The Greatest Game Music

Reviews of truly outstanding game music

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Azkend 2: The World Beneath Soundtrack

Azkend 2: The World Beneath Soundtrack

Azkend 2: The World Beneath Soundtrack, Jonathan Geer, 2012

One of the most exciting experiences for music collectors is to come across a work that defies expectations and delivers something much more involving and satisfying than expected. Jonathan Geer’s Azkend 2: The World Beneath soundtrack is exactly that sort of album. It’s music for yet another match-3 game – a genre whose popularity soared with the advent of mobile gaming. This is not necessarily the kind of game one expects to deliver a full-bodied, lush (synth)orchestral score. However, that’s precisely what Azkend 2 achieves.

In an interview, Geer stated that “this kind of big, lush, adventurous soundtrack is really right up my alley and probably my strongest genre as a composer. My goal was to just write something very romantic and big.” You only need to listen to opening track “Azkend 2 Theme” to realise that Geer achieved his aims. If you walked into this soundtrack not knowing what kind of game it was written for, chances are that you’d never guess this was music created for a puzzler. Instead, this is the kind of mature orchestral score that you’d expect to hear in a big-budget RPG.

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Tagged With: 10tons, 2012, Jonathan Geer, Mobile, Orchestral, Puzzle

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack, Jonathan Geer, 2020

What do you do if you have delivered two successful instalments of your cooking simulation franchise and are wondering where to take things next? If you are developer Vertigo Gaming, the answer is: don’t change your winning formula, but have some fun with the premise. In other words: the core loop of clicking on the right ingredients at the right time while juggling multiple food orders didn’t change much. Reviewers did point out issues with the game’s UI and occasionally punishing difficulty level, but by large and enjoyed Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! (and its appetising art style). Where things took a left turn was with the game’s narrative. Set in a post-apocalyptic USA, your restaurant empire has been blown to pieces and now you’ve hit the road with a couple of helpful robots who’ve let you turn their van into a food truck.

Less surprising was the game’s choice of composer: Jonathan Geer returned after delivering solid work on the previous two CSD games. However, this was easily his most ambitious franchise entry so far, sporting significantly longer compositions than previous CSD titles – with the soundtrack clocking in at a whopping 102 minutes. And it’s not just the scope of the Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! soundtrack that impresses. Geer’s most creative work yet in his already eclectic discography is impossible to swiftly sum up and label with a genre tag. If one had to find easy descriptors, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! might well be dubbed game music’s most ingenious easy-listening score.

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Tagged With: 2020, Action, Jonathan Geer, Mixed Music Genres, PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, Vertigo Gaming, Xbox One

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