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Why Robin Makes Batman Better It’s been a lot of fun cataloguing and recognising the best video game music of the year. We’ve gone from AAA blockbusters to indie games, sweeping melodies to ambient synths, heroic themes to dread-soaked atmospherics. Some of the games built music into their gameworlds, while others brought in full orchestrasand still others used the kazoo as a stand-in for the protagonist.
We’ve already recognised a whole bunch of the best game soundtracks of 2011. But of course, there are only so many hours in the day — only so much time to play games, and one can only write about so many game soundtracks.
And so we come to the end of our “Best Game Music of 2011″ series, where tradition dictates we crown a victor. I’m only half-serious, of course; it’s all but impossible to say what the best anything is, and that’s doubly true of something as ephemeral and subjective as music. But all the same, Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was hands-down my favourite video game soundtrack of the year.
Bastion snuck up on me — I had heard a lot of friends and fellow critics hyping it after seeing it at PAX East and GDC, but I hadn’t actually played it until it was released. For the first hour or so, I wasn’t sold, but as the story snowballed and the levels stretched out, I fell increasingly under its spell.
Listen: the first thing you need to know about the music in the newest Rayman game is that it’s got some kickass virtuoso kazoo playing.
Despite the fact that many folks have been playing Minecraft since the fall of 2010, I’m counting it as a 2011 game. After all, 2011 was the year that it saw a full retail release, and it was also the year that I finally sat down and really played it.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is perhaps the most compelling argument yet for “video-game-as-concert-piece”. As a game, it is a smartly designed interlocking series of puzzles, an ever-more-complex world filled with hidden secrets and challenging combat that unfolds with a uniquely Zelda-y sense of joyous excavation. But as a concert piece… oh, boy.
We’ve done a lot of big-budget games so far in our Best Video Game Music of 2011 series, but there were some great indie soundtracks released, as well. One of the very best of those was Danny Baranowsky’s dangerous, dark, synthy work on the Zelda-esque roguelike The Binding of Isaac.
Believe it or not, Skyrim was not necessarily a shoo-in for our list of the best video game music of 2011. Epic first-person open world games can get into murky territory with their music, especially if the music plays too often.
Total War: Shogun 2 may look and sound for all the world like the latest in a long line of reasonably bland strategy games. As most strategy games are. Removing the player from the action to such an abstract level tends to rob the genre of its potential to truly immerse you in the spirit of the war, time or place.
