So that’s what I’ve been up to. Queuing up music playlists, studying the classics by year, exploring the artists’ history, and otherwise becoming a scholar in the fine arts. Granted, my experience of listening to every composition back-to-back couldn’t compare to experiencing the music firsthand at the height of it’s popularity. Times were different and society has changed since then, so the meaning of the music itself is somewhat of a novelty to me. Still, I thought I’d share my experiences with you, my friends, as well as give my impression of ten famous artists of old.

Black Sabbath
This experiment was already off to a good start. I was only familiar with songs of theirs like “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and whatever popped up on the “Brutal Legend” soundtrack, and it was nice to find out that quite a lot of their other songs were just as awesome to listen to. What I really liked is that with every album, there was a sudden leap in the band’s style, as if they were always trying to invent new kinds of music. I ultimately prefer the Ozzy years (‘70-’78), but the band had their moments throughout the 80’s.
Favorite Album(s): Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Never Say Die, Mob Rules, Headless Cross

Led Zeppelin
Okay, so holy crap. Apparently I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin for years – I just didn’t recognize most of their music on the radio because nothing else they write sounds like “Stairway to Heaven.” Good to know! Much like Sabbath, they liked to experiment with music for the first few years. They also had this crazy thing for making every other song 10 minutes long. That got a little annoying whenever they started up an extended jam session of some generic blues-inspired rock later in their career. As it turns out, I’m not a big fan of blues rock, and this was just a taste of things to come.
Favorite Album(s): Led Zepplin IV, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti

Deep Purple
Okay, I get that these guys are supposed to be really, really popular and are considered pioneers of heavy metal, buuuuutttt… they really only have about three or four great songs, a few good ones, and a whole lifetime of them just backing down from the metal scene and playing bar music. Rock, blues, rock blues… lots of blues rock. Kind of disappointing, really. They were inventing heavy metal for a while, and then stopped and did the other kind of music for the next thirty years. I could have stopped listening to their music anytime, but that would defeat the purpose of this experiment.
Favorite Album(s): Machine Head

Motörhead
This is one of the bands I was COMPLETELY unfamiliar with, as none of their songs ever hit radio around here. I couldn’t even identify a hit from them, unless it was a cover of another popular song. Still, there’s something appealing about their balls-to-the-wall approach to music. In the early years, all their recordings sounded like they were piss-drunk on stage, and they’d just jam incoherently about women, booze, and cars. Then, in the course of 30 years, they almost never changed their style. In fact, about 95% of their songs all sound the same (like a motorcycle engine trying to learn our language, making it the manliest form of music in existence.) Still, as awesome are they are, listening to their entire discography from beginning to end over three days of renovation can be very mind-numbing. And they have A LOT OF SONGS.
Favorite Album(s): Motörhead, Ace of Spades, Orgasmatron

Iron Maiden
If you would excuse me, I need to kick myself 666 times in the head for not listening to every single one of Iron Maiden’s songs before. This is the kind of music I’m always cycling through the radio stations listening for, and apparently, it’s all comes from one band. I could fall asleep to any of these albums and wake up feeling like a million bucks. And I did. They were awesome then, and their new music is awesome now. Much like Motorhead, they rarely changed their style, but who’s complaining?
Favorite Album(s): Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Seventh Son of the Seventh Son, Brave New World

Judas Priest
I just realized these last six bands are all British. Between Monty Python, Doctor Who, and all this music, that’s one hell of a country! Their chief export? AWESOMENESS. “Judas Priest” rocked too. Not as much as Iron Maiden, but they still made me want to tear down the establishment. They had a great run with albums too, up until Rob Halford left the group and they re-invented themselves as a generic death metal band. Then for the first time, I actually skipped over an album (every song was about blood and pain or something like that, with nothing catchy. At this point, my experiment had failed.) Then Rob came back and everything was awesome again.
Favorite Album(s): Sin After Sin, British Steel, Turbo, Nostradamus

Metallica
So… just a heads-up, it turns out I really, really don’t like thrash metal. Nothing against Metallica, of course – I think they’re awesome now – but when I started listening to them, the first four albums were nothing but thrash metal songs. After the first hour, I couldn’t take it anymore and I found myself skimming through the songs, listening for anything that didn’t damage my ears. Then the “Black Album” finally came along and I fell to my knees and cried. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. Well, maybe beautiful compared to having my eardrums ground into mulch, but their leap in quality was nothing short of a miracle.
Favorite Album(s): The Black Album, Load, ReLoad

AC/DC
Remember when I said I didn’t like blues-rock? AC/DC is the exception. They’ve ALWAYS been the exception. All they ever play is blues-rock, and every song still turns into the best thing ever. I’d already been a big fan of theirs for years, so listening to all of their albums was a nice musical reprieve. It also made me sit down and watch “Maximum Overdrive” again, for good time’s sake.
Favorite Album(s): T.N.T, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Let There Be Rock, Highway to Hell, Back in Black, For Those About To Rock We Salute You
Best Album Cover Ever? This one.

