Imagine you’re playing a game without the sound on. Your coming up to a corner but before you reach it a tank comes round the corner and kills you. Now imagine you’re playin
g with the sound on. You come up to the corner, the ambience suggests you’re in hostile territory. Music starts, ominous music, you know something’s going to happen. Then you hear a faint rumbling sound, and the creak of metal. It’s getting louder in the right speaker by your screen. All this information goes together and informs you that a tank is approaching fast from the right and by the music and ambience is telling you that you don’t stand a chance if you stay where you are. So you move back behind a rock and hide. The tank rolls past without seeing you. This is just an example of the importance of sound in a game, but it plays many other roles too. I will always play through games with the sound the game’s makers intend you to hear. I always find that listening to your own music while playing through a game will ruin the overall experience. This however is not true for multiplayer. I personally love playing fps’s whilst listening to fast paced music, like rock music or drum and bass.
I find that it takes away the fear of death. I run in guns blazing, like a mad man high on adrenaline. It intensifies the gaming experience. This brings me to my favourite sonic moment.
g with the sound on. You come up to the corner, the ambience suggests you’re in hostile territory. Music starts, ominous music, you know something’s going to happen. Then you hear a faint rumbling sound, and the creak of metal. It’s getting louder in the right speaker by your screen. All this information goes together and informs you that a tank is approaching fast from the right and by the music and ambience is telling you that you don’t stand a chance if you stay where you are. So you move back behind a rock and hide. The tank rolls past without seeing you. This is just an example of the importance of sound in a game, but it plays many other roles too. I will always play through games with the sound the game’s makers intend you to hear. I always find that listening to your own music while playing through a game will ruin the overall experience. This however is not true for multiplayer. I personally love playing fps’s whilst listening to fast paced music, like rock music or drum and bass. I find that it takes away the fear of death. I run in guns blazing, like a mad man high on adrenaline. It intensifies the gaming experience. This brings me to my favourite sonic moment.One of my favourite all time games has to be Burnout Revenge because of the way the sound track and the sound effe
cts couple with the visual game play so perfectly. The game comes with about 40 music tracks from modern rock/metal/dance ECT. artists. I start up the game for the first time and play the first level. I’m driving through a track called Motor City, the music blaring and the sound of a 12 cylinder Ford engine coming is coming from my car. I hit a ramp accompanied by the sound of metal scraping on tarmac, fly though the air past the horns of lorries as I whip between two of them in the opposite direction. All the while the sound of the air is whooshing past me, like some western film. Then after my sonic flight of glory, I crash down on top of another car and the game goes into slow motion. Suddenly the volume of the music is drastically decreased to a barely audible level, the camera angle changes to an overv
iew of the crash. There is the sound of screeching tires and crushing metal and glass. The victim car career’s off to the left and hits an oil tanker, making it explode. The accompanying sound sounds like a tiger growling. Flames lick round the side of my car and the force of the explosion propels me further forward though the air. Words pop up onto the screen displaying ‘vertical take down’ with a sharp metallic sound effect. I notice my boost bar is full! Suddenly allot of things happen at once. The game comes out of slow motion and the camera angle goes back to the normal behind the car view, my car lands back on the road, tires screeching, sparks fly and crackle,
I press the A button on the controller, activating my boost, which sounds like a harrier jet taking off. The games sound track is restored to its normal volume, just as the chorus kicks in, resulting In a masterful crescendo of visual effects and sound, that leaves me sitting there, mouth agape and my heart racing like I’d just ran a Marathon. The game doesn’t let up for the rest of the race. It hits me again and again with a wide range of amazing sonic and visual events. Have you ever put down a controller after playing a game and your hands are actually shaking!!!
cts couple with the visual game play so perfectly. The game comes with about 40 music tracks from modern rock/metal/dance ECT. artists. I start up the game for the first time and play the first level. I’m driving through a track called Motor City, the music blaring and the sound of a 12 cylinder Ford engine coming is coming from my car. I hit a ramp accompanied by the sound of metal scraping on tarmac, fly though the air past the horns of lorries as I whip between two of them in the opposite direction. All the while the sound of the air is whooshing past me, like some western film. Then after my sonic flight of glory, I crash down on top of another car and the game goes into slow motion. Suddenly the volume of the music is drastically decreased to a barely audible level, the camera angle changes to an overv
iew of the crash. There is the sound of screeching tires and crushing metal and glass. The victim car career’s off to the left and hits an oil tanker, making it explode. The accompanying sound sounds like a tiger growling. Flames lick round the side of my car and the force of the explosion propels me further forward though the air. Words pop up onto the screen displaying ‘vertical take down’ with a sharp metallic sound effect. I notice my boost bar is full! Suddenly allot of things happen at once. The game comes out of slow motion and the camera angle goes back to the normal behind the car view, my car lands back on the road, tires screeching, sparks fly and crackle,
I press the A button on the controller, activating my boost, which sounds like a harrier jet taking off. The games sound track is restored to its normal volume, just as the chorus kicks in, resulting In a masterful crescendo of visual effects and sound, that leaves me sitting there, mouth agape and my heart racing like I’d just ran a Marathon. The game doesn’t let up for the rest of the race. It hits me again and again with a wide range of amazing sonic and visual events. Have you ever put down a controller after playing a game and your hands are actually shaking!!!An example of somone else doing smthing very similar in Burnout revenge. (30 second clip). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuU6eT2VFJw&feature=related
My favourite composers for a game’s score have to be Marty O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. They are responsible for the Halo sound track. I love the music from a
ll three halo games. Sound track albums were released for both halo 2 and halo 3. Almost every part of the halo games are accompanied by variations on the games sound track. The music tells the story just as the game does. The games score is one of the reasons why the Halo trilogy stood out from all other games. One of my favourite tracks from the halo 2 sound track is a track called ‘Peril'.
ll three halo games. Sound track albums were released for both halo 2 and halo 3. Almost every part of the halo games are accompanied by variations on the games sound track. The music tells the story just as the game does. The games score is one of the reasons why the Halo trilogy stood out from all other games. One of my favourite tracks from the halo 2 sound track is a track called ‘Peril'.About a year ago I was watching Top Gear live on BBC 2. I noticed that this music was playing in the back ground while Jeremy was driving through a scenic mountain range that looked very similar to the level that the music accompanied in Halo 2. I don’t think anyone apart from hardcore halo fans would have noticed this but I did :)
No comments:
Post a Comment