The Greatest Game Music - Page 13 of 13 - Reviews of truly outstanding game music

Torchlight II Soundtrack

Torchlight II Soundtrack, Matt Uelmen, 2012

To call one particular creation the culmination of an artist’s oeuvre can be a risky maneuvre. It suggests linear development across works and prescribes an easily identifiable trajectory. But it’s hard not to fete a work like the Torchlight II soundtrack as the realisation of a specific musical approach. On this album, Matt Uelmen combines all elements that have characterised his previous scores and perfects them.

As always, his music deals in textures rather than melodies, suggestions rather than definitive manifestations. At its best, this approach leads to wonders like Diablo’s “Tristram”. This game music classic was an instantly striking demonstration of how to score fantasy environments in new, idiosyncratic ways. However, taking the same approach, Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction ended up veering between scintillating and meandering.

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Total Annihilation Soundtrack

Total Annihilation Soundtrack, Jeremy Soule, 1997

There’s no doubt that real-time strategy games peaked in popularity during the second half of the 1990s. Their commercial success was kickstarted by the hugely popular Command & Conquer and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. For a few years, RTS games were all the rage (not that the genre is dead now). As a result, a glut of similarly-themed products soon hit the shelves. Differentiation – either by quality, innovation or style – became paramount for more ambitious developers.

Total Annihilation was the lucky case of differentiation through all those three markers. It didn’t rewrite the rule book, but made many tweaks that updated genre conventions in smart ways. And while its look wasn’t too different from the hordes of Command & Conquer clones, its music easily stood out. For that, gamers could thank Jeremy Soule, who back in 1997 wasn’t yet the star composer he is now. To set the game apart, Soule proposed a live orchestral soundtrack – nearly unheard of in 1997.

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TowerFall Ascension Soundtrack

TowerFall Ascension Soundtrack, Alec Holowka, 2014

Created by Alec Holowka’s friend Matt Thorson, multi-player brawler TowerFall proved to be a hit with gamers and critics. In 2014, Thorson ported TowerFall as TowerFall Ascension over to the PlayStation 4 and other systems. Essentially, Ascension is an upgraded version of TowerFall, and this time the music received a dedicated soundtrack release on Bandcamp.

What luck, because TowerFall Ascension delivers some of the most creative Western game music ever written. The game’s visual retro stylings and simple yet addictive gameplay would have suggested a chiptune soundtrack. On the other hand, Ascension’s fantasy trappings could have easily resulted in yet another late-romantic orchestral score. Holowka eschews both these options. What he comes up with instead is a head-spinning concoction that combines rock, orchestral and electronic elements with such virtuosity that the TowerFall Ascension soundtrack rivals the best works of Falcom, Gust and CAVE – or a classic fantasy-themed genre merger like Matt Uelmen’s Torchlight II.

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Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack, Michael Giacchino, 2008

No doubt, Michael Giacchino‘s body of work includes some of game music’s best and most influential orchestral scores. Specifically, it’s the Medal of Honor soundtracks that secured his name in the annals of game soundtracks. However, Giacchino’s most fascinating and curious work of game music is another one: the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack.

It’s surprising to see how little attention this score has attracted. Of course, the easiest explanation is the score album’s rarity. Never available commercially, the album came as a bonus item of the game’s Xbox 360 collector’s edition. Another reason why the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack disappeared from view is the game’s commercial failure. But the most intriguing explanation for the obscurity of Giacchino’s work for Turning Point is the unusual nature of its sound world – both when compared with Giacchino’s other game scores, and Western game soundtracks in general. This is Giacchino at his most experimental and acerbic – both across his game and film scores.

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Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 – Martian Dreams Soundtrack

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 – Martian Dreams Soundtrack, Dana Glover / Tom Hollingshead / George Sanger, 1991

Back in 1991, dedicated soundtrack releases for Western game soundtracks were pretty much unheard of. One of the pioneers was Origin Soundtrack, a compilation of music from some of Origin‘s high-profile games of 1990/91. Exactly how Origin Soundtrack came about still remains a bit of a mystery. What seems to be confirmed is that the album is an unauthorised collection of music. Its producer and engineer was veteran composer Martin Galway, who had just finished work on Wing Commander II. His aim was probably to showcase his work and that of other composers at Origin on a stand-alone basis.

