Games SoundTrack

[raptor1181]

Hey Escapist!!

So I just bought Dust - An Elysian Tale of the Steam sale (If you haven?t already stop reading this post and go pick it up!) Anyway one of the things that I love about this game is the soundtrack I think it?s amazing and so when I took a break from the game I downloaded the full OST and I love the whole thing! (It?s playing right now in fact!).

I have just started to realise that music plays a huge part for me, I notice it in every game I play and it can make or break a game for me.

So Escapist what games do you feel have an amazing soundtrack? Have you bought any? And do you even notice music in games?

I only have Dusts And the Jade Empires OST but I think my collection will do nothing but grow!!!

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well I have FFVIIs soundtrack on my Ipod in full as well as a fair number of songs from Ar Tonelico melody of metafallica I love the tunes from both. I also have a few from Valkyria Chronicles as a few songs from that are amazing.

Only other games I can remember the soundtrack to off the top of my head would be Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter 2, I wouldnt want to listen to these outside the game but when packaged with the rest of the game they really shine.

Oh and ofc Persona 4 and Persona 4 arena have good soundtracks as well but I only remember a few off the top of my head and I dont find them as memorable as the above.

I do like music or the lack of music and how its used to create moods in games and if its done well I definitely enjoy the game more, but as a standalone piece I rarely listen to music in games.

Ofc if its a rhythm action game then it better have good music and marry it well to the onscreen action or its doomed to fail.

 

[Asclepion]

There are countless games with amazing soundtracks.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Persona 4 and BlazBlue are my favourites. Persona 4 has great soundtracks all round whereas BlazBlue has best character specific soundtracks I have ever heard. The character themes in Persona 4 Arena are weaker as a whole but there are still some good ones.

I'm only going to post one Persona 4 song cuz i'll end up posting the entire damn thing if I let myself.








"The Earth! The Heavens! and a MILLION squirrels call to me!"

[sub][sub]Wait what? They don't?[/sub][/sub]


"*maniacal laughter* Ladies and gentlemen! Please, enjoy the show!"


Recently i've begun noticing games that lack a good soundtrack. Like Borderlands for example. And yes, I know everyone loves the opening titles because there's a good song in there but there's fuck all music in the actual gameplay.

I mean hell why didn't they pull a Far Cry 3 and start blasting dubstep for no reason? You don't even have to justify it because Borderlands as a series is already wacky and comedic enough to just roll with it

 

[Miss G.]

Okami, TWEWY, a lot of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, ATLUS, and Atelier titles do it for me. Sometimes I bother and get the soundtracks or just listen to 'em on youtube while I have other things muted because they are also great as stand alone pieces.

Here's one of my favorites from Okami

And my favorite Persona 3 opening in conjunction with my favorite Persona 3 song

And one more from Persona 4

 

[Rariow]

There is a tonne of fantastic game music out there. In fact, a good 40% of the music I listen to on a daily basis is game soundtracks, with some film OST's thrown in the mix as well.
Just quickly looking through my iPod, some of my favourites are

-Deus Ex. Some fantastic electronicy-sounding ones, and the main theme still sends shivers down my spine every freakin' time.
-Bastion. Take Country, throw in some Rock, give it some Electronica, maybe a bit of Dubstep every now and again (but very mildly, don't go overboard) and a couple of the most amazing vocalists I've ever heard. I'm not usually into "weird" music, but I love this one.
-Deadly Premonition. Mostly for that one track with the whistling. It's got some pretty good stuff apart from that too, though. Haven't actually played the game, I just love the music.
-The Elder Scrolls. Ever since Morrowind they've had some of the most amazing sounding pieces in videogames. Jeremy Soule is fantastic. In fact, part of why I was so dissapointed in Skyrim was I didn't like the soundtrack as much. I've still got it on there, and I've listened to some tracks over 400 times.
-A couple of Final Fantasies, including IV, V and VIII. Honestly, the soundtrack to VIII saved that game. It'd've been OK without it, it's pretty damn good with it.
-Ace Attorney series. Some pretty damn good tracks in there. Especially reccomend the "Gyakuten Meets Orchestra" and "Gyakuten Meets Jazz-Soul" re-arrangments, bringing the chip tunes into some downright glorious orchestral tracks.
-"The Greatest Video Game Music" by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. More than "Greatest" it's "From the most famous ones", but hearing stuff like the Mario theme, the Angry Birds theme or GTA IV's "soviet connection" played by the freakin' London Philharmonic is damn awesome.

Yeah, I'm quite a bit of an afficionado. I swear, I might spend more time and money on the soundtracks to games than on games themselves.

 

[Glongpre]

The best soundtrack has to go to Vice City. The thing is legendary. But there are too many games with awesome tracks and for the love of god spoiler your videos, some people have wooden computers, thx.

 

[TrevHead]

Ive got tons of VGM that I like but my very favorite genre are shmup VGM, unlike alot of other genres the music is very upbeat and full of energy, the whole genre is full of great VGM, with crappy shmup music been the exception not the norm.

CAVE imo are the best and have had some of the best Japanese VGM talent composing OSTs, remixes and arrange (30-40) albums over the years.

Normally I'd just post an OST or two but that will give the impression that all of CAVE's music is the same, which it isn't the case as there's over 30 albums with differing musical styles.

This would serve better.

http://www.originalsoundversion.com/cave-music-history-2003-2012-video-series/

This mixtape has a great selection of shmup music too. http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=46594&p=931542#p931542

Plus here are a couple of CAVE tunes to listen to off the bat.

 

[neonsword13-ops]

I really don't listen to pop music anymore because it doesn't have the diversity that game music provides.

