When a new game hits the scenes, we’re quick to focus on its major attributes—the graphics, the physics, the lighting, the controls, and the premise—and all of those things are rightfully important to the gameplay and greatly reflect how a game will turn out. But there is something that we tend to overlook when first introduced to a game, and that thing is just as important as a game’s other attributes when judging the game—the music.
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I would say its Hardly overlooked on a developers side of things (definitely hardly noticed by most gamers), before the dawn of fully recorded dialogue for games, music was all a game really had to convey any sort of emotion it was trying to get across. One of the most memorable thing about videogames (and films), for me, is the music. I spent my secondary level education praising nobuo uematsu when I was FF obsessed, I remember downloading midi tracks of final fantasy 7 and 8 and would listen to them for hours because downlaoding mp3's back then wasn't even a thing.
Since then I've bought countless game and movie soundtracks (especially joe hisaishi's work on ghibli films) and they always give me fond memories of my first experiences with the related videogame, all it takes is the first few notes of "To Zanarkand" all my memorys with FFX come flooding back. Some of the best music in video game history existed in the 8 to 32 bit era of consoles, im pretty sure anyone can hum along to a couple of sonics memorable stage BGM's.
These days some video games have let their music fall to the way side as nothign but mere background noise, rather than another storytelling device and leave the emotional delivery to (sometimes horrendous) voice acting, BUT there are still masters of the industry who's music holds up against the rest of the game as a shining example of thematic composition designed to convey emotions and whathaveyou.
Music has and always will be Key, in so many forms. Half the time it goes unnoticed by your average person, so many times a friend has talked about how scary a movie is, and ill say somethign like "yeah they did a top job on the music and ambience to really get you to feel unsettled, worked perfectly with the visuals" and theyll look at me like Im talking crazy, as if music could have that sort of power over them. For some reason they think its all in the visuals :| *facepalm*
I remember when games started to become more 'movie-like' in presentation, their soundtracks tended to err on the same format. That Grand Orchestral Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman kinda thing.
But still, there are a myriad of composers that deserve recognition for their soundtracks in video games.
Masato Nakamura - Need more be said if you were a Sonic-Head?
Yuzo Koshiro - You can listen to some of his tracks and think, wait wtf?! This is just a total rip of <Insert Famous 90's Dance Beat>. But that holds up part of yuzo's charm. His tracks are unmistakably 90's and do a lot to give you that funky feel while playing games.
On the flip side, you have one of his songs used in the Master System Sonic 1 sampled by Janet Jackson! The dude can make a beat!
Jeremy Soule - Outright master class in composition. Elder Scrolls you'd know. But check out Total Annihilation & Icewindale's soundtracks. Brill.
Michael Giacchino - Before I even knew of this guy there was always something awesome about games published by Dreamworks Interactive. Their sountracks were gripping, turns out they were done by Michael. Medal of Honor, Lost World Jurassic Park, Small Soldiers. Great soundtracks.
Jesper Kyd - When I first played Hitman, I was taken aback by how 'bleak' the world felt. The soundtrack played heavily on this. I wasn't really a fan of Hitman 2's ost, but it showed he had talent. Then the Ass Creed games:
Say what you want, it's a milky super skimmed series but it kinda holds its own. The soundtracks are part of what keeped me playing. The 'chase' music from Ass Creed 1 really got your blood pumping as you try to escape an assassination. Then there is the 'At Home in Florence' track from AC2, which is just beautiful.
Soundtracks are really not forgoten.
Namco's sound team in the 90's were genius. Tekken 2, Air Combat and Ridge Racer music are friggin awesome!
What's more? A number of steam games give you option to pay more for the soundtrack if you wish.
Konami used to lead the way in this department. They always found a way to give you an emotional or toe tapping beat while you gamed away in rhythm. It's kind of like the idea of Farfegnugen. The gamer feel one with the music and the dude on the screen while he's doing something.
Firstly through GTA bringing in radio stations with music that you were familiar with that, in essence, basically gave you the choice of what soundtrack you wanted to play to. That alone could enhance the game considerably.
But they've also experimented with using songs at key moments in their latest games, both in RDR and Max Payne.
That moment when you first step into Mexico and the song plays made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and theres a point in Max Payne that did the same thing. It elevated the action right up and got your blood pumping.