Pantera
I didn’t even know who Pantera was, or that they were considered to be a classic band. Yet they end up on just about every top ten list of great heavy metal bands – so I had to check them out. And guess what? Thrash metal. Practically nothing but thrash metal (if you skimmed ahead to this part, I don’t like thrash metal.) I honestly liked Pantera’s earlier work a lot better, back when they did *dramatic sting* GLAM metal. Hey, it had better energy, catchier riffs, and didn’t sound like an angry homeless guy stuck in the dryer. I’m entitled to my opinion, even if it does get me crucified by metal fans worldwide.
Favorite Album(s): Projects in the Jungle, Power Metal
A Side Note: I’m aware of the hypocrisy between me liking Motorhead and not liking thrash metal. The only explanation I can come up for this inconsistency is that Lemmy Kilmister’s awesome mustache has healing powers.

Ozzy Osbourne
Don’t ask why it took me so long to get back to Ozzy. The important thing is, I did. After noticing a certain lack of all my favorite songs while listening to Sabbath, I’d made a mental note to catch up on Ozzy’s solo career to find where they had gotten off to. And as it turns out, Ozzy is an even bigger musical genius than I expected. Fans aren’t exaggerating when they use terms like “Godfather” or “Prince” to describe his role in heavy metal – he is what they say he is. The Beatles, Elton John, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Queen, Weird Al – all geniuses in their respective styles as Ozzy is in his. While his signature voice stayed the same, he was always trying to re-invent his music and make every song sound unique. His winning awesomeness almost makes me feel half-bad for never watching his reality show, but at least I can appreciate movies like “Little Nicky” on a whole new level now.
Favorite Album(s): Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman, No More Tears

So there’s the big ten I’ve been listening to for the last while. I’ll probably look into more later on – and any good recommendations are welcome since I want to hear all the essential artists eventually.

A fun note: for just about EVERY song I listened to on YouTube, you could always scroll down and see people complaining about Justin Bieber in the comments. I have nothing against complaining about Justin Bieber, and I’m certain I will hate him too if someone makes me listen to his music – but isn’t it a little nuts that I can listen to almost a thousand songs on YouTube from over a hundred different albums by ten different artists, and the one name that appears in almost every comment section is “Justin Bieber?” I don’t know why all these metal-heads feel so threatened by this little kid. I’m pretty sure I could take him in a fight.

For anyone unfamiliar, “Sam & Max” is an adventure game comedy about two freelance cops in New York – one’s a dog, the other’s a rabbit, and they go around solving bizarre “crimes” of a paranormal nature. The first game was back in 1993 with “Sam & Max Hit The Road” where they travel across America looking for a missing Bigfoot. A few years ago, Telltales Games started making new, shorter games in episodic format, and released them as seasons (much like a TV show.) It’s been very successful since then and “The Devil’s Playhouse” is Season 3 of the series.

I’ll keep this review of “The Devil’s Playhouse” as spoiler-free as possible, but I really wanted to comment on some of the more innovative features of the new five-episode season. The general premise of the story is that Max suddenly develops psychic abilities, and becomes a target for many power-hungry villains. Throughout the adventure, you discover special “Toys of Power” that unlock even more abilities, such as Future Vision, Teleportation, and Shape-Shifting. This lends to some interesting puzzle solving as you have to use Max’s psychic powers in tandem with Sam’s inventory to progress throughout the game. This results in a lot of unusual – but brilliant – situations where you’re required to think outside-the-box, especially in the scenarios where you have to experience the story non-chronologically. Experimenting with the powers often leads to success, or to some incredibly funny and/or awkward scenes.

