Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Standing Strong Inside the Inferno

The God of War series is one of my favorite video game franchises. The stylish game play as well as the visceral and intense combat ranks this game very high on the list of best action games of all time. It makes me sad to no end that I am not able to play the third entry in the series (as I lack ownership of a Playstation 3). It is very, very hard to overrate the God of War series and its impact on the world video games.

Yet it seems that critics have finally found a way to do it.

Dante's Inferno is a game that I have always been extremely interested in playing from the first time I heard about it. As the months wore on and I saw more trailers and previews of the game the more excited I got in anticipation. But something started happening.

Something sinister that spoke of a bias and disdain among video game critics and so-called experts.

Everywhere I turned Dante's Inferno was being blasted and dismissed as a God of War clone. This was quite curious to me because the game play elements they were saying Dante's Inferno "ripped off" God of War were, themselves, not unique to God of War. The God of War series is an amalgamation of the finest qualities of all the action/platforming games made over the years. It combines the stylish, brutal combat of games like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry with the platforming of the Prince of Persia series, albeit a much simpler system of platforming. Hell, even the quick-time button events were not something that gamers had never seen before the God of War series (although it was the first series to grossly overuse them).

After finally getting my hands on a copy of Dante's Inferno and playing for slightly over an hour I have been vindicated in my distrust of the naysayers.

Dante's Inferno is not a ripoff of God of War. It is just another take on the ever growing stylish action (not my name for it) genre of video games. The thing that people seem to be forgetting is that God of War is not the original over the top, slaughter with style game. Dante has just as much in common with Kratos's misadventures as he does with any other extreme hero dudes in his respective genre. Like the God of War games it is simply an amalgamation of everything that came before. The only thing God of War did differently than the games that preceded it was take the action to a higher level of intensity.

The curious thing to me about all the backlash is that the developers for Dante's Inferno never claimed that the game was going to be anything original or revolutionary. I think it was crystal clear from the start what they were going for with this game. Personally, I think Dante is a much more compelling and sympathetic protagonist than Kratos. Where Kratos is a "fuck the world and everyone in it, I'm number one" kind of dude, Dante just wants to reclaim his lost love and will gladly sacrifice himself to do it.

While hacking and slashing my way through Greek mythology with style to spare was infinitely entertaining, I ultimately never cared about Kratos's ultimate goal. The only motivation for Kratos succeeding was knowing that it meant I had succeeded and beaten the game. But if Dante succeeds then (hopefully) he reunites with his stolen love and they live happily ever after. I have an emotional investment in Dante's quest that I never had for Kratos. Whatever the outcome I am 99.9% sure that I will be satisfied with the personal, as well as visceral, journey.

Dante's Inferno does, without question, kick incomprehensible amounts of ass but it is definitely no God of War.

Ah, Kratos, here's hoping that someday I can partake of your third (and presumably final) bloodbath.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Death By Way of Rebirth

One of the most disappointing days of my life was when I found out that Creed, my favorite band (at the time), was breaking up. Three of the four members went off and started another band, Alter Bridge, which was a more mainstream version of Creed. My initial excitement upon being able to hear more music from some of my favorite musicians immediately melted away once I realized how typical and unoriginal Alter Bridge’s sound was. Every once in awhile I would give the band a cursory listen but I never was a serious fan.

Last year the impossible happened and Creed reunited, putting out a new album. I was beyond ecstatic at this news. The band that had the most impact on the development and direction of my musical life was back with more alternative rock goodness. It took me several months to procure the album but now that I have I am wondering if it would have been better to leave the past in the past. Creed is not Creed anymore. They are a Frankenstein amalgamation of every post-grunge cliché and chord progression ever committed to an audio format.

What made Creed so special to begin with was that they did not sound like any other band out there. Creed made their own style of music that transcended the restrictive confines of their genre. While other bands were literally raping our ears with horrendous rap metal or recycling grunge riffs that were new and exciting in the early ‘90s Creed was carving their own path through the musical wilderness, forcing us to tread off the beaten path into an exciting new world. Granted, not everyone was willing to go along for the ride and for those of you who resisted you do not know what you were missing. Now they are just another typical alternative metal band hammering away at tried and true riffs and power chords that have been done to death by numerous other bands in the eight years since Creed disbanded.

I feel at this point I should say that Full Circle (the new album’s title) is by no means a bad album. It is a very good album if taken on its own terms as an enjoyable, rollicking ride through the aural landscapes of the average post-grunge album. But that is where the inherent problem lies.

Creed is not supposed to be the band that churns out manufactured, average post-grunge albums.

I am not saying I want Creed to be stuck in the past or that they need to sound exactly like they did eight years ago. Refusing to evolve or trying to recapture past glories can result in some bad, bad musical and lyrical decisions (see Motley Crue’s latest, Saints of Los Angeles). But it is like Creed is not even the same band. Some of the songs (“On My Sleeve”, “Good Fight” are the two best examples) sound like Creed is unsuccessfully trying to copy their own signature sound and fuse it with their newfound fondness for mediocrity and conformity while others (“Fear”, “Full Circle”, “Away in Silence”) have no business being anywhere near a Creed record.

None of the songs on the album are bad songs (“Away in Silence” being a painfully obvious exception) for your average band. But here again we run into that same old problem: Creed is supposed to be better than your average band. And that is where the heart of the problem (and my dejection) lies.

Creed went from being superior to the crowd to becoming part of the crowd.