Lack of memorable music in games today
polycounter lvl 6
Is it just me or do games nowadays (more so really serious games) lack catchy beats that really stick with you?
Sure I love orchestral music more so than most folks, and I am an absolute jazz fiend; but none of these beat really stick with me as much as the games of yore and a couple of platformers today. Why so serious and somber dudes? Can we have a couple of fun tracks?
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4Fh3BaKbVw"]Let's Listen: DKC 2 - Snakey Chantey, Rattle Battle (Extended) - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsj5xjoLXtE"]#15 - Corridors of Time (Zeal Theme) - Chrono Trigger - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj8zw8rrUhM"]SM RPG: Beware the Forest Mushrooms - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz0kjLnltnA"]Arc the Lad OST - Battle 2 - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGLW3qgiiB8"]Best VGM 827 - We ? Katamari - Disco ? Prince - YouTube[/ame]
even in this day
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOpckwRQ_2w"]Super Mario Galaxy 2 Music - Freezy Flake Galaxy - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTZ8uhJ5hIE"]Kirby's Epic Yarn Music - Butter Building - YouTube[/ame]
I am not wearing nostalgia goggles nor a Nintendo fanboy (it just seems as though many of their titles have good music) it's just that many of the games today and serious games about don't seem to have the killer beats old games had.
What say you polycounters? Do you think the music is too somber these days?
Sure I love orchestral music more so than most folks, and I am an absolute jazz fiend; but none of these beat really stick with me as much as the games of yore and a couple of platformers today. Why so serious and somber dudes? Can we have a couple of fun tracks?
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4Fh3BaKbVw"]Let's Listen: DKC 2 - Snakey Chantey, Rattle Battle (Extended) - YouTube[/ame][ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsj5xjoLXtE"]#15 - Corridors of Time (Zeal Theme) - Chrono Trigger - YouTube[/ame][ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj8zw8rrUhM"]SM RPG: Beware the Forest Mushrooms - YouTube[/ame][ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz0kjLnltnA"]Arc the Lad OST - Battle 2 - YouTube[/ame][ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGLW3qgiiB8"]Best VGM 827 - We ? Katamari - Disco ? Prince - YouTube[/ame]even in this day
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOpckwRQ_2w"]Super Mario Galaxy 2 Music - Freezy Flake Galaxy - YouTube[/ame][ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTZ8uhJ5hIE"]Kirby's Epic Yarn Music - Butter Building - YouTube[/ame]I am not wearing nostalgia goggles nor a Nintendo fanboy (it just seems as though many of their titles have good music) it's just that many of the games today and serious games about don't seem to have the killer beats old games had.
What say you polycounters? Do you think the music is too somber these days?
Replies
There's room for melody. I like it when they have at least one very memorable tune, and the rest is all for setting a mood. Halo is a good example of this. I love the main music, and it's very memorable, and the rest of the soundtrack just serves to add flavor to the game itself.
oh i love the Halo 1 theme so much!
That brings another point "epic" why does it always have to be epic?
Nothing calm, nothing smooth, it must always bold and fierce and somewhat
"mature", what's the deal with that?
because back in the day, sound chips had limited capabilities and you needed to rely on more on catchy composition to get you by. afaik nintendo still uses realtime sequencing with the same cheesy n64-era roland soundfonts for much of their music, so they still have to rely on composition some.
and lastly because we're out of the "exploratory" phase of video gaming, most popular games don't try much new these days to warrant anything more creative than a boring orchestral score. (see first paragraph)
thankfully hideki naganuma is still around and making music, so let's hope he can save us.
Elder-scrolls main theme is pretty memorable, in it's many incarnations, not so much Skyrim for me though, I guess it suffers from that MOAR EPIC, syndrome, it's a little over the top.
[ame="
[ame="
[ame="
If the game was played a lot, I remembered the music. Had nothing to do with the music being good or bad, I just played the shit out of that game..
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/video-game-music
Basically put, games were limited in space so they would limit themselves to either 2 or 3 chips/tune per second, this progressed and stayed upto the PS1 and PS2 age since many composers came form here.
Now that we have people like Hanz Zimmer in games, they will apply their own traditional formula's.
Calling current age music for being 'epic' is just plain wrong, since you first need to look at the composers background before making such comments.
ok, doesn't stop it from being boring and unmemorable
to me at least
Sacrilege ... [ame="
You're likely to remember battle music in todays games or the calm music playing in Open world games you hear while dicking around.
I love the shit out of game music and keep albums of it rotating among my regular music. When an old favourite comes on I'm like "Awww yeah" but if I actually sit back and try to compare it to non-game music; it doesn't hold up. Not to say it isn't good but you typically won't get down and boogie with it. I mean Corridors of Time is a sweet piece of music but even it doesn't compare to the time when it was playing in the background as you discovered Zeal for the first time.
