trick wrote:
b0rsuk wrote:
music isn't very important when rating a game
I disagree. Or, well, it depends on the game, but I think that music in games are often seriously underrated, both by the developers and the players -- it plays a huge role, or at least has the potential to play a huge role, in setting the atmosphere, maybe even more than the graphics and the rest of the design. This may sound cheesy, but music talks more directly to our feelings.
For example, if you have a game with creepy graphics and creepy music, there's no question that the atmosphere is creepy. Then replace that creepy music with happy up-beat music, or do the opposite, replace the creepy graphics with shiny happy graphics. What happens to the atmosphere ? Again, that depends on the game, but I think that more often than not the music will dominate, and things may feel "wrong" because they don't match up. Setting up contrasts like that can have a huge impact on the overall feel of a game that is virtually impossible to get if you don't have good music.
- Gerry
About cheesy music - music can usually be turned off. I agree that music can contribute to athmosphere a lot, but in itself it doesn't make a game good or bad. I mean, I know many games who have good music and are quite boring. And opposite cases, too. Game can have no music whatsover and still be a hit. So let's asume that a game has great graphics and great music. And aside from that, AI is poor, it crashes, or something else. WIll you play it for long ?
If you need specific examples, look at Emperor: Battle For Dune. Music pieces range from fair to very good, yet the game has serious flaws that make it impossible to enjoy in multiplayer. For example terrible problems with collision, units often get stuck between buildings when you expand your base, or you find yourself unable to access far point of your base (which is attacked from the air).
Collision problems make theoreticaly good units worthless. For example Harkonnen tanks are strongest of all base vehicles, but are BIG, meaning that they block each other's way when attacking. 3 tanks win against all other 3 basic vehicles, but when numbers increase, they are impossible to manage, and lose against supposedly weaker units. This forced "
Rush or die"
strategy for Harkonnens. And all this - and others glitches/major balance problems happened with quite good music. Needless to say I stopped playing it, and domestic animal went back to RA2 multiplayer.
Generally I appreciate good sounds much more. Especially in FPS or RPG games. And ambient sounds like wind, or some machinery working in background belong to sound effects, not music. Such sounds make an area feel alive.
I used to make maps for Quake games, and I quickly learned that map without "
speakers"
, as they are called there, feels simply empty. You don't see what's wrong (duh), but something is deffinitely missing. It's like with making one-colored backgrounds - if you just fill an image with one shade of color, it feels very crude, dull, 8 bit. But if you use a gradient, or some fancy overlapping layer with low opacity, or very subtle shadows, the "
empty"
feeling is gone, even if it may take some time for a person to determine what has been changed. I would say the sound effects are the most underrated "
thing"
, not music.
I really enjoyed sound effects in Rune. Yes, it has very good music, too, but it plays only occasionaly. There are many various creatures, or should I say enemies, and each of them has like 20 or more sound effects. It's hard to notice without using editor, but they are there. When you play Rune, you hardly ever hear any sound repeating itself over and over, which is common thing in other games. And it gets on your nerves. Well, not in Rune. You can listen to goblins/dwarves taunting you forever.
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http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051128/adams_01.shtml
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It became much worse.
