Month: December 2010

The 3 Best Comeback Albums of the Decade

You love a band, you love their music, but a disagreement or death forces the collaboration to halt. And I’m not talking about a 3 year “retirement” hiatus Jay-Z style. No, this is a true parting of ways, a genuine end of an era. You’ve long given up hope of ever hearing new tunes from this group again but out of nowhere the impossible returns. Call it a comeback. But coming back is not the same as *being* back. Which artists have successfully been able to return to critical prominence? On this blog that means which music do I like most? Here’s the 3 best comeback albums of the last 10 years.

Chinese Democracy, Guns ‘n’ Roses
Admittedly the loosest definition of comeback on this list as many would just as likely label this a solo project, Axl created a legend more famous for the process than the final product. Chinese Democracy took over 10 years to make, involved a huge turnover of musicians, and was rumored to be the most expensive album ever to produce. How was it possible that these songs could live up to expectations? The album got mixed reviews and I do agree that there are some bad songs on it. What was worse was that some of the better songs were released or leaked early, taking away some of the luster upon release. But a great thing happened. Instead of the expected round of bashing, a contingent of fans emerged who still loved Axl’s voice and who appreciated some of the songwriting. A lot of the change ups in the music are original and scored critical points. It turns out that most of the bad public opinion were old guys complaining about, “these damn new electric drums.” While the album does have an overproduced sound and some of the weaker songs confuse noise with being hardcore, overall there is a very emotional layered elegance to the work. And when a process as easy to poke fun of results in a product that many critics begrudgingly respect, I call that a win.

Strays, Jane’s Addiction
Here’s an album that flies under the radar but deserves every bit of respect I am about to give it. Releasing 10 years after Jane’s Addiction’s last album and break up, this was a reunion that defied the odds. Why would a band whose members hated each other and had individual success after splitting up reunite? I have no idea but I am glad they did. All but a couple of the songs appearing on Strays are easily 4 or 5 star material. Track after track delivers variety and well conceived and executed harmony. What’s more, the ability of the band to generate the ‘same old sound’ without coming off as dated was nothing short of amazing. There is no single good reason that old fans of the band would dislike this material unless they didn’t give it a fair listen. But alas, it turns out the band members still couldn’t stand each other and a second breakup occurred. Is it possible Jane’s Addiction could reprise this award in the next decade?

Black Gives Way to Blue, Alice in Chains
Last but not least is the least likely of comebacks. For years Alice in Chains had limped through drug problems and Layne Staley’s death seemed to put the final nail in the coffin. The band was stuck on life support and fans were treated to countless dvds, compilations, and live albums instead of getting their fix for new music. Finally after almost 15 years a followup studio album was made possible with a replacement lead singer- and black dude sounds *exactly* like Layne Staley. Jerry Cantrell wisely steps back from the lead vocals and focuses on the guitar work and tempo that has brought the band fame. Black Gives Way to Blue laments Layne’s death but refuses to be defeated by it. Instead of hiding from the past the first track, All Secrets Known, unapologetically tackles the elephant in the room head on. “Hope, a new beginning. Time, time to start living, like just before we died.” And indeed, instead of being paralyzed by the tragedy Alice in Chains finally regains their strength. Similar sounds from past successes like Dirt and onward appear but are infused with a new boldness of heavy guitar that is almost lost in this day. This album is refreshing because it fights conformity and non-conformity at the same time and instead simply attempts to be true to itself. And what results is an album so good that it surpasses the self titled effort of 1995. The past is over and that’s ok. Turn the volume up and appreciate this one.

Modern Warfare Series

After years of the first person shooter market being dominated by the World War II theme (and space marines), Infinity Ward decided to go against the grain and shift the genre into a new trend. This was no easy feat. Several attempts on more original shooter stories have of course been created but the key metric was gaining the public’s acceptance.

After inventing the Call of Duty series and building up a respectable first person shooter talent base, it was time to enter the modern era. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was an interesting idea when it was in development but nobody could have predicted the success it would have. There were so many things the game did right as far as utilizing the first person perspective uniquely- instead of a crutch that inhibited storytelling the camera view was leveraged as a strength for in game cinematics and action. The game was so successful that the Call of Duty name was dropped and Modern Warfare became its own brand. The sequel, Modern Warfare 2, was groomed from the beginning to be a blockbuster and perfectly utilized all the great gameplay techniques of the first. These two titles sold more units than any other console games in recent years. As a developer in the genre I had to play them both, and as prepared as I was to hate on them I have to admit that these are two expertly executed single player campaigns.