Spoiler: I go to Shadow of The Colossus for powerful music performed by an orchestra.

I go to Shadow of The Colossus for powerful music performed by an orchestra.

Spoiler: I go to the Shin Megami Tensei series for kick-ass battle music.

I go to the Shin Megami Tensei series for kick-ass battle music.

For the most recent example, let's go to Shin Megami Tensei IV, which just released yesterday.

Spoiler: Nintendo games always have the best soundtracks with memorable melodies. (Nostalgia Overload Incoming)

And Nintendo games always have the best soundtracks with memorable melodies. (Nostalgia Overload Incoming)

Spoiler: And then there are many other game soundtracks that I just adore with all of my heart.

And then there are many other game soundtracks that I just adore with all of my heart.

And no, I haven't purchased any soundtracks, I've only received them with certain games. (Persona 4 and SMT4 being the prime examples.)

But I love game music. It's all so different.

 

[Spiritmaster]

Spellforce the Order of Dawn had a really good soundtrack. Not the greatest merging of RPG and RTS but still the soundtrack really made the game shine in my opinion. Lots of great flute-work and such.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

SMT Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 have the absolute best Soundtracks of any game I've played. Devil Saga 1 in particular has the greatest battle theme of any JRPG ever.

Here it is:

Spoiler

 

[Strelok]

My favorite game soundtracks are easy to choose:

GTA: Vice City - Great 80s soundtrack that take me back to high school. Ever do a mission and you wouldn't get out of the car till the song is over? Happened a lot for me in Vice City

Mafia II - Amazing 40s & 50s classic songs, this and Vice City are tied for first. This is one my favorite songs, Roy Hamilton, a big influence on Elvis, but infinitely better in my opinion.

Dear Esther - Haunting, beautiful, it's had me since I first heard the narrator start the story, Dear Esther...

Brutal Legend - Metal soundtrack, what more do you need? Running over glam rockers with this blaring was a blast.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Last but most definitely not least, the main theme really brings me back to the days of renting cheesy sci-fi action flicks.

 

[Joffas16]

I love a lot of video game music so I'll name a few of my favorites. I love the soundtracks to the Hitman games, Chrono Trigger and Cross, Pikmin, Jet Set Radio Future and the Zelda games.

 

[Marik2]

Msot of my music comes from video games.

The best ones imo are from Halo 1 and 2. Those made the game for me and gave it a feel that there was an interesting world going on

 

[not_you]

HOTLINE MIAMI
HOTLINE MIAMI
HOTLINE MIAMI

Seriously, this, along with Capsized have what I would call Epic soundtracks...

Sequence would also be high up there, but that IS a rhythm game, so it's cheating...

in case I didn't say it enough...
HOTLINE MIAMI

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

The only complete OST I've bought is for Bastion.

Aside from that, I've picked up some songs from the Sonic: Generations and Dissidia: Final Fantasy soundtracks. Of course, I also bought Guile's theme from Street Fighter. As we all know, it really DOES go with everything.

 

[King of Asgaard]

There's a distinct lack of Chrono Cross in this thread. Let's change that.

Spoiler

But really, I'm doing a disservice by only posting these five tracks, because the entirety of the soundtrack is godly.

 

[LetalisK]

I have a playlist in my itunes library of almost all video game sound tracks that I use for other games(ie MMOs, strategy games, some FPSes, etc) that have soundtracks that I find to be meh. They're almost all combat-oriented tracks. The tracks include selections from:

Skyrim
Warcraft 3
C&C Red Alert 3(game was poo, but enjoyed some of the music, especially the end credits)
300 (Like I said, almost all video games)
Starcraft 1
SC2: Wings of Liberty
SC2: Heart of the Swarm
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2 and all its DLCs
Mass Effect 3
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Star Wars: Republic Commando
Crysis
C&C Red Alert 2
C&C Red Alert
E.S. Posthumous's Unearthed album
One song by Oakenfold
C&C Generals and Zero Hour(probably my overall favorite of the whole group)

I'm always looking to grow this list too.

 

[Ikasury]

Parasite Eve (Techno opera) and Xenogears (beautiful Orchestral scores) are two of my favorite OSTs to listen too... just about any Shin Megami Tensei game, ESPECIALLY the Persona series (3 and 4 end/op songs are amazing along with the sequences) are good... Bioshock Infinite's is particularly interesting especially if you get the original songs together as its good old US-loud-and-proud-A music, Final Fantasy X-2 really only exists for its concert scenes AND THEY ARE FUCKING AMAZING SONGS, Mass Effect 3's i delightfully creepy if you play it in the right moments so i'd recommend that too, and NiER's soundtrack god that is both cheery, creepy, and sad and its so freakin' good...

music plays a big part in anything i watch/play, so yea, if they music doesn't get you, well fuckit, the rest probably won't even register to me, no matter how good the 'plot' or gameplay...

 

[BanicRhys]

Music is everything to me, a superb soundtrack can make even a mediocre game (or film) one of my favourites.

I may as well get Final Fantasy 9 out of the way.


Surprisingly, gen 5 of Pokemon had a great soundtrack.


I'll just throw in a dash of Valkyria Chronicles.


Let me augment this list with some Deus Ex: HR


And to shake things up, have a little Diablo 3.


While Diablo 3's music isn't as outstanding as many others, it has some of the best foley I've ever heard. When you kill a skeleton, you can hear its skull bouncing away, your attacks sound visceral and forceful.

Diablo 3's foley is probably the main reason why I can't become as invested in the Torchlight series, it just sounds so cheap in comparison.