Author: Trafficblast

Hatsune Miku and her fellow Vocaloid friends made their Nintendo Switch debut this week with the western launch of Project DIVA MegaMix. Our beloved blue-haired virtual pop idol has voiced so many hits over the years alongside Luka, Rin, Len, Meiko, and Kaito (who have their fair share of banging tunes). And since MegaMix includes a total of 101 songs in the base game, you might be a bit overwhelmed as to where to start, especially if you’re new to the Vocaloid world.

For the uninitiated, Project DIVA is a rhythm game series that adopts the music made by artists who use Vocaloid software to provide a singing voice in their songs. The game’s note charts are made up of face buttons, directional inputs, and left/right bumpers that sync to each song’s rhythm, and you need to keep up. Wonderfully drawn or animated music videos play in the background of each track, too. These games have been an absolute joy to play because it lets us take part in music we love and even discover new favorites. So, after putting 12+ hours into MegaMix myself (and countless more in previous series entries), I’ve decided to recommend my personal favorites that are playable in MegaMix.

If you’re thinking about giving this new Switch entry a try or wondering what the big deal is with Hatsune Miku rhythm games, be sure to read my full review of Project DIVA MegaMix. For those ready to dance and jam out to some infectious Vocaloid tunes, let this be your guide. In recognition of the game’s Japanese name (Mega39s) and the associated wordplay (39 being read as mi-ku), here is my ranked list for the 39 best songs to play in Project DIVA MegaMix.

1. Senbonzakura
2. World’s End Dancehall
3. Teo
4. Rolling Girl
5. Two-Faced Lovers
6. Secret Police
7. Unhappy Refrain
8. Hibikase
9. Alien Alien
10. Jigsaw Puzzle
11. Akatsuki Arrival
12. Tokyo Teddy Bear
13. Roki
14. Catch The Wave
15. Gaikotsu Gakudan to Riria
16. Luka Luka Night Fever
17. Dreamin’ Chuchu
18. 2D Dream Fever
19. Ghost Rule
20. Pinky Swear
21. Remote Controller
22. Tengaku
23. Black Gold
24. Jitterbug
25. Suna no Wakusei
26. Nice to Meet Your, Mr. Earthling
27. Po Pi Po
28. Blackjack
29. Cat Food
30. Electric Angel
31. Amatsu Kitsune
32. Hello Worker
33. Hibana
34. Sweet Devil
35. MMORPG Addicts Anthem
36. 1925
37. Doubleganger
38. Black Rock Shooter
39. Colorful X Melody

Of course, this is not a definitive collection, but rather a ranking of my favorites, ranging from songs that’ve been personally meaningful to ones that are just straight up fun to play through. Over time, I may even warm up to other songs or grow fond of ones I may have overlooked, so there could be updates in the future. Granted that we all have different tastes in music, I’d suggest giving all the songs a try at some point.

It’s also worth noting that DLC packs for extra songs are available for MegaMix, but were not included in this list. If you have some Vocaloid favorites that either didn’t make this list or aren’t in the MegaMix soundtrack, let us know in the comments.

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I probably speak for many of us in our mid/late-20s or early-30s when I say that the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games were a cultural phenomenon that permeated our real lives at a young, impressionable age. We were smart enough to realize that dreams of launching off ramps to land a Kickflip Mctwist or grinding on a 50-foot handrail doing a Casper Slide were well out of reach, yet that didn’t stop us from asking our moms for a cheap deck and a few bucks to buy our new favorite punk band’s album on CD. But while many impulses or fads throughout the years have come and gone, the ones born out of THPS have been ever-lasting.

Seeing the reveal of THPS 1 and 2 remastered was yet another reminder that the storied video game series has, in many ways, significantly helped in forming our identities. I vividly remember watching Tony Hawk himself landing the first 900 at the 1999 X-Games and realizing it was sports history in the making, yet it wasn’t quite the motivation to seek out skating for myself. Participating in the act virtually in THPS bridged that gap and packaged a chunk of skate culture in a form that I did have expertise in: video games. And through the THPS games, I then looked at skating more like, “this shit is cool.”

Growing up in an urban part of southern California, it was common to see older kids violate penal codes by loitering outside taco shops and liquor stores, incessantly trying to land kickflips and grind sidewalk curbs. Skating hit my neighborhood to the point where the city government led a campaign to install steel notches on railing, benches, and any other surface you could grind on. While others may have found skating as a form of rebellion in a relatively quiet suburban community, folks in my neighborhood saw it as a way of assimilation.

THPS 1 and 2 were my gateway: the motivation for an uncoordinated nerdy kid, afraid of falling on solid concrete, to at least give skateboarding a try. Even if I’d be called a poser, I was kind of “doing the thing from the video game.” I’d never get like Rodney Mullen or Eric Koston in their skate tapes, but I was in on it. I knew about the big skaters, their signature tricks, and which brands were more prestigious based on sponsorships. Honestly, I never got any good–I could ollie somewhat consistently, went off a little ramp a few times, rode around the neighborhood and down hills, and ultimately busted my knee caps before giving it up at 14 years old.

