I now present a properly-formatted list for everybody to be mildly bemused! For the record, these songs do not define my taste in games, nor am I specifically appraising any of these games on par with the goldies, they just contain these songs and give them context. Context is half the experience to a good OST, in my opinion!
#1 Tears from
Max Payne 3, played during the final gauntlet of enemies. I'll come clean: I've never actually played
any of the Max Payne games, but I've read about the story (won't spoil it for the half a person out there who doesn't know) and seen the location for the battle. In a nutshell, this song is Max's emotional trauma made audible. Its lyrics allude to a benign, noble objective lost along the path to completion in a whirlwind of psychotic violence, piles upon piles of bodies, and shellshock; the pounding, repetitive beat symbolizes the ongoing struggle Max endures in his adventures, while the dischordant verses blatantly represent the many breaking points ("moral event horizons") he's crossed over during the course of his "career". Max Payne was never a totally original story and Yahtzee makes a good point that
3 in itself gives the eponymous player character very little to complain about, but this song perfectly packages why Max is a broken man. He's like a robot going through the routines, re-enacting vindictive rampages on thugs and criminals he mistakenly perceives as equally responsible for his suffering, while his last nerve of rationality (which I perceive as
the memory of his dead spouse and child) screams at him to stop because it's not what they would've wanted him to be. To me,
Tears is an artistic tangent from the usual run-and-gun formula of the series to hint at just how fucked up the whole situation is; the irony of how bodaciously
everybody involved- Max especially, could be killed off during the events of the plot, and the world would be a better fucking place for it. For Max, death would be a blessing because he truly has nothing good left to live for, and this soundtrack is a good auditory expression of that. In the end, I wonder if he actually manages to sleep, or if he isn't caught in some kind of eternal fever dream brought on by a stress-induced stroke.
#2 Distant Thunder / Safe Return from
Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies, a slow-starting song that gradually rises into a mind-racing crescendo of tension and motivated panic. I'll say this about Shattered Skies: before AC4, I had almost zero interest in jet fighter games. Safe Return? I wake up in the morning and listen to this to get out of bed. The player begins the mission flying into the fog-shrouded airspace of a long river canyon, effectively without radar or missile/bomb guidance systems. Your objective is to make visual contact with a number of radar-scrambling miniature blimps scattered around the mountain range (particularly along the river's course) and manually take them down with your minigun, clearing the way home for an allied bomber whose aircraft is so damaged that it can only stay afloat via radar guidance on autopilot. If they arrive at the staging area and touch the scramble radius as is, they will fall to earth in a wild, misguided dive! Occasionally during the mission, your allied partner will radio in and give you a rough estimate of their distance in miles, and all throughout combat, the music builds and builds until you feel both like the biggest hero to ever touch the fucking skies, and the biggest procrastinator when you realize how little time you have to react to the mission parameters! When I listen to the song, I can feel the jumpsuit and helmet I wear to fly, I can feel the Gs bearing down on me as I pivot, pull, and push the stick around, swerving all around the valley at low altitude only to see these miniscule zeppelins shifting wavelengths like it's nobody's business, barely contrasting the skies as I desperately hunt them in numbers. My wingman and best friend Nail calls in: "Mobius 1, we are three miles out! I repeat,
we are three miles out! If we go any slower, we'll fall out of the sky - HURRY!" I'm determined to run these balloons down if I have to go
Independence Day on the last one standing and run it through. I line up the crossheirs on the offending blimp carefully and drop. The fucking. Hammer. It's one of the most vivid objectives I've had in years, and the mixed elements of responsibility, limitation, and aviation puts butterflies in my stomach. And this game is twelve years old! It all sounds dumb and corny, I realize this, but its potent and challenging enough to get such a rise out of me.
