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JJ's Bizarre Blog #52 - Symphonies of Virtual Worlds - NOTG II Remastered/Revisited/Resurrected HD
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Welcome back, all! It's been a busy few weeks and it only now truly started to set in for me. I am fifty blogs into this project and the second anniversary of the Bizarre blog series has arrived. This is a truly monumental milestone and it feels so humbling. But I'm far from done! So, let's celebrate the anniversary in style by revisiting the topic from all the way back in blog #2 and seeing how far I've come exactly fifty blogs later. And if that gives you pause, well let me tell you this. If Todd can release the same game six times and get away with it, then I can talk about one of my favourite topics once again. So, without further loading screens or lag, let's dive even deeper into video game soundtracks! Let's roll!
Video games as we know them have been around for quite some time now and ever since the hardware they run on got advanced enough to play sound alongside the visuals, music has become an integral part of the experience. From the very dawn of the medium, developers understood that a catchy melody, even in just 8-bit can make a game that much more memorable. And by virtue of the fact that we're still talking about these games and still immediately recognize their jingles today, they were absolutely right!
Probably the earliest example of a legendary game soundtrack has to be the original Doom in 1993. Taking PCs by storm and revolutionizing gaming as a whole, giving birth to the first-person shooter genre! Slaying demons in abandoned alien bases is already fun as hell, but what elevates it to greater heights is the legendary soundtrack by Bobby Prince, who reimagined many iconic metal, rock and grunge tracks of the time into low-poly bangers that perfectly fit the dark yet violent tone of the game. Anything can run Doom and anybody can appreciate this legendary soundtrack.
The tradition was kept up as the years went on, as every Doom game, as varied as their soundtracks have been, has always had incredible music to fit all your demon slaying needs.
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The classic Doom sound would be revolutionized with the arrival of one man - Australian machine Mick Gordon! With the rebooted Doom in 2016 and its sequel Eternal in 2020, the franchise rose to new heights and reached its greatest popularity ever, injecting a lot of fresh blood into a stagnating FPS genre. The sauce that pulled this full course meal together was Mick's insane soundtrack. Mixing djenty Fear Factory-esque metal guitar riffage, heavy industrial electronics, dense and macabre biomechanical ambiance an entire choir of demons courtesy of some iconic metal vocalists, he truly took pure rage and distilled it into musical form. This soundtrack revolutionized game music just like how Doom revolutionized game design. Not to mention how many people were converted into listening to metal for the first time thanks to it. Doom is a horror game...where YOU are the horror! And boy do these songs make you feel like it.
This wasn't Mick's first outing though. He had already shown his talents across iconic games prior such as the new Wolfenstein games and the latest Killer Instinct entries. Those also contain the awesome metal bangers we most often associate with him, but also many other symphonic and atmospheric tracks, allowing him to show a lot of diversity in his compositions. He is far from a one note slayer and has many weapons in his arsenal!
The legacy of Doom inspired the entire FPS genre and the legacy of epic gameplay with epic soundtracks is felt across all of them, continuing into even the ambient industrial nightmarish hellscapes of the Quake soundtrack composed by the legendary Trent Reznor!
These same traditions continue to this day with modern shooters diversifying their musical portfolio, but always hitting hard and strong! Even the iconic film composer Hans Zimmer threw his hat into the map with Modern Warfare 2 and it's grand cinematic score!
Many shooters have come along that have earned iconic status in their own right. Croatian crew Croteam's legendary Serious Sam has always featured seriously recognizable songs for its alien slaying madness, mixing electronic sounds, folk instruments and rock beats for a seriously unique blend, courtesy of the master Damjan Mravunac. The songs even play a practical purpose, changing from calm to crazy depending on if enemies are nearby!
Also, special shoutout to Croatian metal band Undercode for the seriously sick boss fight themes they provided for The Second Encounter, my favourite entry!
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For something completely different, check out the one-of-a-kind score of one of the most influential shooters ever - the undying Team Fortress 2. With a full brass section, blues and rock 'n' roll style guitar and cinematic dynamism, these songs capture your brain and hold it for a long long time. A unique soundtrack for a truly unique game!
And all of that in just one genre, eh? From the very start real-time strategy games have also always relied on amazing soundtracks. There's a lot of downtime to plan and prepare, so you need some proper bangers to fill the space with tension before all out action breaks out! No other man has mastered the soundtrack of mechanized warfare like Frank Klepacki and his work on the Command & Conquer series. Just listen to the remastered tracks recorded with his band the Tiberian Sons! Unironically one of the best industrial metal albums ever created!
His work across the entire franchise, ranging from ambient and foreboding to epic and fun always fits the mood and is a joy to explore. Command & Conquer invented the RTS genre just like how Doom invented FPS and just like the latter, the legendary status is only made greater thanks to the iconic soundtracks!