Oddly enough, skateboarding itself isn’t necessarily the thing that has stuck with me the most. Maybe that does make me a poser, which I’m willing to accept–it’s fine. More than anything, it was the music. Goldfinger’s “Superman” became iconic and will forever be associated with THPS 1, and it was the first time I heard brass instrumentation fit so perfectly alongside distorted guitars, exposing me to ska-punk and getting me to pick it up. I already had an affinity for punk tunes through the likes of The Offspring and old Green Day, but discovering Bad Religion in THPS 2 opened my eyes and ears to the scene like nothing before.

Bad Religion’s song “You” delivered catchy, moody, hard-hitting rhythm guitars against fast-beating percussion while the vocals harmonized to create a layered sound that I never knew existed in punk music. I’d feel the hype whenever the song started up a two-minute run in the graffitied Venice Beach skatepark or through Marseille’s vert pipes, and I knew I was going to give it my best. I had no idea what the song’s message was at the time, yet thought, “man, this sounds deep,” which I say in jest, but over the years I’ve embraced understanding songwriting as a way of truly loving it. On my 11th birthday, I picked up Bad Religion CDs and discovered a band that has critically shaped my worldview and become my favorite, all because I was landing gnarly combos to one of their songs in THPS 2.

(Look, I understand that this isn’t some piece of activism in and of itself. I’m fully cognizant of the irony in watching the THPS remaster trailer while a Dead Kennedys song plays and thinking “hell yeah, I can’t wait to give Activision my money.”)

The inherent brash, progressive messaging behind bands like Rage Against The Machine and Dead Kennedys sounded badass to the unsuspecting kid who was just spending summers and weekends skating virtually a whole lot more than for real. Bad Religion’s deep discography is ripe with science-laden, philosophical lyricism to the backdrop of melodic-punk instrumentals, instilling curiosity and educational aspirations that continue to empower me. THPS soundtracks through years have pointed me toward certain bands that’ve sowed the seeds for the values I embrace to this day.

The love for the music, all the silly fashion trends, and the association with skate culture–among many other factors–are all things that affected my social life in middle and high school. We’d spent so much time with the games, but we’d also recognize band shirts of other kids, exchange CDs, and form bonds over the music, too.

So, why am I going through this long chain of personal events? Because when I play a THPS game today, those are the things that run through my mind, and the reasons why many of us hold these games so dear. Skating, music, fashion, and video games all intersected at THPS, giving kids like me an identity that influenced their formative years, and in some cases, our values. So, when the trailer for the THPS 1 and 2 remaster dropped, all those thoughts and feelings closely associated with the games came flooding back.

Looking back, the craze for extreme-sports games existed in a fairly small window. If you missed it, I can understand being left to wonder what the big deal is. Regardless of whether or not players internalized skate culture, THPS games nailed the sport’s representation and cranked up the wildest aspects of what professional skateboarding looked like. It consistently delivered the thrill of chaining ridiculous combos of tricks and racking up high scores, and each subsequent entry introduced new game-changing mechanics. For as impactful as it was on the outside, THPS was a marvel of a video game series itself.

Over the years, I’ve played several tremendous games that I would rank higher than any THPS on a personal favorites-of-all-time list, but very few have come close to the level of personal significance and influence of THPS. Remastering THPS 1 and 2 is a clear play at nostalgia, but I don’t really mind. We can only wish for the game to play as close to the originals as possible, given the disaster THPS 5 turned out to be. And if it nails it, seeing those old skaters and skateparks recreated using today’s technology with the classic soundtracks will be a trip, and hopefully, rejuvenate the memories of the series we’ve relegated to the past.

Dear Microsoft,

We need to talk about Xbox Series X–specifically, we need to discuss how to use this console generation change to fix how Xbox Achievements work. And yes, this direct confrontation is necessary because, if the Xbox One is any indication, you haven’t yet recognized how annoyingly flawed the Achievement system has been since the days of the Xbox 360.

So I’m here to politely (but firmly) tell you what’s up. For the sake of the Series X, I reach out to you now and beg that you fix the numeric system for Xbox Achievements going into the next console generation.

It’s not like the entire Xbox Achievement system is flawed–we can salvage most of it! It actually is a great system for the most part. I love that each Achievement tracks its unlock percentage, rewarding players with a special ping when they manage to earn one that has less than a 10% completion rate. It’s also a pretty cool way of seeing where exactly a majority of a player base falls off of a game. Did you know, for example, that of all the people who started Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on Xbox One, only 79.99% actually played long enough to unlock the Shinobi prosthetic, and that number plummets to 39.17% for defeating the game’s first official boss (Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa)? It’s quite the fascinating look at how hard that game can be for some.

