LogFAQs > #928608256

VVVVVV - Piercing the Sky
Murasaki Tsurugi - Lake of Tears

Holy wow, tough day and there's a lot to digest. Let's start from the top.

Piercing the Sky is kind of perfect. And I don't mean that it's perfect like "best VGM song ever" or whatever. I mean that it accomplishes everything it sets out to do, and no part that you could add or subtract would reasonably improve it. I feel this way about most of VVVVVV, but Piercing is really the -one- where all the elements come together and take you off on this soaring, evocative adventure with dramatic highs and lows. It wants you to dance, to move, but it also wants you to reflect. To push past the limits of what you're capable of, or what you think you're capable of, and pierce the fucking sky.
I love this song, dude.

"VVVVVV vs. Umineko is the most obviously B8 final possible, and it's surprising it took 5 contests for us to reach this point"
~FL81

I haven't been around here long enough to really understand the weight of this, but even without a first-hand account I can tell that Umineko music is held up as a sort of gold standard. It's the bar, and very, very few things are going to be able to best it. That all out and said, I don't get it. I've listened through worldenddominator something like four times in a row today, each time more critically; poring over details I may not have noticed before. And I still feel so empty.

Maybe I just needed to be there, you know? A couple years give or take of a song like this growing on you to the point of being a fond memory. But for now, it has precious little to offer me. Even the bits that I did like (the harpsichord solo and glitchy distortions in the back half) couldn't make much of a difference since the whole is so bland and played-out. Maybe I'll feel differently with time.

Moving on, Murasaki's been tearing up the snubs bracket, eh? And we might not be done just yet, because damn if Lake of Tears doesn't have the right moves. In some places, it reminds me of another game in the bracket: Ripple Dot Zero. Swap FM for contemporary synth production and it might make a lesser Part Two track for a Crater Lake-type area. Also wanted to note that the sweep pads, heavily associated with hard EDM of the day, are put to great use during lulls just before the repeating chorus. On the whole, it's a shiny little funk/jazz fusion arrangement that's just sticky enough to keep you coming on back for play after play.

DORNWALD made some admirable headway in the last VGMC, and it's not difficult to see why. Track's got a lot of B8 appeal for sure, and the great moments are like stupid great. But the parts alone don't make a whole and, while I can't remember if this was the version used in VGMC or not, I definitely enjoy the in-game cut more since it's got just the right amount of all the good stuff. Stings to vote against this today, but I consistently and confidently prefer Lake of Tears that bit more.

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