Dear Pingle,
While I spend a lot of time playing games, I may not be the best person to talk of video game music. But what I can do is talk about a few gaming experiences I have had where the music made a significant difference to my gameplay experience.
Also, a lot of this is context driven. So sometimes the music may sound strange in isolation. Where you are in the game also adds to the effect the music has on the gameplay
1. From 1996.Quake 1. The Necropolis. Nine Inch Nails
You're
a lone soldier in an overrun military base. The teleportation tech that
the government has been experimenting with has been compromised. You
have to make your way through dimensional slipgates into strange
environments full of monsters, and stay alive until you can deal with
the malign brain behind it all. This is early on in the game, a
water-filled level called the Necropolis.
2. From 1999. Baldur's Gate OST. Night on the Plains. Michael Hoenig
You've just turned 18. All your life, you have lived in the cloistered library city of Candlekeep. One day, your foster father comes to you in a state of panic, telling you that you are in terrible danger, and the two of you need to leave Candlekeep and find shelter elsewhere. You leave Candlekeep, but on the way, you are accosted by a sinister figure in armour, and his ogre bodyguards. Your foster father dies defending you, but you manage to escape. It is your first night in the wilderness. There are wolves. And there is a murderer looking for you, and night falls.
3. 1999 again. Planescape Torment OST: Vhailor. (A year before Memento was released) Mark Morgan
You wake up in a mortuary. You have been killed again. You have no memory of who you are, but your body is full of cryptic tattooed instructions about what you should do once you recover from your latest death. And slowly, you start to figure out who you are, and why you cannot die. Along the way you pick up a group of companions - each accursed in their own way, each one tormented. And one of them is Vhailor, a member of the group of Mercykillers, a sect dedicated to bringing justice. And when he finds out about the magnitude of your crimes, there is a reckoning
.
4. 2000. Icewind Dale. Kuldahar. Jeremy Soule
Up in the frozen North, in the spine of the world, where the air freezes in your lungs, there is a village called Kuldahar which nestles in the shelter of an ancient lifegiving oak tree. The tree is vast, and radiates a field of warmth. The village and the tree share a symbiotic relationship, making the place a welcome one for the weary and cold traveller. This was the first time I'd heard of Jeremy Soule, one of videogame music's most prolific composers.
5. 2003. Knights of the Old Republic. Manaan. Jeremy Soule.
In the Star Wars galaxy, the planet Manaan, for millenia, was the only source of kolto, a rare and valuable medicinal substance. Manaan was home to the aquatic species Selkath, who remained neutral in conflicts between the Jedi and the Sith. Kolto itself was believed to be produced by an ancient Giant Firaxian Shark called the progenitor - who holds one piece of a larger puzzle you need to solve to find what the Sith Lord Darth Malak plans to do in his war against the old Republic.
Ahto city is the only spaceport - and surface city - on Manaan.
6. 2006. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Jeremy Soule.
This one is very personal. I bought my first console - an XBox 360 - in Mustapha's in Singapore. I bought 3 games with it. One of them was Oblivion. When I got home and plugged it in, this was the first game I played. While it may look dated today, it was mindblowing then, especially when you finish the prologue and escape from prison and step out into a wide new world. Oh, and the opening narration was by Patrick Stewart, and it had Sean Bean as your companion. He dies, of course.
(I played this to Hari once. He was quite bewildered, and tried hard to be polite)
7. 2007. Mass Effect. Vigil. Jack Wall
Another personal favourite. I've been Commander Shepard, oh, for thousands of hours, across three games. Mass Effect is a space opera, and you are pitted against extra-terrestrial eldritch abominations intent on destroying sentient life. But the greatest part of the game is not the combat. It's about the people - both human and alien - that you meet, and how you choose to save the galazy. And this piece - the opening music - so full of longing - absolutely captures a moment in the game where you meet a remnant of a long dead species.
8. 2010. Bioshock 2. 10 cents a dance. Ruth Etting
It's not original music that makes a game all the time. Bioshock 2 was nowehere as good as its predecessor., which had one of the greatest gut-punches in gaming. But this piece has stayed in my memory, and for good reason. It's played during a loading screen, and on a gramaphone, in-game.
9. 2010. Mass Effect 2. Suicide Mission. Jack Wall.
Mass Effect 2 is quite simply, one of the best games ever made. Think of it as a dirty dozen in space - where you have to be friend, philosopher and guide to a ragtag bunch of misfits - and travel into deep space to blow up a space station - a suicide mission if there ever was one. ANd if you have done the right things - talked to you teammates, understood what they were good at, helped them with their problems, researched alien tech, upgraded your ship, no one will die in the final mission. And your reward is the look of respect you get from your teammates as you walk through the ship afterwards.
10. 2011. Dark Souls. Ornstein and Smough. Motoi Sakuraba.
It's probably the most famous boss fight in gaming. You enter this massive, pillared hall. At the other end is a balcony, and on it is an armoured figure - Dragon-slayer Ornstein. He looks at you, and raises his spear. Lightning crackles along it. He jumps down. And behind him, another figure rises, a huge man who dwarfs the 8 foot tall Ornstein. Smough carries a ridiculously large hammer, but on him, it's the right size You hold your breath, and before you let it go, Ornstein has charged across the room and you are wriggling at the end of his spear.
One of the most popular comments on the video is "So this is how it sounds like after 10 seconds...". Because that's how long you last in this legendarily difficult battle.