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Project CARS Soundtrack Review

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Project CARS OSTI’ve never picked up a soundtrack for a racing game before. They’re usually mix tapes of various hip hop, rock, and techno tracks with the occasional orchestral piece thrown in. I have nothing against popular and mainstream music, but I’ve gotten into video game soundtracks because I really enjoy the orchestral music. (The soundtrack for Max Payne 3 is a complete outlier.) So yes, looking at the soundtrack for Project CARS never even crossed my mind, because that surely is more of the same. However, I received a press release from the label last month, advertising the soundtrack, and they included the following quote from the composer, Stephen Baysted:

Like all authentic racing simulation titles, there is no music during gameplay; car engines always take precedence. My job as composer is to try to enhance the player’s sense of immersion in this world of racing and deepen their emotional and psychological responses to it by ‘preparing’ them for the race. The music in the menu system is therefore dramatic, gripping, epic, gladiatorial and is infused with race day sounds – cars, crowds, tannoys – so that it links directly to the sound world they will be exposed to whilst racing. It tries to get inside the head of the racing driver and represent the range of emotions they feel – fear, excitement, nerves, adrenaline pumping, and danger. Imagine what it is like driving at Le Mans at 330 kph in the dark as you slice your way through traffic! As a result, it’s a varied score and reflects many facets of motorsport.

NOW, good sir, you have my attention. Firstly, there is a composer. Secondly, he wanted to make menu screens exciting? This I gotta hear.

Granted, many games have done a fantastic job with placing great music with their menus. Saints Row IV comes to mind as well as Double Dragon. Oh, the memories of 8-bit chip tune menu music. That was truly the best menu music, something that we’ve kind of fallen away from over the years. Which is fine, but it’s great that composers are finding new ways to jazz up menu screens, so to speak.

Since this is mostly menus, the soundtrack is very, very short at 12 tracks running for 31 minutes. Yet, with tracks like the one below, it’s very easy to keep this OST on loop for a bit.

Did you ever expect to hear an opera singer in a racing game? I feel revved up and ready to go, and I loathe racing games. I wonder if I would start speeding down the highway if I listened to this soundtrack while on road trips.

Instead of blending together a varied collection of tracks, Baysted put together a blend of orchestral, pop, and a bit of techno in each track. As such, you really can’t pin this OST down as one genre or another—anything other than soundtrack. At the same time, he keeps the blended ingredients similar, so the soundtrack is cohesive like a beautiful soup, rather than thrown together like leftover night.

The Project CARS soundtrack was indeed a welcome and pleasant surprise, however, it’s length leaves plenty to be desired. I know that the OST contains all of the tracks possible, since the game has no music while racing, but it’s hard to recommend $10 for 30 minutes of music, especially when one half of the soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed Unity has more than twice the songs, more than twice the length, and costs only $1 more. The music is well worth it for the variety and how much it will get you ready to race, but it may be rather steep for those who aren’t hardcore video game soundtrack fans.

Digital review copy received via label.

Comic Review: The Witcher: Fox Children #5

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The Witcher: Fox Children #5And at long last, we come to the end of The Witcher: Fox Children comic book series. Writer Paul Tobin outdid himself this time, especially since he absolutely tricked me into thinking this was the biggest let-down of an ending since Fable II. I was ready to tear this issue a new one after how each of the previous four issues were so riveting and kept me on the edge of my seat in anticipation and a bit of fear. That was how he was going to end it? Really?

REALLY?

And that’s why you stay through a movie or video game until the very end, even after the credits, or in this case, until the very last page. No matter how weak a storyline is going, see how it ends, and then rip it to shreds. It’s possible it pulls a Paul Tobin and yanks the rug right out of underneath you.

But no, I won’t spoil the ending. I’m already afraid that I’ve said too much.

It’s not only how the comic ends that makes me applaud Tobin, either. He carefully crafted exactly why Geralt is so afraid of the Vulpess and why he refuses to tangle with them to the point that the reader will, in turn, fear them just as much. In fact, if I ever come across one in The Witcher 3, I will board the first nope train out of that situation. The craziest part of the whole thing is that she never lays a hand or paw upon anyone, yet so many died by her hand.