#3 The Story Begins from
Super Mario Galaxy. This is a game I have actually played all the way through: it is a pretty good direction for the "next generation" for Mario and friends, exploring new dimensions on multiple levels (physics jokes abound!), but what really sank its claws into me was Rosalina's story. From the moment that the Library Observatory is restored to operating capacity, Mario and the Lumas can listen to Rosalina telling a story from a magical book; at first this seems dumb and childish for any player above the age of 7, but the comforting lullaby and premise of being told a story just draws you in! You unlock additional chapters of the story as you progress through the galaxies and collect stars, gradually revealing more of the book and the observatory overall. The story itself seems pretty conventional at first: a little girl is all alone pondering the universe in its infinite splendor when she makes an unusual friend, a Luma looking for its comet mother. Thus begins the journey of the little girl and the motherless Luma, traveling far and wide through space in search of that one special star trailing luminous ether through the skies! It's a fanciful tale, one that warms even the most cynical gamer's heart because it makes us wistfully return to grassroots, recalling with great nostalgia how we once invented such grand stories in our imaginations and primitive gaming technology (perhaps the one thing Nintendo's done right for Mario in a long time). Now, it's obvious from the beginning that the little girl is Rosalina, or at least supposed to represent her in physical appearance and demeanor. What you don't expect is
you learn later in the story that in her searches, young Rosalina had actually gone with the Luma to escape the fact that her own mother was long dead and buried peacefully underneath a tree on the hill she, her father, and her brother once considered a sacred star-gazing platform. It's never told what became of father and brother, or what planet it was exactly that Rosalina came from, but it is the catalyst that gives her the strength to take on the many hundreds of Lumas that flock to her seeking to assuage her unreasoned guilt and inner pain. Keeping fond memories of her own mother, she becomes Princess Rosalina, godmother of the star children and high keeper of the galaxies at large. Of course, the story ends
before you reach the final plot galaxies and leaves you with an entirely different sense of what you're fighting for and just what kind of person Rosalina is to aid you in your journey. At the same time, the significant impact of that heel-face-turn plot element makes it so that
nothing in SMG ever feels quite so innocent or pure ever again... throw the soothing lullaby of
The Story Begins over that, and even the hardiest of once-betrayed Nintendo fans will weep in sympathy and compassion for dear Rosie.
#4 Tension / Blue Creek Apartments Theme #2 from
Silent Hill 2 is one of the creepiest ambient tracks I have ever heard in my life. The warped breathing sounds mixed with the constant high-pitched whine already made it your traditional spooky background noise, but what really clinched it was the metallic groans. Each time you hear it, whether or not you've yet run into Pyramid Head, you know
exactly what the fuck it is and how little you want to run into it. That horrid, cringe-inducing grind of metal on rusted, dilapidated metal, seemingly radiating from all directions simultaneously at a consistent proxy volume. It could be at the farthest possible point, it could be just outside the door you just entered, and anywhere in between... the first time I heard the grinding, I was walking down the apartment hallways and I
froze. I've always had a deathly fear of truly tense, frightening games (duh), so I felt the natural response to a non-located source of abnormal and mildly-threatening noise was to stand still, try to pinpoint its direction, then slowly retreat towards the entrance of the building so I'm no longer trapped in such poisonous, strangulating darkness.... but it's all around you. In your stomach, you know that to run won't save you, and neither will pressing onward. It isn't just some noise you can ignore or manipulate to your advantage, it is a constant, primal threat over which you have no control.
#5 Pairbond of
Bioshock 2 is one of the various orchestral cues to help you emulate the emotions of Subject Delta, the most promising Alpha-series Protector to have ever been created. When the game began and the opening cinematic fills in the story, I instantly felt far more sympathy and relation to Delta than I ever did for Jack, and have even taken to calling the game Deltashock as a sequel alias. All throughout gameplay, I felt obligated to adopt and protect Little Sisters with my life, driven into suicidal rages whenever their ADAM harvesting was disturbed; despite their invincibility, I always feared for them more than myself. I could feel the paternal comfort and sadness whenever he picked up an adopted Sister as they smile back at him, and I was reluctant to fight the Big Sisters knowing just what they are. Finally, when
Lamb used a pillow to smother Eleanor out of spite for her much stronger love for Delta, I was genuinely outraged that I was never given a chance to smash my drill through her skull and watch her entrails dissolve. Yet... when all of my steadfast rescues, and the forgiveness of inconsequential, helpless antagonists had taught Eleanor what it meant to spare her unstable mother, the struggle all felt worth it. I felt that Delta could
die in peace knowing his struggles were over, and his 'daughters' were safe.
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