I have to fully admit I've never really given dubstep a shot and I'm sure there's plenty of amazing stuff out there, but it's always just seemed incredibly boring to me. I'm sure the music in the actual scene was totally different, but I always feel like it's meant to be in the background of an action scene from a movie around the 90s set in a club, most specifically like from Blade or something.

I find the only appropriate time for dubstep is when I'm driving like a maniac with a car full of friends.

I don't hear any wub wub wub

Heh, I remember there being some pretty epic flamewars on the Winamp forums back when they were adding the "genre" preset. Because you'd have one guy say "you dont need 30 different terms it's all just bippity-boopity music" and another would be all "darkwave quickstep eurobeat is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from melodic vocal grindcore and people need to recognize that!!"

Remember that "where's WALL-E" artwork? Here's who all the robots are.

re: techno (that I like)

re: techno (that I like)

Re: dubstep

I was listening to BBC's Newshour this morning on the way to work, and Robin Lustig brought up dubstep - specifically Skrillex - as some group that predicts "what's big in music" determined that we're going to be hearing a whole lot more of it in the coming year.

This is the song that he played a clip from:

At least they're actually creating something new--even if it's only "new" in the sense of someone assembling Lego blocks in a different configuration. I think the worst was when we were supposed to be falling all over ourselves at the thought of someone playing two songs at the exact same time, and like, WOW man this is TOTALLY NEW ART.

The computer itself is far too predictable. After 8 games, of which I only lost twice, I won or tied for thirty some straight games.

If you think new wave produced not-musicians because they used synthesizers, you don't know shit about new wave. Almost all new wave was done with actual keyboardists because cheap and actually usuable music tracking/composing programs were just plain not around yet. Now go bitch about mid-90s big beat and dnb and trance because THAT is when everyone could make music on their computers without "real" instruments.

Now fuck off, because programming computers to make music is legitimate music.

lul

I have no major grudge against New Wave. Shit, New Order is a favorite group of mine (speaking of, where the hell are my Substance CDs?), and the genre was heavily responsible for me liking electronic music when I got older. That doesn't change the fact that many teenagers/adults used the pre-programmed beats, along with one or two added notes to create their "songs" for the sake of saying their were in a band. It served primarily as an excuse to kill the ozone layer with their hairstyle, and wear god awful clothes in the pursuit of chics. It was a large umbrella that gave tons of folks the chance to say they were music makers, when all they were doing was flicking a few keys to a repetitive melody they had little hand in composing. Now if you wanna say Flock of Seagulls marked a revolution in music, then yeah, we're gonna have a huge and irreconcilable difference of opinion.

Relating back to Spankminister's point: as instruments become cheaper, or lower the bar of entry to play, there becomes a swell of people who have no viable claim to be called musicians calling themselves as such. That doesn't cheapen the real musicianship that happens, but it does increase the signal-to-noise ratio... especially when the marketing and commercialization of music are concerned. Cheap guitars did dilute the rock pool. To use punk as an example: any fool can learn a few chords and mix them ad nauseum (and did). It doesn't mean that the Ramones, or Joy Division, or Sonic Youth, or Nirvana sucked. It just means there was a lot more crap floating around that they had to rise above.

Most new wave bands did not use drum machines, they had live drummers using pads to trigger samples, as RB brings up. New Order did. As terrible as A Flock of Seagulls was, they also had an actual keyboadist and an actual drummer.

A Flock of Seagulls was bad because of boring pop songwriting with dopey lyrics, not because they weren't "real" musicians.

Using the presets on a synthesizer also does not mean you are not a musician. It just means you used the default sounds of the keyboard instead of spending 50 hours tweaking the synthesizer to make the oscillators do weird shit. I spend 50 tweaking the synthesizer to make weird noises, but you know who doesn't? Pianists. Your argument is ridiculous.

In fact, your other argument, that accessibility breeds crappy music, is also stupid. You may as well say, "Fuck the Internet!" for the Internet makes the barriers to entry for shit like "radio shows" very low, so anyone can have a podcast. Like Fast Karate, or like my own podcast. Yes, more people can make mediocre crap, but more people can also make good shit. Lowering barriers to entry is NEVER bad if you ask me.

The punk rock, DIY, "Fuck the mainstream record label over produced crap" attitude is basically the same attitude as the majority of the Internet has. This argument is also ridiculous.

My wife told me an amusing story about Dream Theater. Their drummer used triggering a LOT. There was one song where most people had only ever heard the album/single version. When he played it live they complained about how it sounded different--because it wasn't triggered.

I was blind, but now I see.

That is super awesome. I wish the actual site wasn't down so I could look at the rest of them. :/

I agree with his point though, I have yet to get past the earliest stage of MGS4 because the cutscenes and writing are unbearable. In 2 I didn't hate Raiden, I hated the 10 minute Codec conversations.

Half-life doesn't exactly get it right either because, like you said, Gordon is pointless. The fact they tried to make a love story there is laughable. I never finished any half-life either but that was because of level design. Fuck you zombie area, fuck you hard. That and I'm allergic to non co-op fpsers.

Not sure what I would put up as the correct counter just yet, but that's because I almost always end up hating any game that is story heavy, in one way or another.

Screw SS3. Killer Instinct was and is the better game. There was no better feeling than doing a Ultraaaaaaaaaa! Ultraaaaaaa! Ultraaaaaaaaaaaa! combo with Cinder, going invisible and dropping the controller to do a quick robot dance in the middle of the combo, then picking the controller back up to do one final flaming quick attack as I did the XPAC suck it gesture to my friends.

I don't think I will ever graduate to the upper levels of these tactical 2D fighters. I still don't know how to cancel in SSF4.

The only reason Gordon is pointless is because they scrapped his original design where he was a Russian space biker.

Gordon isn't pointless; he's purposefully undeveloped. Attributing and unnecessarily moulding Gordon would make him difficult with which to relate. Essentially, he's left as a blank slate to be a universal character; anybody can be Gordon. Beside his physical appearance, he's hardly gendered. There is no sexual characterization of Gordon, only Alex's attraction to him.

In a few words, anybody can play Gordon because Gordon can be anybody. You isolate nobody with the Gordon character.

You're wrong about that, things would be greatly improved.

I think it needs to be said that Gordon actually isn't a literal character. Instead of making the protagonist another super soldier who saves the world and drives the plot, Valve made a non-character; Gordon is a force, not a character. Gordon is the inspiration for the resistance. He is the hope that lives in all of them. He is the will that topples evil. He is the good in the world.

Think about Uncle Sam. He's not a person, but people say they fought for him. Gordon is the same way, but Half-Life is a video game, so there needs to be gameplay.