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Game Soundtracks.
If you played it, in spite of the music being done on a keyboard and converted into Redbook Audio, Mechwarrior 2 managed to perfectly create an image of familiar tribal sounds with haunting alien overtones - perfectly representing the clans' battles on alien landscapes like vast arctic wastes and massive crystalline formations. Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries managed to pull it off a second time, applying a variation of ghostly, uncertain tunes as you navigated ice pillars in order to evade a Flashman, or Wailing guitars in a Metal-like tune as you race to get to a dropship before it takes off and leaves you behind.
Mechwarrior 3, unfortunately, didn't really provide anything special. Only two eerie songs found their way into the game, not doing much to accent the tone of the game and it's various missions. A shame, as many other aspects of the game were spectacular.
Mechwarrior 4, on the other hand, I felt had few redeeming qualities, watering the game down and mostly disregarding the established universe in favor of market research alone. One thing it did get right, however, was it's soundtrack. The orchestrated music for the game did an outstanding job at setting the feel for each part of the campaign. Most of all, it sounded very professional, on par with many science fiction television shows of the period. In MW4 Mercs, the music quality dropped when the orchestra was no longer used, but the songs still did an excellent job of setting the mood.
As for the atrocity that was Mechassaults' soundtrack, I feel so strongly about it, I must use an image macro.
Honestly. Even after Microsoft's X-box team bent the game over and treated it like an alter-boy, the game is not a Wrestling game; It's not a football game; it's not a hockey game; and it's not a Grand Theft Auto game. Somewhere underneath the arcade system and powerup tokens scattered everywhere, it's still a Battletech game. DO NOT CHEAPEN THE GAME BY GIVING IT A SOUNDTRACK BY KORN; OR PAPA ROACH; OR NICKELBACK; OR ANY OTHER "EDGY" MUSIC FOUND ON THE iPOD OF A REBELLIOUS SUBURBAN 13 YEAR OLD OR WEIGHTLIFTING FRAT-BOY.
So that leaves this game. While there are few games that deny you from turning off music, and it's always possible to play your own soundtrack in the background, I would LOVE to be able to enjoy more 'mech stomping to compelling, unique, atmosphere-appropriate music made just for this game - this universe even.
...Just not Papa Roach. Let someone put that kind of garbage in the game on their own. Don't force feed it to the rest of us - we don't need you to insinuate how masculine and hardcore this is by cramming top-20 Nu-Metal down our throats.
PS to the game makers: If you made some of MWO's songs be covers or homages of songs from the past Mechwarrior games, especially from the "Mechwarrior 2" series of games, or even "Battletech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge", I think I speak for all the fans when I say we'd be ecstatic.
Edited by ice trey, 08 November 2011 - 12:25 AM.