Probably inevitably, the album was a mixed bag of offerings. Music from high-profile titles like Ultima VI: The False Prophet and Wing Commander II turned out to be surprisingly bland. On the other hand, Wing Commander’s pioneering, film music-inspired score made its album debut (if only with a six-minute medley). Nestled between these well-known games was a score that deserves much greater attention: Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 – Martian Dreams. Martian Dreams was part of the Ultima: Worlds of Adventure series that allowed Origin to get a bit playful with the venerable RPG franchise. Just look at Martian Dreams’ storyline, set in the Victorian era. Things kick off at the 1893 World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago with a steampunk-inspired rocket trip to Mars. Here, players meet Vladimir Lenin, Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Rasputin and other prominent figures of the era.

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Victoria II Soundtrack

Victoria II Soundtrack, Andreas Waldetoft, 2010

Throughout the years, Andreas Waldetoft has been consistently churning out pleasingly melodic scores for Paradox Interactive’s history-themed strategy games. Titles like Europa Universalis III and Europa Universalis Rome showed promise during their moments of unrestrained melodicism. Unfortunately, various issues held these scores back from entirely fulfilling their promise.

It is on the Victoria II soundtrack that Waldetoft finally reaches his artistic peak. His music has always been best when allowed to wallow in its lyricism and meandering prettiness. The secret ingredient are Waldetoft’s beguiling melodies, which often manage to cover over the general thinness of his material. What’s usually more problematic is Waldetoft’s action material. Less melodic in nature, it can’t fall back on mellifluous instrument lines and can sound repetitive, if still competent.

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Wing Commander Soundtrack (FM Towns)

Wing Commander Soundtrack (FM Towns), David Govett / George Sanger / Nenad Vugrinec, 1992

Very few games foreground their music as much as Wing Commander – and that’s only one way in which it proved to be a watershed moment for game music. Before the player gets to see the game’s intro or even title, game producer Chris Roberts inserts something else, something remarkable: the sight of a pixelated orchestra and conductor, set against the backdrop of a blue planetoid and star-speckled outer space. The orchestra tunes for a few seconds, before the conductor gives the signal to launch into a brief fanfare.

Roberts’ vision for Wing Commander was to create a full-blown space opera à la Star Wars. The orchestra intro in Wing Commander shows that Roberts knew how hugely important music was for his dream project to play like a swashbuckling space opera. The intro also serves as a curtain raiser that heightens expectations. The show is about to start, and it’s going to be of grand proportions. And of course, the sight of the orchestra announces the composers’ symphonic ambitions – a rarity for a 1990 video game. Rarely has a 25-second game intro carried so much meaning and context.

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Zhadnost: The People’s Party Soundtrack

Zhadnost: The People’s Party Soundtrack, David Govett / Joe McDermott / Weston Phelan / George Sanger, 1995

Zhadnost: The People’s Party is one of those games that could have only emerged in the mid-1990s – that heady time when CD-ROM technology was still fairly new and game developers were trying to figure out what do with it. Often enough, the extra storage space would simply be filled up with a Red Book audio soundtrack (The Terminator). Other developers discovered their cinematic ambitions and turned their games into wannabe-movies and full motion video bonanzas. Zhadnost: The People’s Party more or less follows that second approach, but it uses FMVs to realise its very particular vision of a whacko communist game show whose contestants compete for their freedom after having been kidnapped by the totalitarian nation of Bizarrnia. Yes, they don’t make them like they used to.

It’s not the sort of game that you would expect to generate a great soundtrack. Praise be to George Sanger and his collaborators David Govett, Joe McDermott and Weston Phelan that the Zhadnost: The People’s Party soundtrack turned out to be such an unexpected delight (and actually received an album release as Surf.com). Their solution to the problem of how you’d score a communist game show certainly defies expectations: surf rock.

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