This is just a quick shout out in support of this really cool game a friend worked on. It’s called Kaleidoscope, and it was released on the Indie Games platform on the Xbox 360. I’ve got to say this is easily the most colorful game I’ve played on the Xbox, and yes, I have played Beatles Rock Band.

The colors are very bright, yet also soft.  It is very easy on the eyes, and for that reason alone, extremely enjoyable. It’s a great break from the usual explosions, and break-neck pace of most games. The world loses its color, and it’s up to a little piece of lint — named Tint — to help bring the color back to the world of Kaleidoscope.

The music compliments the game very well. It’s a subtle type of electronic music that perfectly fits the mood of the game, and I believe actually grows in complexity based on the environment change of the game. The full soundtrack was released for free on OverClocked ReMix.

This past Tuesday, two big games came out: BioShock 2, and Dante’s Inferno. I went with Dante’s Inferno, and I am really glad that I did. I enjoyed this game a lot, and I’ll probably have a lot more fun with it in the future. The re-playability is insane, and the Resurrection mode (new game+?) will help me max out the rest of my stats and such.

I have never read the Divine Comedy, so I only basically knew what to expect from the story. I really enjoyed the way that the story was told, through the beautiful cinematics, the guide Virgil.. even the animated sections were very good. I liked how they left it open at the end for a sequel, but also concluded the story in a way that doesn’t leave you hanging.

The graphic quality is incredible with this game. Not only is there a ton of detail put into pretty much every aspect of the design, but the framerate is very quick and it never stutters like most games do. The anti-aliasing is great as well, and there’s no annoying flickering lines. The graphics are really smooth, and the action is fast.

It’s worth mentioning that a lot of parts in this game are incredibly gross. A good example is the circle of “Lust”, where there is a huge topless demon lady, and other very grotesque creatures. There’s also the Unbaptized Babies that you’ve got to deal with. Little babies, making actual baby sounds. It was a little weird to kill these babies, and punish or absolve them. The glutton is also a fairly grotesque character. A big, naked fat person. All of the gross environments and characters add to the credibility of the story. Doesn’t really look like a place I’d want to be for real.

The sound design and orchestral score is simply stunning. The first time I heard all of the souls screaming was a really unnerving experience. The sound can get so intense, and the screaming is coming from everywhere. I remember a certain part in the circle of “Greed” where you’ve got to pull a lever that makes a large structure come down the wall. The souls sticking out of the wall, of course, get hurt by it. The sound at this spot was really intense, and I kept messing up the puzzle, so I had to hear it over and over. At some point it gets silly that you’re standing there hurting these things over and over, and the sound is so over the top!

Well, the game wasn’t very long, but there’s a lot of replay value in there, as well as being able to play this and talk about it with friends. There’s going to be some DLC in the near future that will also enable multiplayer, which should be a lot of fun. I could imagine starting up the game just to check out the video gallery of in-game videos. Everything is really well done with this game, and it’s definitely an interesting experience. I’d recommend it.

I had been waiting for this game since the day it was announced, and I was not disappointed!

I have been a writer on the staff of Maelstrom since Issue #43 in March 2006. Over the years, I’ve had a really great time writing about a huge abundance of diverse music. I used to spend so much money buying CDs, which has lowered to about 0 to 5 CD purchases a year at this point. Last year, I bought Darkest Hour, Muse, Dream Theater, and that was near the end of the year, but I digress.

I’ve been working on a lot of my own music, so I haven’t been contributing to Maelstrom as often as I should have. I think I may have been published on the issue before last, but not the brand new issue posted in January. There’s a lot of music I have missed out on, because I don’t buy many CDs anymore and I don’t download CDs either. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the writing game so I can hear new stuff. Good times.

Projects & Blazar / Rubicon

One of the things that resulted from my time at Maelstrom was my collaboration with the editor of the magazine, Robert Martinelli. He is a drummer in California. I originally received the Line6 Toneport through the zine so that we could record a song with it for an article he was going to write for EQ Magazine. I don’t know if the article was ever made or published, but we did produce a little song with the Toneport. My thoughts on the Toneport are about the same now as they were then, I give it a solid 3 out of 10.

I’m not sure, but I think that first song we made was released on my side-project band’s name, Blazar. Much later, we decided to make a full album with Blazar and I received the M-Audio Keystation Pro with 88 weighted keys. My task was to record the keys for the album with it, and take notes on its performance and things of that nature. I still use it to this day; it is an incredible MIDI Controller and I would recommend it to anyone.

Roberto decided to change the name for the album to his pre-existing band Rubicon, so we were no longer working as Blazar. The Rubicon demo had a lot of problems, and the fact that we’d began to fight over the process didn’t make anything better. As a result of our fighting, I had little to no say over the production of the CD and it came out very poorly. I’m not saying my input would have made any difference, though. The studio, The Atomic Garden in San Fransisco,  was a huge vortex sucking up cash and spitting out crap. For all the more time Roberto spent there trying to tweak things and make the album, it really should not have come out sounding like a demo. It didn’t help that he’d chosen an amateur vocalist either but that’s a whole new part of the story I’d rather not go into. Getting a bit de-railed here.

Roberto decided to continue on with Rubicon without me in it, which is not fair at all, but what can I do. I pretty much sacrificed my stake in the band when I allowed the name to be changed. I thought it would lead to bigger and better things, but in the long run, Rubicon became one of the least successful things I was ever a part of.

Of course Roberto and I don’t talk nearly as much as we used to, and there’s a certain element of friendship missing from Maelstrom that will probably always be a stain on my experience there. But for the most part, I’ve got some cool memories. How many people can say they’ve done what I did with that whole situation? Maybe I’m still a little bitter about it.

The Future

The guitar riffs I wrote for that demo are still really incredible, some of my best work. I will probably incorporate the best of them into new music sometime. Now that I’ve got a 7-string guitar, I don’t need to “fake” the heaviness like I was doing on the 6-string, trying to write in key of B and using low, crunchy chords.  It’s a good thing all of the Rubicon demo was written in a standard tuning! I could play it in any standard tuning without a problem.

Maelstrom is a great zine with some cool friends involved with it. Zaragil — who guested on In Staid Grace’s second album — also writes for the zine, and is considerably famous for his band Ophidian Forest. He had a very similar experience with Roberto, who also plays drums for Ophidian Forest, but I think he is still involved in the band. It’s sad to hear about stuff like that going on.