Of course, words can only do so much, and once again, Joe Querio nailed the expressions of the Vulpess, Geralt, and the rest of the hapless shipmates. Most of the Vulpess’s facial expressions were very subtle as she didn’t show her face to everyone on the ship, but Querio was able to use the lines of her fur and whiskers and position of her eyes to beautifully present exactly what she is thinking.

With the close of The Witcher: Fox Children #5, I am both happy and sad to see it end, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that CD Projekt RED and Dark Horse will team up for at least one more mini-series. They have something amazing here, and they should keep it going.

If you haven’t read this series yet, now that all five issues are out (as of August 5, 2015), there’s no better time to grab all of them at once. The Witcher: Fox Children #5 is available both retail and digital from Dark Horse comics.

Digital review copy received from publisher.

Comic Review: Halo: Escalation #20

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Halo: Escalation #20The Tomb Raider comic may be on hiatus to prepare for the November game, but Halo: Escalation is still going strong, even with an October game release. Issue #20 isn’t the last issue before the game, and it’s not even the last issue of this particular arc. Issue #20 is, however, quite the culmination of nearly every theme ever introduced into the Halo-verse. We have the following to look forward to:

  • hatred of Halsey
  • Halsey’s obsession with technology and knowledge no matter the cost
  • Covenant hatred of humans
  • human hatred of Covenant
  • all Hell breaking loose
  • ONI double dealings
  • Forerunners as gods
  • betrayal
  • other spoilertastic things I won’t mention

I’m not sure you could ask for more in a comic issue for Halo.

At the end of the last issue, everything that could go wrong has for the Spartans who have sneaked aboard Jul M’dama’s fleet with a Sangheili spy has. Really, would it be a Halo story if everything went smoothly and according to plan? This time is once again a bit of Dr. Halsey’s fault in her rush to find the coveted artifact the Librarian left her to uncover, and it’s also a bit of Jul M’dama’s fault for insisting everything happen right now. Unfortunately for Halsey, she enjoyed pointing out the latter to him way too much, and I honestly though he would be the one to finally kill her. He still may be, but he didn’t this month.

Yet, this doesn’t help our Spartan IVs at all or Ayit the Sangheili spy or even the UNSC back on the Infinity, since Halsey’s mistake damaged their communicator back to the mothership. They’re now having to wing it, Ayit and the Spartans are even more forced than they were before to trust one another with their lives, and Palmer has to be super nice to a scientist, something she loathes to do. The entire story has a great buildup to the very last page, which hints that we may finally get the answers to ________ and ________.

While the story is great, this issue is a bit off, art-wise. Ian Richardson and Netho Diaz have left off a lot of the details in faces and the environments that the series usually has. Even the inks seem to be lighter, as if this was a cel-painting from the 80s with severe line fading. It’s bizarre, and definitely not what I’m used to with the Halo: Escalation comic series.

Halo: Escalation #20 is available now from Dark Horse via digital and retail.

Digital review copy received from publisher.

Comic Review: Tomb Raider #18

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Tomb Raider #18 reviewWell here we are, the last issue of Tomb Raider before Rise of the Tomb Raider releases in November. From the way issue #18 ended, I honestly had no idea this was the last one. The writer, Rhianna Pratchett, tweeted about it this morning, and thus educated me. I had to reread the issue again before writing about it, to see if I could see the hints that this is indeed the last one leading up into the next game. Now that I know it is the last issue, it honestly changes how the comic reads, and for the better. Nothing is wrapped up, and it appears that nothing will be wrapped up, as the events of the comic set the story for the game. Even though issue #18 does not have a “real” conclusion and it is incredibly light on the action, it’s one of the best issues of Tomb Raider I’ve read in a long time. And yes, I did feel this way before knowing it’s the last one; learning it’s the last one only makes it better.

Now that Lara and Sam and company are back from Mexico, neither are handling what went down very well, and neither are talking to one another in any sort of constructive way. Sam wants to avoid it and yell at Lara about being a control freak and constantly running away. The pot is calling the kettle black here, but Sam makes an extremely valid point yet again (she told her the same at the start of the Mexico arc).

