Sound Problems and Solutions Assignment

For this assignment, I will be looking at a general sound problem as well as a music problem.

My sound problem comes from Grand Theft Auto V. Graphics-wise, it is meant to be one of the most realistic games in history, but when you hear some of the sounds that male NPCs make when you kill them with one punch, it really isn't. If you've followed my blog for a little while, you already know how much I've criticized the 3rd sound in the video below. It's meant to be made when the guy gets murdered.

I scrolled down to use some qualitative research and see what people thought about these sounds but the comments were just full of people saying which one was their favourite because of how hilariously bad it is. However, I did get an answer at home. When I asked a family member what they thought of the 3rd sound, they said it sounded more like the guy had got his finger trapped in a door. Other than that, I knew it was down to me because this appears to be one of those problems that was so bad in a funny way.

The 8th sound in this occurs when they're killed in a car crash or when they drown but to me it sounds more like they've been spooked by a ghost. One of the others 9 seconds in sounds more like they've been punched really hard in the stomach and are just lying on the floor in pain instead of stabbed to death. The sound 11 seconds in also occurs in a car crash or after drowning but it sounds more like they've been a big kid and fallen off a climbing frame.

Also, these sounds apply to all male NPCs and personally, I don't think that there is anyone that these sounds apply to that suit all of them. For example, the high pitched sounds at the beginning sound more like they suit the Latino guys who sometimes walk around Rockford Hills (I'll put a picture below) who have quite a higher-pitched voice.

The deeper sounds at the end of this video do not suit this man at all. Instead, they sound better suited to either the really tough guys working in construction or truck driving or the gang members who spawn around Franklin's old neighbourhood.

So I think that when they made these, they just took and edited some random sounds they heard while on their travels. I think that the actors they used to voice the various NPCs around the game should have made the getting attacked and dying sounds as well so that when you kill someone, the sound they make sounds suitable to them based on their voice you may or may not have heard before killing them, or they should have got a sound actor to record some more realistic getting murdered sounds, and to make it better, then used the Foley technique for either the punches (probably punching a thick piece of meat), the getting stabbed (stabbing into a watermelon) and falling to the floor (dropping a bag on the floor in the studio).

My music problem comes from the New Super Mario Bros. series. I found a discussion saying how every title has just recycled the same music. When the first game came came out on the DS in 2006, it was pretty cool at the time since the last proper Mario platform game was Super Mario World in 1990. Nintendo went on to release the game 3 more times, on the Wii on 2009 and the 3DS and Wii U in 2012, by which point, it wasn't really new anymore. The concept was the same, just bringing Mario platforming into the next generation. These are the themes used in the first levels from each game.

They consist of the same "bah bah" choir. Consequently, this is why it feels like playing the same game. With the original Super Mario Bros. games, each first level theme sounded completely different from one another because you knew they were completely different from one another, partly because of the different main weapon. Super Mario Bros. was a basic introduction using mushrooms and stars while Super Mario Bros. 2 focused on throwing vegetables at enemies, the fact that the boss in the end is Wart, not Bowser, and of course you could play as Peach and Toad. Super Mario Bros. 3's main focus was the tanooki tail. Here are the first level themes of those games in comparison.

The New Super Mario Bros. games added new features but apart from that, they were all the same. Maybe if they came up with new level concepts for each game, so New Super Mario Bros. had the basics from the original Super Mario Bros, then New Super Mario Bros. Wii could take advantage of what had been introduced since then. Super Mario Galaxy was released between them so they could have easily created a space level to show off that what they've introduced in their 3D games to their platform games. I put a piece together on Soundation and exported it to my computer. However, I currently can't find a way to put audio files on this blog so I have put them on my memory stick in case there is no solution,

Additionally, I'm surprised it's taken 32 years for Nintendo to create a city level in a Mario game (excluding the city levels in the Mario Kart games) bearing in mind that Mario was born and grew up in Brooklyn which the city level in Super Mario Odyssey is based on. When making these New Super Mario Bros. games Nintendo really should have thought outside the box a bit. They managed to do so when they made their first 3D Mario game, Super Mario 64 and came up with a clock level. Maybe then they wouldn't all feel the same. Like the space idea, I have also put a music piece together for a city level theme on Soundation that is currently on my memory stick.

I then put quantitative research to the test to see if anyone else thought these were good. I emailed the group but only 3 people responded. They all said the space one was good while two of them said that the city one needs a bit more done to it.

  

So those are some problems that I have noticed and analysed in video games and some solutions that I have come up to make them more realistic, better and interesting. Hopefully when it comes to the next game in that series for each game, they'll take something like what I've done into consideration.