Wednesday 19 March 2008

Custom Game Soundtracks

One thing that paticularly annoys me about the 'next gen' of consoles are custom soundtracks. The Xbox 360 already has this feature available in any game, and users on PS3 forums everywhere are practically screaming for the feature to be added in a firmware update.

Why?

The majority of games out these days are either virtually just multiplayer, or very atmospheric games.

I'll start with the former. If you're playing multiplayer, surely the last thing you're paying attention to is the music. Even if you do notice the music, it's deliberately background music as not to distract you or simply to add to the immersion. Atmospheric games' music has even more importance. Game developers these days must spend a fairly hefty portion of their budget on the soundtrack, many games these days having extensive fully orchestrated scores for the game only for some greasy numpty to kill the mood with the emo flavour of the month. I'll demonstrate this, here's a portion of the wonderful opening level of Bioshock with a 'custom soundtrack'.

Point proven. I do hope this feature is not added to the PlayStation in a firmware update as otherwise we may well eventually lose the fantastic soundtracks we're getting at the moment as the majority aren't listening to them.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm not saying people should play Gears to Metro Station, but that doesn't mean that there is no need for custom soundtracks. Personally I spend almost half of my gaming time playing games like Galaxy Wars, Burnout Paradise, skate, or Forza 2 to my own music. Those games actually get better when your listening to exactly the songs you want.