Music in games

[Ironshroom]

What was your favourite OST for a video game?
For me it has to be either the Alan Wake soundtrack or the Majora's Mask soundtrack. Banjo Kazooie, Braid, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy all get high recommendations from me.

 

[I Stomp on Kittens]

The only one that I really find myself listening to outside of playing is Diablo 2's wonderful soundtrack. Atmospheric and super gloomy sounding paired with the nostalgia make it perfect! I could seriously just crank on "Wilderness" or "Rogue" anytime and the same mysterious/uneasy feeling just creeps right back in.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

All of the Halo soundtracks (bar Halo 4) I really enjoy. of them, I rank them as follows
1. Halo 2. Best soundtrack of the lot, expanded on themes from the first game and had the really neat Covenant themes.
2. ODST. Good god do I love the noir aspect of this soundtrack.
3. Reach. Amps up the tragedy music and it really hits an emotional chord with me.
4. Combat Evolved. The original comes in low on my list not because it is bad, but because the later games really expanded on the music.
5. Halo Wars. I'm including this one because it at least tried to sound like a Halo game, unlike Halo 4.
6. Halo 3. While ODST, Reach and Halo 2 really managed to expand and diversify the soundtrack of the Halo franchise, to me, Halo 3 sounds mostly like remixes of earlier music. It still has some good parts, but it just lacks the creativity and heart of the other tracks on my list.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The only one that I really find myself listening to outside of playing is Diablo 2's wonderful soundtrack. Atmospheric and super gloomy sounding paired with the nostalgia make it perfect! I could seriously just crank on "Wilderness" or "Rogue" anytime and the same mysterious/uneasy feeling just creeps right back in.

I never gave Diablo's OST much thought but I'll give it to you, "Wilderness" (first time I ever heard its name) is a great track. Such melancholy riffing. Makes me wanna go back and play it just from hearing it, which I think is a good sign.

/OP the Donkey Kong Country OST (all three games) is beautiful and has an impressive range.
Akira Yamaoka's tenure as composer for the Silent Hill games is amazing as well. He's usually the best thing from crappier games like Origins and Homecoming. I'll listen to tracks of those games while abhorring the games themselves.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Most of my music is game OST's so trying to select a single album as my favourite is rather difficult for me.

Best would be the Dawn of War 2 soundtrack, a grand orchestral score full of Gregorian chanting which invokes the gothic Imperials, brutish Orks and mythical Eldar.

Honorable mentions include:

Portal and Portal 2 OST's
Half Life and its sequel
FTL: Faster Than Light
Hotline Miami
Black Mesa
Matt Uelmen for both Diablo and the Torchlight soundtracks

 

[WhyWasThat]

What was your favourite OST for a video game?
For me it has to be either the Alan Wake soundtrack or the Majora's Mask soundtrack. Banjo Kazooie, Braid, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy all get high recommendations from me.

Alan Wake's is not an original soundtrack (OST) since it uses songs by other artists (pretty well-known songs at that, such as In Dreams by Ray Orbison and Up Jumped the Devil by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). All of your other choices are legitimate picks, though.

 

[Ironshroom]

What was your favourite OST for a video game?
For me it has to be either the Alan Wake soundtrack or the Majora's Mask soundtrack. Banjo Kazooie, Braid, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy all get high recommendations from me.

Alan Wake's is not an original soundtrack (OST) since it uses songs by other artists (pretty well-known songs at that, such as In Dreams by Ray Orbison and Up Jumped the Devil by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). All of your other choices are legitimate picks, though.

Sorry, didn't really make myself clear. OST means original soundtrack, and by that I mean the stuff written by Petri Alanko in this case. I didn't mean the stuff that they bought the rights to. Sorry for not making myself clearer!

 

[Baddamobs]

Dark Souls' music is my favourites, mostly because they only really play when fighting a boss, which is actually quite in tune (pardon the pun) with the rest of the game: the rest of the world seems so lonely and the player so isolated when the silence is only filled with the death cries of friends and allies, but the bosses feel a lot more 'alive' because they mostly each have a unique musical piece.

