Kinect Star Wars Soundtrack, Gordy Haab / Kyle Newmaster, 2012
It’s curious to see how little joy music fans could derive from the soundtracks for so many Star Wars games. Often, they were ultimately compilations and adaptations of John Williams’ immortal scores – in which case, it felt like you might as well just get the real deal and buy the movie score album. Of course, there’s also a fair number of Star Wars games that came with an original score. But from Clint Bajakian’s Dark Forces to Jeremy Soule‘s Knights of the Old Republic, Frank Klepacki’s Empire at War and Mark Griskey’s The Force Unleashed titles – while they all did a competent job at replicating Williams’ signature franchise sound, the music often suffered from a significant lack of substance and felt underdeveloped.
Enter Kinect Star Wars, probably the last game one would expect to generate a decent soundtrack, given its thoroughly negative critical reception. But score collectors willing to look past the game’s deficiencies would find an orchestral score that managed the seemingly impossible. It features orchestral writing of a quality that matches Williams’ classic Star Wars film scores.