I’ve never particularly been much of a rap fan, and I would largely chalk that up to simply missing out on what it had to offer in my teenage years. It wasn’t until the soundtrack of Anarchy Reigns OST came along that I got a look into what rap could be, specifically in the form of underground battle-rap. The soundtrack featured a number of lesser-known, but nevertheless extremely talented artists who were commissioned to write songs for the game, and I can only recommend giving them all a listen.
Where other artists might make a pair of rhymes every four bars, MuzeONE in Venom manages to fit a dozen sound-alikes, back-to-back, at almost twice the tempo. Any beat where he doesn’t fit a rhyme is covered with a play on antonyms, idioms or another type of wordplay. I didn’t realize that rap lyrics could be this involved prior to this album, and the revelation shattered my tastes in music permanently. The majority of the songs are battle-rap in fitting theme for the title they’re made for, and while the meaning in them don’t aim to be deep or layered, I think there’s something respectable in how they make their message self-evident through pen ability alone.
The game itself held my attention just for how overblown its character designs were, in true PlatinumGames fashion. They took a number of designs from their previous cult classic MadWorld and spun them into an arena brawler with a similarly irreverent flair. A special shoutout to the ‘Blacker Baron’, who could be mistaken as being the same Black Baron in MadWorld, if not for the fact he is actually black this time and not just dyed that way. It was a very different era… And yet it was just over a decade ago. Being a fan of competitive 3D brawlers in general, it’s a shame that it didn’t get much support when it finally released in the west.
Leave a Reply