Here’s a breakdown of notable features:

Plenty of variety to counter core mechanic fatigue.

Movie Moments

A shooter, at its core, consists of great gunplay and enemy reactions. Still, no matter how deep the weapon system is it will get eventually get tiresome to endlessly repeat the same actions. Pacing is a great tool that designers use to make sure a player is not constantly doing the same thing again and again. When a player is walking down an empty street with nothing in sight for a bit it makes the combat segments more interesting. But downtime isn’t the only way to get a break from the core shooting mechanic. There are so many other special situations during the game used for this. Whether you are manning a turret, breaching a door in slow motion, swimming, rappelling, or driving- there are plenty of change ups. These are things that all shooters employ to some degree but Modern Warfare executes them as short one-offs that are reminiscent of movie moments.

Great story.

Story

In the true style of modern combat, wars are not fought by a single soldier who can never die. The action jumps around between several different people working for different units. The SAS, the Marines, the Army Rangers, the CIA- the interplay between the different factions all over the world is fascinating. And dare I spoil the plots a bit and say that not all the characters make it through alive- I’d even go as far as saying getting shot in the head is an Infinity Ward trademark. Dialog and voice acting also get props in an industry that doesn’t always provide an ‘A+’ product.

Every level has a sensible entry, a clear target, and a cool exit.

Level Progression

Storytelling in games isn’t only the metaplot- it is also the level progression, or unfolding of events during play. In Modern Warfare it is usually easy to know what the current objective is, when you are leading up to a climax, and when the status quo changes. Many games do not do this well and may in fact fail miserably in this category. If you get lost or confused during levels and don’t know what to do or why you are going somewhere then you have fallen victim to this design flaw. It is likewise important for players to feel a sense of accomplishment, and some sort of clear progression and achieving of goals needs to be understood instead of aimless wandering around. In addition, many of the Modern Warfare levels start in interesting ways like ferrying from a submarine into the bottom of an offshore oil rig or flying into a mountainside prison from the side of a transport helo and end in exciting sequences like airlifting out of the middle of an ambush or running to an extraction point while outnumbered and under chase.

There are no real movies.

In game story

Speaking of all this cool action, it is important to note that it all happens in game. You lose control of your character and can sometimes move the camera around a bit but the point is that you are taken in and out of gameplay seamlessly and ensures that you don’t sit through belabored performances with an itchy trigger finger. Sure, there are prerendered movies instead of loading screens but these are computer images and audio recordings for the most part – nothing excessively hard on the development team but interesting enough to watch. These add style to the game and cover the level loads without becoming a strain on the animation team.

The AI doesn’t try to be too smart.

AI

This is a small point but worth noting because some games try to get too complicated with the AI and do too much. In Modern Warfare, enemies use designer placed fire points or some similar system to determine where the AI can stand and fire. To be honest this is a weakness of the first game because many enemies stand in the same place and it feels like after you kill one that another soldier just pops back into the same place, but the sequel mostly corrects this problem. My main takeaway is that the friendly allies either follow the player and take cover or lead the player in a 100% scripted fashion, the enemies take cover and either defend or advance slowly, and that’s it. There’s not a whole lot going on and there doesn’t need to be because that is all the action needed without getting overly complicated.

And just for good measure… the main weakness of the series:

The zoom firing mechanic.
The damage model in modern Warfare is fairly high. That is to say that enemies go down with a few bullets and the player can’t take many more before needing to duck and hide or die. Facing multiple enemies without mouse control can be tough especially when getting shot kicks the camera around and covers the screen with blood. Console shooters use various aim assist techniques as a great equalizer, anything from making the reticle ‘stick’ to targets to nudging the bullet trajectory from a near miss into a hit. The unspoken rule with aim assist is that it should be helpful without being noticeable. One such technique that Modern Warfare over relies on is pushing the reticle towards the closest target when you push the zoom button. Unfortunately Infinity Ward outright abuses this feature and makes the reticle immediately snap to enemies making it supremely affective to rezoom rather than aim manually. I am sorry but quickly zooming and unzooming to autotarget is a ghetto aiming system. I am not against removing the hardcore nature a precise aiming game offers by giving some sort of autolock- that is a fine compromise to bring a hardcore game further into the casual space. The problem is the execution of the feature. When forcing the screen to zoom and unzoom repeatedly in a nauseating fashion is the clear optimal strategy then there is a problem with the game. Not to mention the number of times the autolock forces me to *miss* my target because I am trying to manually aim at it while I am unexpectedly ‘assisted’. Weak sauce. The designers need to either force the player to aim (and make getting hit yourself not be such a penalty to counter-balance) or more realistically build the autolock feature into the game in a better way without making the screen jumpy.

