Well, you guys only have yourself to blame for complaining so much about physics and not enough about music. Yeah. It's all your fault. But go ahead and take the moral high ground and shift the blame onto others.
At least the instrumentation doesn't involve felines being abused all the time. You know, why can you blame the fan base for the music not having a drastic revamp? If you want someone to blame it's Ken Balough. He said in an interview that he sat down with Jun Senoue about what Episode II's music should be like and he said that he liked the direction taken in Episode I. Jun said that he wanted to keep the basic compositions to make it in line with the Mega Drive games. Ken probably told him that the fans weren't pleased with the instrumentation and it was to be changed. Jun toned down the cats for the World Map music. And if you want someone to blame for Jun Senoue's involvement in Sonic 4 that's Takashi Iizuka's fault for making him the music director and sole composer in the first place. There were better people out there but he chose the guy who the fans credit every Sonic track to him everywhere, thinking that he could still work on tracks like the good old days.
Its either that there not paying him enough to do a good job or classic work just isn't his thing. Little history folks, When Jun came along it was 1993, Around Sonic 3's development, And he just got out of college awhile ago, A rookie by all means since hes had no real professional work before this. The music was already starting to take changes from what we heard in Sonic 1&2 so its not like he had a real direct involvement in previous works. This is what hes credited for in Sonic 3/S&K: Thats all he was given, Jingles and Bonus Stages! There not going to give some fresh, wet behind the ears, former college student by only a couple months big work like stage music yet so they stuck the guy with stuff you wouldn't be hearing normally. Then after some works with other SEGA games, his last Sonic classic game he had real involvement was 3D Blast: After which, adventure came along and the rest is current history to us. Now mind you the Genesis version is supposed to be the superior one in soundtrack but it was no Sonic 1-3 sound-wise. My point being this man has been around for awhile, but he wasn't actually involved in our beloved classic music we heard over and over and over until our ears bled. if anything hes drawing inspiration from his works on 3D blast as his classic element. Again, why don't they just bring a few people back from the Sonic 1-3 crew and let him assist instead of forcing him to mimic someone Else's work? This isn't his thing he shouldn't be forced into something that doesn't fit him. SEGA should either give the order to have more people from the classic era help Jun or ditch this whole 16-bit OH WERE TRYING TO BE RETRO HOW COOL IS THAT? vibe and go for its own flair! Give Jun a Guitar and tell him to "go nuts, create whatever you want!" and we get stuff from adventure-generations, nice decent sounding stuff you want to replay on your ipods over and over. Give Jun a keyboard and a Genesis soundset and tell him "Do this EXACTLY like how it was in Sonic 2" and we get deceased cats!, bad stuff thats entirely forgettible. There, my opinion is voiced. Yeah probably a good idea. We dun get jokez! :specialed:
The main problem, which is the same problem with EP1 music, is that the direction the music is taking is on the basis that "16-bit" means a couple of particular synth patches, which really isn't the case. The Genesis chipset was capable of so many different things (Sonic 2 being a prime example of variety just across levels) Not to mention going that far back in terms of style really doesn't suit the beefed up visuals. Yeah I know, I said S4EP1 had beefed up visuals. Come at me with pitchforks, why don't you. They really should have insisted on stuff like Sonic CD, or music from the Sega Saturn era. Not particularly "modern" modern, yet not particularly 16-bit either. edit: To be fair, the lead sounds in this aren't distinctly MIAU MIAU MIAU MIAUUUU anymore, but my point stands.
There's some stuff related to Sonic Adventure for Playstation Home (basically the avatar clothing rewards) except for your Home .. Guy? I don't even know what it's called. Sonic's shoes and stuff. New music sounds nice. It's sounding much better than it did in Episode 1. Also I haven't said it yet but that new title card is great.
That Sylvania Castle tune sounds like uninspired meandering crap. I don't consider this an improvement over Episode 1's music.
Hm. This time, it isn't quite the ear-meltingly bad instruments, but now rather limp and boring music. About the same quality as that rather uninspired and linear level design. Yeah, I think I'll give this one a pass. It's got nothing going for it.
In addition, might I add that the music track is extremely short, yet again, so uninspired music in conjunction with repetitiveness will result in nothing good. This is a bit of a let-down.
It doesn't sound terrible. The synths, while still too limited and incongruous with the graphics, are definitely a step up from Episode 1. It's just that the melody is really generic and forgettable. I just listened to it thirty seconds ago and I already forgot it.
These were my initial thoughts precisely. The music so far has gone from making me want to commit suicide from "feline death noises" to "I'm so bored I'm starting to fall asleeppppppppppppppppppppppp." I recommend replacing the tracks with my Ep 2 Proposal music if you want for the 360, PC, and PS3 versions. Just for fun if you are looking to listen to something that goes longer than 50 seconds between loops. I would find it absolutely hilarious if everyone posted gameplay vids on youtube with replaced music (not necessarily mine of course). I feel that Jun's music lacks soul w/o a guitar in his hands. Mad Gear is the exception (because it takes cues from Cannon's Core....I made audio comparisons but never got around to posting them).
A bit off topic, but here is a comparison of 2 Cannon Core songs with Mad Gear Zone Act 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?q41w74rbfejgjwu http://www.mediafire.com/?50mmc51tmfnr820 I made these well over a year ago, meant to put them up on youtube, but never did.
Um, the drums aren't the same, the chords match up for about 50% (being generous), melody lines are completely different, the only thing that's remotely comparable would be accents and the fact they both are 4 chord progressions that start on the root, with an ending flourish that leads back to it. Maybe I'm deaf, I dunno. :|
