VGM of the Day #18: Gluttony Fang

There comes along every so often, a character in a video game that's just that perfect kind of evil. Be it demented psychopaths like Kefka from FFVI (Suck it Sephiroth), or more direct evildoers like Bowser or Ganondorf, they find a way to weasel into our hearts, for better or worse. BlazBlue's got one of those guys. His name is Hazama.

Hazama, although having a generic plan to destroy all existence as we know it, has won fans over for a different reason - he's a complete dick.

Yep, he's a real silver-tongued bastard; always has the perfect thing to say to press the BlazBlue casts' buttons, and then laughing in their face about it. Quick with one-liners and even direct quotes from other popular media (WHY SO SERIOUS), it's easy to hate the guy, but easier to love. He's the closest thing to a video game troll we've seen in years, and he's captured the hearts of fans and other trolls alike with his outspoken antics.

With the introduction out of the way, we can talk about his theme song. Daisuke Ishiwatari's got his name written all over this track, going crazy with the guitar, complemented with fast-paced bass and the occasional death metal scream. My personal favorite bits are the piano bars, adding flashes of color to the piece no matter how brief they may be. I don't expect much else from Ishiwatari, but he's an expert in the craft, even if predictable. It fits Hazama quite well nonetheless; hardcore and a little crazy, but well planned out and one of the more memorable tracks in the game.

Playing every time Hazama enters the room, this track can grow on a guy pretty quickly. Hazama's much the same way himself, and if you disagree, umad.

The Verdict: Some of Ishiwatari's finer work, and one of the best songs in the game.

Don't forget to drop your VGM requests at vgmoftheday@yahoo.com , and your song might be chosen for my next blog post!

SilverTrinity Rants About Video Game Music - BlazBlue

I've been playing BlazBlue a lot recently, and can tell you that there is more depth to this than there is to a lot of other fighting games. Whether SFIV is one of those, I'm not sure, but regardless, this ranks among my top 3 fighting games ever. If anybody's played and liked Guilty Gear, don't shy away from picking this up; it's awesome.

And so is the game's music. Much like Guilty Gear before it, the soundtrack in this game is heavily rock-inspired , yet still somehow strongly diverse among the 12 character's themes. Except for Taokaka's and Tager's themes, all the character tracks have an electric guitar accompanied by whatever fits the character (Rachel's theme has an organ and Hakumen' s sounds Asian, for example).

Now, usually, I don't approve of the game's music being too rock-heavy, or too biased into one any one genre, for that matter. but the action gets intense during play, and it fits that so well. As for the remainder of the tracks, they take on a much less bring-the-pain role. The intro has Japanese lyrics (joy of all joys -_-), and the main menu is actually pretty good and catchy, unlike a certain recent fighting game that I won't be playing for a while.

The song I'm most pleased with in the game is actually a lyrical piece that only plays when my favorite character (Bang) activates his Distortion Drive. This song right here can motivate a paraplegic to run a marathon, it's so good. It can motivate you to run outside in a snowstorm and DODGE SNOWFLAKES, it's so good. It can make you want to die, come back from the dead, and AVENGE YOURSELF, it's so good.

But I digress. Though it may not work for some anti-rockers, it's actually really good in terms of production and arrangement.

SilverTrinity's Score: 8.0 / 10.