And Sam isn’t alone in telling Lara what an idiot she is. Kaz yells at Lara the same thing about Yamatai that I’ve been saying for months. No one else has told Lara this nugget of truth before, so I suppose it’s only fair that Lara wouldn’t come to that conclusion herself.

However…

Lara is finally coming to grips with the fact that she has not handled Yamatai or anything else that has happened to her well. She’s paranoid, overly controlling, and is too ready to run off on the next adventure before closing her last one. It’s unfortunate that it takes two friends to yell at her and one to get arrested (oh that’s not a spoiler, it’s the cover) for her to realize she needs help. The trailer for the upcoming game has shown Lara in a therapy session, and while the comic doesn’t go that route, it sends her down a rather healthy path toward recovery.

The bad news is that it looks like we aren’t saying goodbye to Yamatai or the Sun Queen any time soon. That said, it does look like we’re taking a fresh perspective on it, and the video game won’t drag down as much as the comics. If that’s really where the game was always going to go, then it really wasn’t the comic writers fault for constantly harping on the Yamatai story; they were doing what Crystal Dynamics told them to do, and they were doing the best they could with what they were given.

As much as I have disliked these comics, I’m afraid they will be necessary for connecting many dots in Rise of the Tomb Raider. The last issue releases tomorrow, July 29, 2015.

Digital review copy received from publisher.

Comic Review: Halo: Escalation #19

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Halo: Escalation #19When reading virtually any of the Halo books, the Covenant constantly points out that humans cannot be trusted because they have no honor, they always lie, and they’ll say and do anything for selfish reasons. Even though the Spartan-IIs and a few other humans always proved this notion wrong, it always bothered me every time I read it. Not all humans are so despicable; how can they get that idea when all the Covenant does is kill every human on sight and take no prisoners? And then I would turn the page and read about the horrid plans ONI is hatching to “ensure” human survival above the costs of everyone else; alliances with other races be damned. However, ONI has always painted it that they do the awful for the greater good, which in a sense is like the honor and culture of the Sangheili and the Sangheili pride.

All of that is gone by the second page of Halo: Escalation #19. Maybe not all humans are awful (I need this thought some days, give me a break), but virtually everyone at ONI is. I’m not sure how they can say what they do is good and honorable, when they say, and I quote:

The species’ [Sangheili] rigid code of honor, combined with their culture of overt and direct aggression, makes them naturally poor candidates for ONI’s line of work. Our search has been for the deviant. The abnormal social profile that shows an instinct for self-preservation and deception. Basically, we looked for the most human Sangheili we could find…

I want to choke them and say, “No, you’ve found the most ONI Sangheili you could find,” but I suppose at that point we would be splitting hairs.

Why are they looking for a human Sangheili? I admit it’s for a noble cause—a way for ONI to infiltrate Jul ‘Mdama’s new Covenant and put a stop to his and Halsey’s insurrection against humanity. Yet, I can’t help but think that they wouldn’t BE in this situation at all if they hadn’t proven Jul ‘Mdama right in his assessment of humans in the first place.

That could be a dissertation for another time. But back to this particular issue.

Issue #19 indeed jumps back into the plotline post Spartan Ops, one that will surely lead into the main storyline of Halo 5: Guardians. All of the big league players from the last several comics and Spartan Ops are here to shine: Dr. Glassman, Halsey, Jul ‘Mdama Commander Laskey, Spartan Thorne, Spartan Palmer, and another Spartan who I don’t want to name here. I’d hate to kill any sort of surprise. For a comic that kicks off a new story arc, it jam-packed in plenty, removing the typical chessboard set-up most first issues/episodes/etc. have. And yet, it was able to do so without feeling rushed or even jam-packed. Virtually everyone has already been introduced in past arcs and media, which allowed the comic team to skip over most character development and jump right into ONI’s insidious plot.

Are you counting down the months until Halo 5: Guardians‘ release? You should be, because according to my watch, we have only 4 MORE ISSUES until the game releases. If you haven’t been reading Halo: Escalation, now is the time to get on board and catch up, catch up, catch up. I can’t emphasize enough how great this comic series is, and Issue #19 kicks it into amazingly high gear.

Digital review copy received from publisher.

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