Anyway, to get back to the point of the matter, despite what it does well, the Xbox Achievement system is deeply flawed because of the numeric Gamerscore values you’ve attached to individual Achievements. And the thing is, I wouldn’t even hate the whole Gamerscore thing if you just didn’t allow developers and publishers to decide the individual numeric values for their games’ Achievements, because sometimes these companies take it upon themselves to be creative and associate said value to some greater meaning.

Sometimes, this is fine. It’s fine. And other times it’s very much not fine–namely, whenever someone thinks it would be “oh so clever” to make the numeric values for the Achievements in their game not be a multiple of five. So unless you fully complete a game and earn the traditional complete score of 1000 points, your overall Xbox Gamerscore is ultimately not going to be a nice round number.

This is a game-breaking issue for me and no I’m not exaggerating, stop looking at me like that. I’ve witnessed my Xbox Gamerscore become a number that is no longer divisible by five a few times now and each has been more physically painful than the last. Do you realize how hard and time-consuming it can be to fix this problem whenever it comes up? I sometimes have to force myself to keep playing games I don’t want to play or buy obscure indie titles with odd numbered numeric Achievements in order to offset a different game and even out my Gamerscore again.

Doom Eternal is the latest game to annoy me. Every Achievement in Doom Eternal is divisible by five except for two: “Darn It, They Keep BREAKING” and “It’s a Magic Number.” The former awards you 33 points for performing 33 unique Glory Kills in a single save slot while the latter nets you 67 for killing 666 demons.

Honestly, I don’t particularly like Doom Eternal. I don’t want to keep playing Doom Eternal. And yet, I am still playing Doom Eternal. Why? Because if I want those 33 points to be evened out, I have to keep going and kill at least 666 demons. And don’t tell me to download and play Threes again instead–I won’t do it! I don’t want to keep playing Threes!

So please Microsoft, fix this. Just enact a policy that all Xbox Achievements for Xbox Series X games need to be divisible by five. I don’t want to feel compelled to keep playing games that I’m done with just so that I don’t begin hyperventilating whenever I log on and see my Gamerscore is a prime number.

Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to even out my Gamerscore ahead of the Series X’s release–I’m sure plenty of other Xbox owners who care about this will do the same. Just help us by making it easier to keep it that way.

Cheers,

Jordan Ramée

P.S. It would also be pretty cool if you took some notes from Sony and PlayStation’s Trophies and separated the trackers for games and their DLC–it’s a little disheartening to see a game you 100% suddenly become incomplete when it gets expansions. Not as pressing an issue as ensuring all numeric values are divisible by five but still something you need to fix.

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The technical specifications on the PS5 and Xbox Series X are relatively comparable, but Epic Games chose to only show Unreal Engine 5 on the former during its demo this week. However, according to studio head Tim Sweeney, this decision does not mean the Xbox Series X can’t handle the impressive visual effects.

Writing on Twitter amid fan speculation, Sweeney shared that the technology powering the Unreal Engine 5 demo that Epic Games prepared will be fully supported on both systems. It chose to work with Sony to produce the demo because of “years of discussions” between the two companies.

The Lumen technology refers to a new illumination system put in place for Unreal Engine 5 that makes it much easier for environments to showcase “natural” night from various sources. Nanite is a system for creating and importing extremely detailed geometry through billions of tiny triangles.

Because the demo we saw is not representative of an actual game in development, it being on PS5 doesn’t mean the company has an exclusive game in the works. Both Xbox Series X and PS5 will see Fortnite transition to Unreal Engine 5 in 2021, and it will launch on the systems this year.

Epic Games arguably has a more famous relationship with Microsoft over the years, as it developed the Xbox-exclusive Gears of War series until Microsoft ultimately purchased the franchise rights and founded its own studio, The Coalition. Despite this move, the new games still run on Unreal Engine technology, including turn-based strategy game Gears Tactics.

This week on Good News Gaming, we celebrate the remaster of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games with the greatest TikTok of al time. We also realise that time is a flat circle because the legendary Leeroy Jenkins meme turned 15 this week.

There’s also a cool new way to look at Red Dead Redemption 2, thanks to a new camera perspective, and we become obsessed with a YouTube channel that makes gaming dioramas out of polymer clay.

There’s also a follow-up to the DragonForce at 165% speed video from a couple of weeks back: the band’s guitarist Herman Li tries it himself. For more wholesome and funny things from the world of gaming, make sure to watch Good News Gaming every Friday here on GameSpot. If you have a story you think should be featured, leave it in the comments below, and it could end up in a future video.

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When Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered 15 years ago, no one could have predicted how this animated show aimed at kids would become one of the greatest animated series of all time. The show explored complex themes such as genocide and imperialism, as well as more abstract questions of fate and destiny, while giving us a world full of rich and vast mythology and a lot of stunning action on par with big-budget live-action films. From The King of Omashu to Sozin’s Comet, here are out picks for the 15 best episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender you can stream right now on Netflix.