Also I don't think it is valid to evaluated modern game's music by how memorable it is when lets face it, the times since last playing them was about 4 - 5 years at best. Also it gets even more difficult to judge when we try to define 'modern games.' How old is that? 1 year? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? Also now games come in huge AAA orchestrated releases and tiny little indie and mobile games with their own unique music.
Hell I can think of a few memorable game music that is not SNES or Mega-Drive bleep-bloops. (For me recent is like the last decade.)
- Anything by Jesper Kyd (Hitman, Assassins Creed)
- Borderlands
- Halo
- Mirror's Edge
- Deus Ex 3
- Ace Attorney series
- Bastion
- Starcraft 2
- Fez
- GRiD
- Fahrenheit
- Jet Set Radio
- Killer 7, No More Heroes
- Mass Effect
- Metal Gear Solid series
- Okami
- Portal series
- Skyrim
- Shatter
- Soul Calibur
- Anything by Danny Baranowsky (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac)
and there's more I'm sure. And the kicker is: I haven't even played some of these games, just heard their music.
like all media, music is evolving and game music is no exception.
if you will you can see Deus Ex 3´s soundtrack as an evovled version of the Bladerunner score.
the thing that freaks me out is this obsession with movie-scores, that is definitely new.
like mentioned before, games are trying to be like movies as much as they can.
i realy hate hans zimmer and that his score for CoD MW3 will probably have more impact on game music then the gem that Black Ops 1´s soundtrack was.
[ame="
[ame="
Also, if you're looking for goofy fun tracks, are you playing goofy fun games?
RayMan Origins had one of the best lighthearted scores of the last few years, imho..perhaps only topped by Bastion's soundtrack (search on bandcamp--its there to listen to for free and/or buy)
Sure, there is a LOT of generic music out there now--generic and/or'ambient' (ie purposefully forgettable), but then again, more games come out now too. A lot more. And we don't all play the same ones and aren't being identically culturally informed by a single source (NES) that we then go on referencing to each other through the entirety of growing up.
Also, yes, I totally CAN hum tracks from the rayman origins score and the Bastion score(the two games I listed in my previous post).
Also: World Of Warcraft. I mean come on.
hl2
portal 1 and 2
Mirrors Edge
Bastion(fuck epic soundtrack)
Pineapple smash crew
super meat boy
tf2
borderlands 1 and 2
arent these a ton of games that got great soundtracks, that arent from the 2d times.
[ame="
[ame="
Bastion:
[ame="
And there rest of Bastion:
http://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/
And Isaac!
[ame="
This game had the most mind blowing soundtrack for me as a kid because they were making sounds I never heard on an NES before:
[ame="
oh yeah, can't forget Skate or Die 2 either!
[ame="
[ame="
But my to answer OP, my own opinion why it's change is because music meant everything in ye olden days. Nowadays we have better graphics and we got voices. I think they rely more on these then making music that controls it. Just make some ambient music to go in the background while the NCP's and the player talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmLvpJySb50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbtmskCRUY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91YHq-ayIvc&list=FLg0n11lnKA0n33qgzDrgSHw&index=6
Super Meat Boy has a soundtrack that for better or worse will never leave my head.
[ame="
I don't know what it is about this song but I was singing it after I played through Bastion. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66731
[ame="
[ame="
And! Akira Yamaoka has done some awesome OST. While i work i do tend to listen to tons of OST from games and some movies. More often Silent Hill, and Ennio Morricone haha.
And these are some of my favorite old school gems;
[ame="
[ame="
[ame="
skyrim had an awesome soundtrack
dovahkiin!! dovahkiin!!...
The thing is, the composers of the past had MASSIVE limitations in what they could do. The NES only had 4 voices and 1 sample channel (for the most part, unless they had a custom built chip..but that was only applicable for some famicom games). So with these limitations they had to come up with a memorable, unoffensive and really melodic tune that you can hear over and over again and not get too sick of. Those channels also gave out the sound effects..and this went on until the 5th generation really. Now game soundtracks have to compete with voice acting, pacing, sound effects, explosions, ambient sound effects etc etc etc. When in old games..you just had the music..and the odd jump/shoot blip.
I think another reason why games were memorable is that we replayed a lot of the same levels all the time because of their difficulties..so we would easily memorize their 30/60 second tune. But yea, most game music today sucks. Composers mostly compose it as a movie soundtrack..now.. Jake Kaufman and Grant Kirkhope I feel are some of the few exceptions.
[ame="
Skyrim is many things (buggy, broken, streamlined, etc), but the music being boring and forgettable? How the fuck is the only game in the last decade that has a chorus that sounds something out of an old movie form the 70 with a heavy amount of viking lash = boring and not memorable?
There is undeniably a ton of generic classical movie scores in games currently and I predict that no one will ever be paying homage to them by re-recording or remixing them. That's not to say that the NES didn't have it's fair share of absolutely worthless chiptune music. Here's an example:
[ame="
I'd like to see more soundtracks like this, but heavier:
[ame="
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGsgDoFp6AM[/ame]