But enough nitpicking. Lord knows I do it enough as it is on this website. For once the public opinion and sales numbers got it right. Modern Warfare is the most successful recent console franchise and *it should be*. Do yourself a favor and play these two games if you are among the few who haven’t yet.

MMA

Mixed Martial Arts has really been catching on over the last 5 years and I admit I’ve been enjoying the ride. It is fresher and more violent than boxing and its other brethren while still remaining very technical. The wider array of skills required of fighters provides comparatively vastly different fighting styles and ways for any given bout to turn out.

Unfortunately, MMA is in a very real danger of turning stale. It is ironic that a sport notorious for being brazen is comfortably settling into boring. While it is impossible to overcome the adage ‘what was once new is now old’, I am alarmed at how fast MMA fighting is losing its edge.

For the record, I am not going to start a diatribe about the good ol days of ultimate fighting where anything was allowed and sumo wrestlers fought ninjas. It was a great gimmick, and a bloody good time- literally- but it simply wasn’t sustainable. To garner real credibility and attract long term athletes many safety issues needed to be addressed. MMA had to go legit if it had any hope of surviving.

I’ve complained at length before about sports that involve judges handing down decisions. After 3 rounds of battle the last thing viewers want to be left with is a scorecard determining the better fighter. Split decisions are even more horrible because it means that two people whose job it is to grade the fight thought that different people won! But it is begrudgingly hard to not have some sort of tie breaker in a sport like this (though I’d be open to experimentation). And letting the fight go on forever isn’t a solution because nothing is worse than watching two gassed fighters hugging each other and gasping for air.

So why not look into solutions that avoid stalemates?

Takedown

The takedown is arguably the biggest tactic that separates this sport from boxing and without a doubt injects a sense of excitement into an otherwise stand up affair. A large part of the ‘Mixed’ in Mixed Martial Arts is due to the fact that every fighter needs a ground style to complement his stand up style. Gone are the days when you can simply be a good puncher and get far- Kimbo Slice can attest to that. What this means is a well rounded fighter is a better fighter and there is bound to be good variety in the fight. Going to the ground is good for the game, no doubt, yet takedowns are still proving to be the weak link of Mixed Martial Arts.

Give the weapons back
There are a lot of illegal strikes in the UFC. Many of these are holdovers from when the sport was trying to claim its legitimacy. But now that MMA commands a lot of money and viewership its backers can flex their muscles and allow some of these strikes again. I don’t think anyone is asking to see more knees to the heads of downed opponents but if a fighter is on his back and being attacked from above, he shouldn’t have to worry about whether his attacker has a knee down on the mat or not. He should be allowed to strike away like crazy and open up the fight. Let’s make it potentially more painful to simply lean on top of a guy and kill clock.

Remove the defender’s edge
In the earlier days of MMA takedowns were more exciting mainly because dominant styles weren’t formed yet and it was harder to defend yourself on the ground. It was much more common to see arm bars and other submissions because the opponent often didn’t know what to expect. The classic ground and pound was easier to apply because an opponent didn’t properly counter a full guard position advance. These days everybody and their little brother attends MMA gyms and learns takedown defenses and the whole thing degenerates into two guys on the floor trying to control the others’ hands. It is common for neither fighter to get a strong edge for long periods of time because they are both trained to use the same tactics. Everybody knows that wrestling is gay and you wouldn’t ever find it being relevant except perhaps in an Olympics discussion, yet this is what we end up watching for large portions of UFC matches. The only other real ground style is jiu-jitsu, which sounds a lot cooler but actually turns out to be even more homosexual than wrestling.

jiu-jitsu

So why is it that these strategies are still allowed? Fighters are ultimately just gaming the rules- give them new rules to make things more exciting. The forward pass did wonders for football, after all.

Is change easy? No. Are the solutions obvious? Of course not. But the problems *are* clear, and it only takes a bit of foresight to address them. Don’t reward lazy fighting. UFC is only 3 rounds because the action is supposed to be intense. Don’t allow fighters to sit in stalemate positions to catch their breath. If a fighter is not being dominated then he should have tools to fight back. Coaches often tell their fighters not to leave the outcome in the hands of the judges. The reality is, as long as the UFC ruleset doesn’t promote this mentality, you can’t expect the fighters to do anything different.