Even on Generals, the first game not scored by Frank, the mix of orchestral elements, hard hitting metal and folk instruments matching the three factions are just the perfect backdrop for the most realistic and believable C&C entry. There has never been a better battle symphony for contemporary warfare than this one!
Video games come in all shapes and sizes (sometimes too big as well) and their music does too. If what you want is to dive into a fantasy world and immerse yourself in its magical landscapes, you're spoiled for choice. Whether it's the Slavic folk orchestrations of The Witcher, the epic grand symphonies or the legendary Jeremy Soule on Skyrim, the enveloping compositions of MMOs like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft, as varied as the landscapes within, there is a piece of these worlds for everyone and the thirst for adventure begs to be quenched!
On the other side of the scale, if you wish to delve into an advanced technological future or even depart from the Earth and explore the cosmos, we got you covered. And whether you want to go mining on Hoxxes under contract with Deep Rock Galactic or fight for freedom and democracy in Helldivers, gorgeous soundscapes ranging from electronic bangers to symphonic masterpieces will accompany you on your journey through the stars!
For some more grounded yet even more epic sci-fi, we have to give a special shoutout to the cyberpunk classic Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and its iconic tunes. Featuring some truly powerful metal songs with heavy electronic elements that never fail to get the blood pumping, these mighty tunes also serve a practical purpose with the soaring vocals delivering lyrics giving deep introspection into the personalities, backstories and mental states of the various characters! Beyond it all, these songs just rock! It's so cool that this God-tier metal album comes with a free game, one that's actually quite good too!
For something very sci-fi but with a distinct dose of fantasy in there too, you have to check out the grand opus that is Warframe. Of the vastest worlds in all of gaming lies at your fingertips in what can only be described as every sci-fi fan's dream come to life. Be a cool cyborg space ninja, pilot your ship through void storms and tear through platoons of enemies in style as you explore planet after planet in search of truth. And while you do it, the music will be out of this world! Starting from the legendary classic score from the appropriately named Keith Power, through the anthemic space shanties we all know by heart, all the way to the modern tracks from a who's who of masterful composers. I'm just saying, they don't have to make a new set of songs for every major update, songs that are absolute bangers every time and that are even in a brand new genre compared to the previous. And yet they do it anyway. And that among many other things is what makes this game so special. That's how you know a game is made with love!
That's a huge part of the beauty of it all. With so many decades of history and developers of all levels from the entire globe, video game music has evolved so much that it can be pretty much anything it wants to be now. From the custom alt rock hits in Sonic Adventure, the bossanova and jazz dance numbers of Persona, the funky beats and city pop karaoke classics of the Yakuza series, the mix of pop, electro, industrial and pure dystopia in the incredible Cyberpunk 2077, the blood pumping, bank robbing beats of Payday, the 1920s film score style funky jazz numbers of Cuphead and so so much more. Video game music can never ever be put into one category and while that makes my life harder in a blog like this, I am ever so grateful this is the case!
In recent years, indie games have been at the forefront of the next evolution of games, diversifying gameplay, bringing in brand new ideas, reviving classic genres and showing that even simple pixel graphics are all you need as long as the gameplay and/or story are top notch. But all of them have one other thing in common - the composers of the soundtracks go way harder than they ever needed to and have thus blessed us with absolutely countless unforgettable tracks that have left a considerable impression of the entire gaming landscape, as well as the internet at large. Not constrained by any predispositions, these games go wherever they please and the music is just as unique and varied. Special shoutout for absolute legends like Undertale/Deltarune's Toby Fox and ULTRAKILL's Hakita who not only made their entire games by themselves from scratch but composed the respective God-tier soundtracks too! Talk about multi-talented!
A great example of this is The Binding of Isaac. This obscure and weird little gem started out on Newgrounds, the greatest website of all time, before becoming a full fledged game and a massive hit, catapulting the roguelike genre into the stratosphere. It later got remade into The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, a much more polished and feature-rich version of the creator's original vision. Both soundtracks are equally as amazing. The original by Danny Baranowsky, a man in a league of his own when it comes to game scores, is retro, eerie and beautiful. The Rebirth soundtrack by Ridiculon is an electro-orchestral epic that is both grand and intense, but also really creepy and unsettling with all its disjointed choir vocals and demonic sounds. A perfect fit for such a grim and bizarre masterpiece.
