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I thought P. Diddy invented the remix?
Codemaster’s and MixMax’s latest piece of software, because it isn’t a traditional game really, is making its debut on Xbox. Wannabe DJs everywhere should keep reading to see if Codemasters’ latest attempt can truly allow you to make songs that don’t suck.
A game with the MTV brand should have a healthy amount of music in it and MG3 doesn’t disappoint. There is a good number of songs in the ten included. There are songs that will surely please contemporary hip-hop fans with artists like OutKast (The Way U Move), Fabolous (This Is My Party), Snoop Dogg (From Tha Chuuuch To Da Palace) and Sean Paul (Get Busy). But the overall song list is rather varied. These artists are joined by Carl Cox (Katja), The Ones (Flawless), DJ Marky (LK), Mike Coglin (Hear Me), Krafty Kuts (Illtype Sound) and R4 with Revolution. Due to licensing issues though, you are unable to grab full versions of songs from your CD collection or Xbox hardrive.
In its most general sense, MTV MG3 is about remixing tracks. The easiest way to get into the game’s many options is remixing one of the available songs since starting from scratch will surely frustrate almost anyone. In the remixing portion, you can change all sorts of things like mixing up the vocals, beat, bass and riffs. You can change the volume of certain portions until you are happy with the final product. There is only so much you can do though until you feel the need to delve further into the game. Thankfully, you are given a number of more advanced options.
Creating a song from scratch can be daunting at first but quite satisfying once you’re done. The game simplifies the process as much as possible while allowing you to retain control. Basically, a song is made up of 24 tracks which are split into numerous bars. In these bars you can place a voice sample, a drum beat or a base or riff sample from the included samples or you can make your own. As you fill up your track, you finish your song which you can then save to the HD or memory card.
There are a lot of included samples in the game, several thousand. You can use all of these samples while creating your song, as I mentioned above. If this isn’t enough for you, you can also make your own sample. In the Beat Box, you mix and match drum patterns until you get an acceptable beat. The Melody section allows you to do this with chord patterns. The coolest feature is being able to sample the various CDs you have. These samples, again due to the licensing restrictions have to be about ten seconds long. On Xbox, you simply rip songs from CDs into the HD which you can then grab a sample from. The Xbox saves the location of the sample, so you can easily access it as long as the song remains in your HD. You can then crop or tweak this sample to fit your song.
The game doesn’t have much going for it into the visuals department. There isn’t anything to particularly catch your attention. Nonetheless, the presentation is clean and able to keep everything nice and tidy for your use. The interface works very well.
The audio portion of the game is wonderful, as expected. The sound quality of the included tracks is excellent, as are the numerous included samples in the game. Although the ripped audio doesn’t sound quite as good, it is sufficient.
MTV Music Generator 3: This Is The Remix isn’t a game per se but it is an interesting piece of software that works very well and every aspiring DJ should pick up. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Jun 30, 2004
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