 

[Sandjube]

Bastion, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Mighty Switch Force, Shantae, Awesomenauts, Skullgirls, Gianna sisters...um...probably many more. I love VG music.

 

[WhyWasThat]

What was your favourite OST for a video game?
For me it has to be either the Alan Wake soundtrack or the Majora's Mask soundtrack. Banjo Kazooie, Braid, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy all get high recommendations from me.

Alan Wake's is not an original soundtrack (OST) since it uses songs by other artists (pretty well-known songs at that, such as In Dreams by Ray Orbison and Up Jumped the Devil by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). All of your other choices are legitimate picks, though.

Sorry, didn't really make myself clear. OST means original soundtrack, and by that I mean the stuff written by Petri Alanko in this case. I didn't mean the stuff that they bought the rights to. Sorry for not making myself clearer!

Oh, okay fair enough. I honestly can't remember anything of Alan Wake's soundtrack other than the licensed stuff, though.

 

[Ironshroom]

What was your favourite OST for a video game?
For me it has to be either the Alan Wake soundtrack or the Majora's Mask soundtrack. Banjo Kazooie, Braid, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy all get high recommendations from me.

Alan Wake's is not an original soundtrack (OST) since it uses songs by other artists (pretty well-known songs at that, such as In Dreams by Ray Orbison and Up Jumped the Devil by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). All of your other choices are legitimate picks, though.

Sorry, didn't really make myself clear. OST means original soundtrack, and by that I mean the stuff written by Petri Alanko in this case. I didn't mean the stuff that they bought the rights to. Sorry for not making myself clearer!

Oh, okay fair enough. I honestly can't remember anything of Alan Wake's soundtrack other than the licensed stuff, though.

Do yourself a favour and look up Welcome to Bright Falls. That shit is glorious! And while you're at it, check out the theme of Tom the Diver!

 

[WhyWasThat]

What was your favourite OST for a video game?
For me it has to be either the Alan Wake soundtrack or the Majora's Mask soundtrack. Banjo Kazooie, Braid, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy all get high recommendations from me.

Alan Wake's is not an original soundtrack (OST) since it uses songs by other artists (pretty well-known songs at that, such as In Dreams by Ray Orbison and Up Jumped the Devil by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). All of your other choices are legitimate picks, though.

Sorry, didn't really make myself clear. OST means original soundtrack, and by that I mean the stuff written by Petri Alanko in this case. I didn't mean the stuff that they bought the rights to. Sorry for not making myself clearer!

Oh, okay fair enough. I honestly can't remember anything of Alan Wake's soundtrack other than the licensed stuff, though.

Do yourself a favour and look up Welcome to Bright Falls. That shit is glorious! And while you're at it, check out the theme of Tom the Diver!

Will do.

Oh yeah I forgot my mention...
MediEvil's soundtrack. All of it. Sheer genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tifnGu62R98

 

[Annihilist]

I just finished Silent Hill 2 the other day, and I'm listening to the soundtrack. Amazing stuff.

I think the best game soundtracks happen when the composers make good music first, and soundtracks second. Case in point is Marty O'Donnell, who did the Halo soundtracks. The music is what made Halo so iconic and original, particularly the Halo 2 soundtrack, so that would be my favourite.

 

[R4ptur3]

Final fantasy and Banjo-Kazooie. Final fantasy just has some great tracks and I have never been disappointed with the music in any of the games. Banjo-Kazooie music is just awesome, but the best thing for me is the depth of it. One level can have multiple types of music and the way it changes as you go underwater or go through the lair is great.

 

[Pikey Mikey]

This is easy for me, Battle for Dune, the Harkonnen part of the OST
Best soundtrack Ever! (I think I'd call it "imperial metal", but I am shite at music)

after that... I don't know really, maybe the Baldur's Gate main themes, if you can still listen to them and find them good after more than hundreds of accumulated hours (throughout childhood and up 'til now (making seeeveral characters and rerolling stats to get 18/00 Str for hours)) then I think that has to be proof that it's good =P

 

[Battenberg]

Where do I begin?

