So I guess I'm doing a Silent Hill playlog

OK, I finally managed to stumblebum to the other two keys for which I was searching. When I opened the door they unlocked, I was introduced (well, for the first time since the ) to Silent Hill's normal world/dark world mechanic, as the outside town was now all poorly-lit and...well, that's it, really. There'll still, of course, monsters roaming the streets, but they're not more plentiful or of different species. The main difference is lighting.

There are, however, avenues open in the "dark" world that're closed off in the real one, and this enabled me to hoof it to the previously-inaccessible school where I'd been told my character's daughter was waiting. I attempted to explore along the way, but whoops, pterodactyls, so I basically just ran the whole stretch; there's hardly ever anything to discover in the overworld, anyway. I started poking through the school, where a new enemy indeed lay in wait: skinless kids with knives (rather featureless; we are dealing with PS1 polygons, after all), whose existence, when I learned of it way back when, made me avoid this title when it first came out. I guess I've become more callous since then, or else I'm just fed up with this dumb game and want to get it over with, as my primary reaction wasn't moral revulsion but consternation on how to dispatch the little twits. The pipe works moderately better here - they're ground-based enemies and all that - but the things pounce and latch onto you like leeches if they get too close, and they tend to roam in packs, which makes the pipe too slow. As I explored the school, though, I found enough ammo to max out almost my inventory - so this has turned into an RE-esque shooter after all, although, again, not nearly as well-executed as that title.

Then I unlocked the multi-stage frobnitz with which I was supposed to be fiddling to accomplish whatever the fuck here, and the interior of the school changed from bloody, busted-down classrooms to bloody, busted-down chainlink, and I was like, wait, I wasn't in the dark world before? This precipitated another trek through the multilevel, enemy-packed school to unlock new configurations of locked classroom doors, whereupon the game started heavily signposting an upcoming boss battle but refusing to give me a save point after, ooh, about an hour of gameplay, which is an ungodly length of time in a start-and-stop title like this. I ultimately decided to trudge back to the one at the start of the level, and while my path was somewhat light on foes - enemies do stay dead for a certain length of time in some rooms here, apparently - it was a chore all the same. I'm now supposed to be looking for a key that got flushed down a drain, but everything here is dingy and rusty and looks like it could be hovering about the drainage system anyway, so I've no idea where I'm supposed to look.

Then it occurred to me: why am I bothering with this game? I'm endlessly frustrated with the gameplay, and I'm not being treated to any sights but rusty chainlink. I'm almost to four hours on the official clock (way more than that with all the restarts, but), which supposedly is halfway through the game's length - but nothing's happened since the intro. It's just an unpleasant experience; I'll continue, but I'm not expecting anything worth my while.
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31 Days of Game Music: Secret of Mana

We've had a lot of bad vibes here, so let's cleanse the palate with an old classic.

The music is what we all remember, but I'd like to start by addressing the first thing that meets your ears and arrests your attention on this piece - the opening sound effect, that of a howling wind. It's not roaring with menace like something from Castlevania, but it's still self-evident in its greatness of scale, its immensity. Yet the piece announces itself with a natural sound synonymous with silence - with stillness - and this seemingly small touch lays the groundwork for both the game's nature motif and the composition's establishment of immensity and authority through understatement.

The composition's trademark sound, its hook, are those high and shining piano notes. They're few, they're unadorned and unaccompanied, yet they arrest the attention. The smallest sonic details provide the greatest emotional resonance - the isolation of the individual notes accentuates the vibrato of each struck key, communicating something pure, something beautiful locked in primal memory.



Onscreen, however, you don't see anything immediately - just blackness with the logo and a credits quickly flashing by. What? What's going on here? Such music must surely announce something special, yet you don't see it right away - the presentation builds anticipation. And then -



With a soft, shimmering crescendo, a slit scrolls open to reveal a glimpse of lush green. The characters are present as well, but they're to the side, away from your primary focus. A more fluid and continuous melody, still tranquil, gently enters through a high and sweet flute; the piano slides to a simple continuo that echoes its opening passage.



The slit onscreen opens wider, to encompass the viewer's whole field of view, and pans up, to reveal - the massive trunk of the Mana Tree, so huge it can be rendered only in impressionistic broad strokes to our focus. A snippet of ancient lore scrolls upward to set up the story; the music, meanwhile, has become smoother and less pointed than its opening, acknowledging that it is no longer the player's only focus but providing a lush emotional framework for onscreen events.



A flock of CGI birds flies over from the right, bringing majestically slow movement on frame, and a quietly building yet unsteady reverb of more overt wonder takes over; the awe is palpable, and the composition is brought to its climax. It ends not with a grand crash of cymbals but instead dwindles to a quiet fade, a sigh; as nature weathers most all passing disturbances, the rich silence that is its status quo has descended once more.

1993 was a little too early for games to be cinematic in earnest, yet Mana's opening provides the backbone of the most cinematic opening of the era; it's program music, though it might not sound like it standalone. "Angel's Fear," it's titled, and it's perhaps the purest sonic distillation of the game's love and awe of nature, of being impressed by something larger than yourself.
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