Video Game Music
Feb. 23rd, 2020 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
singedsunI've been putting off this post since I only ever seem to think to post it at the weirdest times. I don't want all my recent posts to be music related, but yet here we are. So, let's make it good.
I mentioned in my previous![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
electric_challenge post about Kentucky Route Zero that the music in that game is SO VERY GOOD, because it is. If that sort of indie folk, chiller even than Mumford & Sons kind of music is for you? Check out the albums for Kentucky Route Zero from Ben Babbitt in that post, because he's great.
HOWEVER. While the music for that game is a pretty close runner-up, it's definitely not my favorite. There's a bunch I could mention here -- music plays a big part in games for me. Too repetitive or annoying, I'll turn it off or listen to something else entirely instead. (I used to listen to the radio when I played Super Mario Bros. as a kid and all games with similar music.) Depending on the game, I might even watch videos on another monitor (if it's on the PC) instead of listening to music at all.
A few games though have the sort of entrancing music that just sucks you in at all the right times and isn't just a background for music stings to cue you in and out of battle or puzzles. And while I can appreciate the grand sweeping orchestral type music they do for Final Fantasy games or even the Zelda games, it's not what serves me.
For me, it's the music composed by Gustavo Santaolalla for The Last of Us that feels just perfect. The soft guitars, the sweeping melodies and the music producers and supervisors at Naughty Dog knew just how to cut it or fade it for the action and cut scenes when appropriate. Few games have made me really take notice of the beautiful musical composition like The Last of Us has.
If beautiful guitar melodies are your thing with a bit of a western twinge, check it out. But if they're not, maybe the other one I want to mention will be it instead.
[The Last of Us album on Spotify]
I would never have expected a horror game to provide me with music experience that made me pause, go look up artists and download whatever I could find and provide me with a favorite band I STILL listen to regularly. If you have not played Alan Wake -- one of the first games to bring the episodic game play style to the console and in a bingeable way. Man this game is great for a lot of reasons, but let's talk about the music. This isn't orchestral, it's not background, it's right up in your face! Over the opening title screen of each episode is a song, a big song, a popular song like Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" kind of song.
And as if that wasn't enough, there's a metal band incorporated into the backstory of the game that Alan can hear playing often in the radios he passes by and later their music is used in the concert scene near the end. This band in the game is called "Children of an Elder God" but in real life it's a prog metal band called Poets of the Fall (I love them so much). It's an amazing integration of story and song.
[Alan Wake soundtrack on Spotify]
Honorable music mentions for the following games: Transistor, Bastion, Cuphead and The Path (I could write a whole post on The Path alone).
Also worth mentioning this single song from Red Dead Redemption, which is best seen with it's accompanying travel scene for which context is not needed. If you've ever liked cowboy movie music like Ennio Morricone, this is for you. This is a song by Jose Gonzales (who is worth checking out if you like Spanish music (ballads) at all) called "Far Away". The scenery change during this scene is one of my favorite non-action/story based scenes in any video game...ever maybe. RDR might often come off as a gunslinger, horse-riding sim (and it is) but this is just a perfect moment that I've always enjoyed.
I mentioned in my previous
electric_challenge post about Kentucky Route Zero that the music in that game is SO VERY GOOD, because it is. If that sort of indie folk, chiller even than Mumford & Sons kind of music is for you? Check out the albums for Kentucky Route Zero from Ben Babbitt in that post, because he's great. HOWEVER. While the music for that game is a pretty close runner-up, it's definitely not my favorite. There's a bunch I could mention here -- music plays a big part in games for me. Too repetitive or annoying, I'll turn it off or listen to something else entirely instead. (I used to listen to the radio when I played Super Mario Bros. as a kid and all games with similar music.) Depending on the game, I might even watch videos on another monitor (if it's on the PC) instead of listening to music at all.
A few games though have the sort of entrancing music that just sucks you in at all the right times and isn't just a background for music stings to cue you in and out of battle or puzzles. And while I can appreciate the grand sweeping orchestral type music they do for Final Fantasy games or even the Zelda games, it's not what serves me.
For me, it's the music composed by Gustavo Santaolalla for The Last of Us that feels just perfect. The soft guitars, the sweeping melodies and the music producers and supervisors at Naughty Dog knew just how to cut it or fade it for the action and cut scenes when appropriate. Few games have made me really take notice of the beautiful musical composition like The Last of Us has.
If beautiful guitar melodies are your thing with a bit of a western twinge, check it out. But if they're not, maybe the other one I want to mention will be it instead.
[The Last of Us album on Spotify]
I would never have expected a horror game to provide me with music experience that made me pause, go look up artists and download whatever I could find and provide me with a favorite band I STILL listen to regularly. If you have not played Alan Wake -- one of the first games to bring the episodic game play style to the console and in a bingeable way. Man this game is great for a lot of reasons, but let's talk about the music. This isn't orchestral, it's not background, it's right up in your face! Over the opening title screen of each episode is a song, a big song, a popular song like Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" kind of song.
And as if that wasn't enough, there's a metal band incorporated into the backstory of the game that Alan can hear playing often in the radios he passes by and later their music is used in the concert scene near the end. This band in the game is called "Children of an Elder God" but in real life it's a prog metal band called Poets of the Fall (I love them so much). It's an amazing integration of story and song.
[Alan Wake soundtrack on Spotify]
Honorable music mentions for the following games: Transistor, Bastion, Cuphead and The Path (I could write a whole post on The Path alone).
Also worth mentioning this single song from Red Dead Redemption, which is best seen with it's accompanying travel scene for which context is not needed. If you've ever liked cowboy movie music like Ennio Morricone, this is for you. This is a song by Jose Gonzales (who is worth checking out if you like Spanish music (ballads) at all) called "Far Away". The scenery change during this scene is one of my favorite non-action/story based scenes in any video game...ever maybe. RDR might often come off as a gunslinger, horse-riding sim (and it is) but this is just a perfect moment that I've always enjoyed.