Well recently I really liked the score for The Last of Us, particularly the gentle acoustic guitar piece used frequently in the game, everything about it just complimented the game. Ditto for the music in the Crash Bandicoot games, they were perfect for the world of Crash and they were super catchy, I still remember them today. Also Red Dead Redemption's score, perfect western music and (while I know it's cheating) the inspired use of Far Away by Jose Gonzalez in the Mexico moment. Then there's both the Borderlands games, I know the actual OST may not be to some people's taste but I just love the drawly, slide guitar-y background music you get, especially in Fyrestone in the first game.

Then there's the varied soundtrack of Final Fantasy XII; I think the game as a whole is underrated but the sheer amount of music for the many varied areas of the environment alone is amazing enough but each piece of music is also so well designed for each specific area and so great to listen to, I think my personal favourite has to be the jaunty baroque-y music you got in the various safe areas (home cities etc). Also Point Blank (mostly 1 + 2) almost entirely for the menu music which managed to be quite basic and appropriate for an arcade game without being repetitive or irritating. And how can you talk about great music in video games without mentioning Parappa the Rapper?! Or for that matter a gem a lot of people missed out on - Gitaroo Man; it takes real skill to write music that's still great listening after two dozen times hearing it in a row trying to beat that one difficult level. on Also Portal + Portal 2 basically for the end credit songs Johnathan Coulton wrote for each game.

Plus the Hitman games (not including Absolution, just the games Jesper Kyd did the soundtrack for) as a whole had fantastic music, also Assassin's Creed 1 + 2, (really just anything Jesper Kyd's done, he's probably my favourite video game composer of all time) Uncharted 2 (and 3 to a lesser extent), and XCOM. And finally the beast that is Skyrim. I did all my revision in the third year of my degree to the Skyrim soundtrack plus it makes great music for playing the Game of Thrones Board game or D & D and of course it fits perfectly for Skyrim itself - it's epic, huge, and varied while still keeping to a core style.

Even money says I accidentally ninja someone with at least one of the games in this list.

 

[SebbyGVS]

The PS2 remake of Dragon Quest VIII.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHAWKGsidhQ

 

[MysticSlayer]

There is Xenoblade Chronicles, which has probably the best environment music that I've heard. I've often felt that what makes the areas come alive so much is the excellent background music that plays while you explore them. Of course, the battle music is also fantastic, especially when you face some of the special enemies, not to mention a lot of themes that play during cutscenes. Overall, just an excellent soundtrack that really makes everything come alive fantastically.

Super Mario Galaxy also had an excellent soundtrack and there are plenty of songs in it that I simply can't get enough of, such as the main theme or the final boss theme. I know Galaxy 2 had a very similar soundtrack, but I think Galaxy sounded better overall.

There's also the early Medal of Honor games as well as the first Call of Duty. It was those games that really got me into taking a closer look at the soundtrack of different games. They always had a way of getting you ready for a fight or bring out the more melancholy emotions that the developers wanted. Pegasus Day (Call of Duty) still remains one of the best themes I've ever heard in a game, both in the song itself and in the use of it. Medal of Honor has some of the best music of any franchise, from its main themes all the way to the obscure level theme that only played for one minute. Neither game used music all the time, but when they did, it was generally well done.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Mass Effect 3. Getting a real composer on the job seemed to be a good move. Also I think Red Dead Redemption's was pretty good, not on its own but it fit thematically to the game, and it definitely inspired The Last of Us' music.

 

[Kinitawowi]

Chrono Trigger (Corridors Of Time is still astonishing), Command And Conquer (the first one) , Bayonetta (everything great about 80s arcade music revamped into one epic package) and Final Fantasy IX (one of the most complete soundtracks around - the individual songs may not be as memorable, except for Vamo' Alla Flamenco and maybe Memories Of Life, but the whole thing adds up to far more than the sum of its parts).

On a technical level, Manic Miner - yeah, In The Hall Of The Mountain King may not sound that spectacular through the Speccy's single channel beeper, but the fact that they managed to interpolate the music with the sound effects relatively seemlessly on a machine with the power of a washing machine and the memory of a single page Word document is still a remarkable accomplishment.