The other thing that stands out about Season 3 is how grown-up the series has become at this point. The non-sequiturs and infantile humor are still abundant, but the story and characters have gone through all kinds of development. Everyone has a back-story, their own share of secrets, and intricate relationships. On top of that, the story takes some very dark turns – not funny dark, as is tradition for the series – but, well… let’s just say characters die. Good characters – that I like. And I feel sad when they die – yet I want to keep playing. It’s very involving. The words “epic” and “emotional” normally never apply to Sam & Max (the series specializes in general silliness,) but this season is a big exception.

In spite of my love for this season, it’s still hard to recommend to everyone. To really appreciate it, you have to go through the first two seasons, learn about the characters, and follow some very important sub-plots which factor into this season. On top of that, if you don’t share the game’s unique sense of humor and abnormality, you’ll probably get fed up or offended after one episode. Sam & Max can be an acquired taste for some people. Fortunately for me, I’ve been following their work since I was a kid, so it’s already part of my personality.

That out of the way, I just want to share some personal thoughts on the various episodes:

Episode 1, The Penal Zone: I thought this was a great opener for the season, as it introduced me to the new puzzle-solving system, and the story played out like a blend of “The Twilight Zone” meets “The X-Files.” Max’s Future-Vision ability really makes this episode fun.

Episode 2, The Tomb of Sammun-Mak: This was the first episode of the season that truly blew my mind. Explaining why would spoil it, but I can say that Sam sports a pretty awesome mustache in this one.

Episode 3, They Stole Max’s Brain: Oddly enough, I didn’t like this episode. It starts out great, but gets disappointing very quickly as they rush from one plot to another. Then there’s the question of all the red herrings left around the game – buttons and levers that do nothing, items I can’t take, pointless shape-shifting forms, a completely useless new character – it’s like they forgot to put in the puzzles – and the ones they left in can be easily solved by accident. Personally, I think they let the new guy design this episode.

Episode 4, Beyond the Alley of the Dolls: This one redeems Episode 3. With a darker tone, some great cinematography, and one heck of a huge EPIC pay-off, this was my favorite of the season until…

Episode 5, The City That Dares Not Sleep: In which they took the huge epic pay-off from Episode 4 and made a whole episode about it. The puzzles in this one were very fun to figure out – albeit too easy at times – and there was some very creative elements to the overall design. This one turned out to be especially heavy on the drama, however, as well as convoluted and bizarre sub-plots (Sybil’s story is a little too weird, even for me.) And the ending… oh, man. Right now, the Telltale forums are abuzz with people debating the ending like it was “Inception.” Some hate it, some love it. Personally, I think it’s one of the best adventure game endings ever written, but maybe that’s just me.

All in all, a great season, a great adventure, and some great fun. All the more reason to look forward to Telltale’s “Back to the Future” later this year.

I get very little spare time, but I make the most of what I can working on the games. I’m already working on the final battle in SQInc, which is arguably the most stupidly complicated thing I’ve ever animated. Will it be worth it? God, I hope so. Although I should really consider investing in motion-capture technology if I’m going to keep pushing my animation like this. Otherwise, from here on out, all my final battles will be two guys having staring contests.

I was going to say something else, but I’m drawing a blank. So here’s something Mr. Burns related. And also one of my favoritest things ever.

And now that you’ve seen that, here’s a shorter version where the washing machine has a face.

It should be noted that this game does not contain any explosions or farting ducks, as the writing staff has been very wise to keep the script away from me. I have a general idea of where the plot is going, but there’s been a lot of changes backstage, so when all five chapters are finished, it’ll be just as big a surprise to me. I could just download it off the SVN and peak ahead, but it would ruin the suspense.

Personally, I’ve been really impressed with everything they’ve done with the game since the Beta version. My role in this chapter has been limited to animation and some voice-work. The intro and the outro, for example, are my big babies this time around. In fact, one of the directors asked me to re-animate the big five-minute intro sequence about four times, causing me to go into a raging fit on multiple occasions. I’ve learned to be a lot more zen about it as a result. It’s good field practice for what to expect in a real animation studio.

Fun Trivia: I voice the first Winged Guard and only have two short lines in this game. Both of them sound like I’m channeling Kermit the Frog trying to be the Colonel from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Not-So-Fun Trivia: King Graham does not actually play a saxaphone in this game.

But-On-Second-Thought Trivia: It just occurred to me that I have a whole hard drive full of 3D King’s Quest character models – fully rigged and ready to animate. Man, I could do so much evil with these.

Anyway, onward to Chapter 2!