Rez Is Techno Music In Video Game Form

It's that time of year again. It's The Electronic Entertainment Exposition, better known as E3. For those that might now know, E3 is the largest event in the world of video games. Press conferences, big demonstrations, swag swag swag, booth babes. Everything that's great and terrible about video games is on display for a week in Los Angeles. But this is a music blog, so I'm gonna write about music and there's nothing video games is gonna stop me, dammit.

Wait! Rez, of course! I can write about music and video games! Rez originally came out ten years ago for the Dreamcast and Playstation 2. More recently though in 2008, it got a significant overhaul for Xbox 360. Higher resolution, better rendering, etc. It was great. It's a game with a strong sense of style, and the better visuals made a huge difference. The game is the vision of Sega's Tetsuya Mizuguchi who has gone on to create PSP classic Lumines and the recent spiritual successor to Rez, Child Of Eden. 

Typical Rez gameplay

Rez is a weird game. The story involves something about you being a hacker trying to shut down an artificial intelligence that has learned every piece of information in the world. You do this by flying an avatar through a crazy space-computer world, shooting missiles at enemies, other missiles, collectible items and bosses. The game play is super simple and not much of a challenge. There's even a way to just turn off death entirely and just soak it all in.

The trick is the sound. Your missiles locking on has a sound, their shots have a sound, every impact has a sound. Each level is described as a track with an artist and song title attached to it. And it's all techno as hell. If you're reading this, thinking you might want to give Rez a shot, know that you really have to be way in the mood for techno. Japanese techno.

The game does something completely genius to make sure everything lines up to the music just right. Instead of hitting a button to fire missiles, you hold down the button, drag a cursor over your targets and let go of the button. This allows there to be some latency between when you want to shoot and precisely control your rate of fire. It might make the game feel a little wonky in places, but it's all in service of the sound.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi has always had one foot in the video game business and one foot in the music industry. In his free time, he has what Wikipedia describes as "A musical and visual project." They're a band, but like the Gorillaz, they don't really have a physical presence. Instead of scary cartoons, they have Lumi, a girl born on the international space station in 2037.  They, like Rez are techno as all hell.

Rez, Child Of Eden and Genki Rockets are clearly not for everyone. The games are fun, but if you're coming for the game, you're coming for the wrong reasons. Lumines is one of the few things Mizuguchi has created with a broad mass appeal. It's a genuinely great puzzle game that also features some fantastic music. Rez and Child Of Eden are out for Xbox 360, Lumines is out for pretty much every modern thing you can possibly game on.