Writing or choosing songs for the game that millions of players will play throughout a long period is a task from “impossible” mode. However, history knows a lot of examples when fans loved the music since it was made by professionals, who put a lot of love and passion into the process. Let’s see the games, where soundtracks are integral to setting the right mood.
Overwatch
The team-based hero shooter, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, is one of the most popular games in the genre even five years after the release. Overwatch stood among the trendsetters for changing the online shooters’ mood: the grim and realistic games lost a big chunk of the market after the colourful, fun, and cartoonish ones came. These days, games like Fortnite and Apex Legends are on the list for awarding most prize money, and among the bettors they are more popular than Warzone, though the bookmaker options for all these disciplines are available on the https://bookmaker-ratings.com/ website.
The arenas players compete in Overwatch are situated in different parts of the world and stylized accordingly. The creators treated the atmosphere in the game with special attention and added an astonishing amount of details to show how the map is linked to the location/country. The visual style is a big part that works on the immersion, but the soundtrack is no less of an important addition. Even when separated from the game, the songs are good enough: they were released on streaming services and even vinyl for the fans’ listening pleasure.
FIFA 22
EA Sports football simulator keeps ongoing, and this year seems to have become the only game in this genre after Konami failed to adapt their Pro Evolution Series to the free-to-play model. Without PES on the horizon, there are only two options for FIFA: maintain the same production level or do scarcely noticeable changes before the new releases since there is no competition.
Thankfully, the department working on soundtrack songs picking is on point as always. The inclusion of FIFA might devalue the songwriters’ work in other games in some way and bring up the question of whether we can put the equals sign between the freshly composed soundtracks and those we might see in sports games. But we don’t think that’s the case: writing the music for the sports simulator is an impossible task by design. But to find a lot of songs that the players won’t hate by the end of the game’s lifespan seems to be a much more plausible scenario. Plus, these soundtracks open fresh, unknown artists every year, which is a significant achievement in itself.
Mortal Kombat 11
“The bloody symphony” is the first thing that comes to mind when you start playing a new instalment in the legendary fighting series and listen to how it sounds. The game looks gorgeous:
- All the models are designed with special care.
- The effects are scarily convincing.
- The arenas have so many features that you might lose half the life bar gazing into some specific details.
The sound design team did an excellent job on this project: every punch, broken bone, or severed limb is not only seen on the screen but heard and, as a result, felt as in a real fight. Despite Mick Gorgon, as the rumours go, missing the composer chair, Wilbert Roget II is a perfect match for this position, as the results show. The drive, the pain, and all the palette of emotion are shown in his soundtrack to the MK11.
This is a paid guest post.