A wholly different approach can be found on another legendary roguelike - Risk of Rain and especially its sequel. Composed by the phenomenal Greek legend Chris Christodolou, these incredible scores mix rock, funk, jazz, electronics and even blues into a sonic experience like nothing else out there. With the help of odd time signatures and strange synth sounds, the feeling of being on a strange and hostile alien planet is incredibly strong. But the songs are also so catchy and memorable, with countless melodic hooks, riffs and guitar solos. Plus, what other video game score has bluesy guitar licks, Hammond organs and a theremin in it? Both the music and the game are fun, yet intense, wacky, yet eloquent, an experience like no other!
For something retro, try the tiny game that took the world by storm and founded its own subgenre of roguelikes - the most Italian game ever, Vampire Survivors. With just movement and item choices, this devilishly simple game is some of the most fun you can have, trust me! A big help in that regard is of course the amazing music, which very much channels classic games in its soundscape and approach, especially Castlevania which is obviously a massive inspiration for the game itself too. It's fantastical, whimsical and unforgettable. You will never get tired of listening to these tunes over and over again as you try and last as long as possible.
And to wrap up this section, we can't forget the king of the indie games. The one little Swedish game that could, that went on to conquer the world and become the best selling game ever made - Minecraft! Now, I'm not the biggest Minecraft fan. I respect it and appreciate it, but never got really into it. However, there is something I cannot deny - the soundtrack is nothing short of a masterpiece! Composed by Daniel Rosenfeld aka C418, these slow and often percussionless ethereal synth melodies with layered atmosphere are truly magical and listening to them as you explore an unpredictable world and forge your own existence is truly special. The music gives the entire game this sense of serenity and dreaminess that is hard to quantify. At night however, it can become creepy and unnerving as you try to survive and not get blown up by creepers. Genuinely, the Minecraft soundtrack is one of the greatest ambient music albums out there and even if you don't like games, you need to check it out!
Although let's be honest, we all know where C418 truly peaked - the Cookie Clicker soundtrack! This music sounds like you have just had an epiphany and discovered the meaning of life. And that's because...you have. It was cookies.
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Last and certainly not least, we need to give a shoutout to jukebox soundtracks. This simply means that the game's music wasn't made specifically for it, but instead the devs licensed existing songs to use. As the song choices often reflect whatever is currently popular, this allows a fantastic intersection between contemporary music and the games of the time, helping spread music to new people when it comes out and capturing the perfect zeitgeist of an entire era years down the line. No other franchise encapsulates this better than Need for Speed. Especially the early 2000s releases, which are also the most acclaimed, feature some awesome selections of nu metal, industrial metal, punk rock, hip hop, alternative, house, trance, techno, big beat and everything else. These games capture the spirit of the early 2000s better than anything and are instant nostalgia for anyone from the time. Especially men, I mean, I found my favourite band ever Static-X from here after all! It all means so much to me!
In a similar vein, many games especially in the racing and sports genres had spectacular jukebox soundtracks that make the songs and games inseparable. Grand Theft Auto, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Fifa (Street), NFL (Street), (Colin McRae's) DiRT and Gran Turismo are just some of the examples that have become legendary in exposing the music of their time to many new ears and for solidifying their mutual iconic status, especially during the 2000s.
For a more modern example, the incredibly fun Killing Floor 2 is the perfect choice to bring it all together. On one hand, it has a killer industrial OST by titans like zYnthetic and Rocky Gray that complements its derelict laboratories and biopunk horror perfectly. On the other, it has an amazing jukebox selection with many iconic mid 2010s metalcore bands breaking it down and chugging away as you chew your way through hordes of zombies. Whatever comes up on shuffle when that trade pod closes, you're ready for blood to flow, heads to fly and for a good time to be had (for you, the Zeds less so). When it comes to pure unfiltered zombie slaying mayhem, ain't nothing better than KF2!
And with that, we've cleared the final level. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm a huge gamer and that this is a huge hobby and passion of mine. I don't care how cringy some people make it, I still wear that title as a badge of honour but with a healthy dose of self-awareness too. Over the years, I have discovered countless incredible soundtracks from these games that have become staples across my playlists. I mean, if you've read several of my blogs, you know I insert some game OSTs any chance I get. Music is just such a huge part of a game's enjoyment and while a game can be great on its own, having an awesome soundtrack really elevates it to a whole new level and makes the game unforgettable. I have both started playing games because of their soundtracks and discovered some of my favourite artists via their inclusion in games. To me, this is the topic that really ties it all together and somehow, like all roads lead to Rome, so many of my paths in music circle back to games. There were so many more that I couldn't include either because they're sadly not available or because there just wasn't enough space left (a common issue for me, just ask my PC). In any case, I hope I inspired you to check these songs and their respective games out. These virtual realms are far too good not to explore. So get out there, get adventuring and take care! Cheers for fifity blogs and here's to fifty more!
Roll the credits.
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