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Music Is Control

25-Jun-2009 Gil muses on soundtracks altering gameplay tactics...

18 Comments

Due to my iPod being thieved and my portable HD on the frizz, I'm currently back to using my Xbox 360 as a music CD player. So a brief blast of Outrun the other night finds me foregoing the usual audio delight of Magical Sound Shower for a heavy stint of industrial rock by way of the custom soundtrack option - and it bizarrely led to a better gameplay performance.

We're talking slipstreaming every single piece of traffic on the way to the finish line, drifting round treacherous corners without blinking an eye and posting my best score yet on the Leaderboards. It has been a long time since I got in the zone during a gameplay session, and the mental shift was triggered not just by the choice of music, but the music type.

Anyone with a long history in videogames will attest to a comfortable familiarity with industrial beats or pounding electronica (all squeezed and interpreted through early computer or console sound chips) that were the heartbeat of 80s and 90s gaming sessions.

The parallels to past soundtracks of my gaming life is what I'm attributing to my best Outrun race yet, the thumping music enducing a trance-like state and whipping me back into mental shape for a five-minute rush of pure gaming adrenaline.

It made me think of the wider implications of videogame soundtracks and how it would alter our play style. My first proper play through of Doom was very different from most people who charged through Phobos Base like a trigger-happy banshees.

Mine was a much more hesitant, cautious affair due to the original rock-orientated score being altered to a heavily sinister and suspense-tinged soundtrack, making the two experiences as different as Crank and Silent Hill.

I never did find out the reason for the soundtrack switch, but it is really cool as it gave me two completely different experiences with the same game.

Is there music you listen to that works better as a backdrop than a game's official score? Or for that matter, which videogame score do you rate as brilliant?

Gillen McAllister