Orchestral Archives - Page 2 of 9 - The Greatest Game Music

Dead Space 2 Soundtrack – Review

Dead Space 2 Soundtrack, Jason Graves, 2011

“The Same. But Different. Yet Better.” According to Jason Graves, those were the words that he stuck above his monitor when composing Dead Space 2. Considering the success of Dead Space’s aural aspects – two BAFTAs and a degree of media attention few game scores ever achieve – Grave’s goal was no doubt an ambitious one. Then again, no matter how ferocious Dead Space’s soundtrack was, there was room for improvement. Graves’ breakthrough work was the equivalent of a horror movie that tries to scare its audience with jump scare after jump scare. And at some stage, watching monsters leap at the protagonist for yet another “boo!” effect gets old.

Fortunately, Graves fixes this and other issues on the Dead Space 2 soundtrack. It is still unmistakably the soundtrack for a very scary game. But at the same time, through a more varied approach to creating unease and immersion, Dead Space 2 clearly surpasses its predecessor. It delivers a surprisingly multi-faceted exploration of the dark corridors of both a haunted space station and of its protagonist Isaac Clarke’s disintegrating mind.

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Dear Esther Soundtrack – Review

Dear Esther Soundtrack, Jessica Curry, 2012

It seems fair to say that it’s usually indie video games that push the boundaries of the medium and have gamers and audiences asking “But is it a game?” (“Is it art?” being a close second). One of these games, Dear Esther, was initially a research project at the University of Plymouth. Players find themselves on a barren island in the Hebrides and are left to explore the surroundings. Meanwhile, a male voice-over reads out random letter fragments to a woman named Esther. With no threat of death and no tasks to be fulfilled, Dear Esther instead aims to capture gamers’ intrigue simply by letting them figure out – or just interpret – the fragmented narrative, hinting at a tragedy that precedes the events in the game. Encouragingly, this experiment in digital storytelling received significant critical acclaim and was a commercial success as well.

Dear Esther also launched the game music career of composer Jessica Curry. Curry’s body of work before Dear Esther included arts installations, film soundtracks and cross-media projects. A co-founder of Dear Esther’s developer The Chinese Room, Curry was closely involved in the game’s creation from its inception. Her aim was for the music “to add an emotional dimension” to the game. That was a crucial task, given that Dear Esther‘s challenge-free gameplay doesn’t reward the player with a sense of odds overcome, but instead must satisfy gamers by delivering a memorable experience.

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Enemy Zero Soundtrack – Review

Enemy Zero Soundtrack, Michael Nyman, 1996

Few video game auteurs have left an oeuvre as intriguing – and divisive – as Kenji Eno. Eno fittingly came to prominence during one of experimental game design’s heydays – the mid 1990s. His company Warp became best known in the West for its D series of horror games: D, Enemy Zero and D2. Only very loosely connected with each other, these games proposed innovative gameplay and story ideas – arguably to various degrees of success. However, these titles did ultimately cement Eno’s name in game history for their unbridled audacity.

It’s certainly not Enemy Zero’s story line that is its most innovative component. The game’s narrative – a spaceship is overrun by murderous xenomorphs – takes entire portions of Alien and mixes in bits and pieces of other sci-fi classics such as Blade Runner. Far more interesting is the game’s central game play mechanic. The rampaging aliens are invisible and the only way to find and shoot them is to rely on a sonar-like system that indicates their location through changes in pitch and frequency. It was an ingenious idea that some reviewers found was implemented less smoothly than it should have been, making for one hell of a difficult game.

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Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Soundtrack – Review

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Soundtrack, Jessica Curry, 2015

Coming off the critical and commercial success of Dear Esther, British indie developer The Chinese Room began work on two projects: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Out of the two games, the latter was no doubt the bigger undertaking, co-produced by industry giant Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. By and large, Rapture took the same gameplay approach as Dear Esther. Gamers are tasked with walking through a deserted village, trying to piece together what happened to those who once inhabited this piece of idyllic English country side – no battles, perils or game over screens in sight. Not surprisingly, the limited interactivity within Rapture’s world wasn’t to the liking of everybody. All in all though, reviews were positive, with critics particularly pointing out the game’s strong narrative, placing Rapture on several year-end lists.

Rapture did reap several awards as well, including for its music. As with previous The Chinese Room titles, Jessica Curry provided the game’s soundtrack – deservedly taking home a BAFTA and two Game Audio Network Guild Awards for her efforts. Curry was involved with Rapture throughout the entirety of its three-year development period, both as composer and director of the project. It’s no surprise then that the music’s shape and function within the game was carefully considered. With the game’s design strongly influenced by the peculiarly British sci-fi sub-genre of the “cosy catastrophe”, Curry’s music was bound to follow suit.

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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Soundtrack – Review

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Soundtrack, Jeremy Soule, 2002

The Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack is easily the best of Jeremy Soule‘s five scores for the franchise. It also benefits from a better album presentation than Soule’s other Harry Potter soundtracks. Only eight minutes of notable material are missing from the album release, which thankfully excises a lot of ruminative underscore. In fact, Chamber of Secrets is Soule’s most satisfying fantasy soundtrack. Yes, that’s a big claim to make, considering his work on franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars. But Chamber of Secrets achieves a consistency of quality that Soule’s more bloated scores don’t accomplish. He doubtlessly deserved his 2004 win of the BAFTA Games Award for Best Original Music for Chamber of Secrets.

Soule’s designation as “the John Williams of game music” has always had more to do with hyperbole and facile comparisons than with actual musical parallels. For example, Soule seems almost entirely disinterested in the elaborate thematic structures that shape so many of Williams’ works. However, there’s no denying that at his best, Soule is able to create a lavish orchestral sound broadly reminiscent of John Williams’ works in the science fiction and fantasy genre.

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