Games that features some good examples of modern
scoring:
Ultima Online - Whether you like the game or not, the music has to be looked from a
musical standpoint and appreciated. The period pieces (
Trinsic, Britain, Buc's Den) are extremely faithful to a medieval style, and the more modern pieces for the
magic cities (Occlo, Magincia) are sometimes
pleasant and sometimes
spooky. These pieces are all midi with no sampling and its how midi
composition should be done: the finished
product sounds good on any system.
Unreal Tournament - The reason I mention this music is because it never gets old. It is perfectly incorporated into the
media its backing up, and as thus functions like any good film score should. The midi scoring is never so thick its
distracting, but its never too thin. The
orchestration employed (whether the composer intended this or not) is almost perfect; you always hear what's going on and what the
composer wants you to hear.
Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption - Not only is this game visually stunning, the soundtrack was beautifully recorded by the
Seattle Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the
composer who's name unfortunately slips my mind. This music uses an
mp3 delivery system rather than midi and I seriously hope that this is the wave of the future, both as a composer and a gamer. The music is beautiful, chilling, emotional, and very very well written.
In my experience, it's more
difficult to write 45 2 minute pieces of music than one piece that's an hour and a half long, because with the 2 minutes pieces you have to get in and say what you mean and then get the hell out. There's no time to develop, no time to screw around with acoustic staging or
the big reveal. In short, the music for this game was better than most
film scores I hear on a daily basis.
I would like to hear which music from which games my fellow
noders have enjoyed. I'll be adding to my w/u as time goes on.