Game music just not what it used to be?

Don't know if it's me, but it has been a real long time since I played a game where I just cranked the speakers because the music in a title was just worthwhile to actually listen full-blast, because it was just that good.
(and I mean in a non-licensed music manner)

Aside from a couple tracks in a couple games where I hammered my speakers (a couple jazz/trumpet tunes in SamnMax, and a recently added mission in FinalFantasyXI) just to hear how well they sounded, I can't recall any recent game where I just listened to the music and enjoyed it, rather than the music just being a thing playing in the background to cover up what would otherwise be silence, or footsteps, or crickets, or...something.

Back in the DOS days, it was all about music and graphical flair, for instance, nearly every track in the PC Turrican2 port was just above its time in what I expected games to be capable of outputting back on my measly 486, where I was just accustomed to hearing MIDI tunes play over my craptacular SoundBlaster Pro.....

Then there's Interstate 76, an older title which I found worthwhile in its musical aspect because every song track was arranged in a 70s funk style, and just sounded bloody excellent. After I beat the game, the play disc just ended up in my walkman.
(back when redbook audio was still used on game discs, just had to be sure to skip track1 whenever I loaded it on the walkman <.<)

And that's ignoring all the SNES RPGs that sounded great due to a single composer.....
(Nobuo Uematsu, did a fair amount of music work for SquareSoft back in the days)

Is there any game of actual recent coming that just sports music worth listening too? I'm really having a hard time thinking of titles that had music that didn't just accompany the action, but made the action itself feel more intense or whatever mood the music is trying to convey, and you would never get tired of hearing it over and over again.

Is there a reason for this? All I ever hear in modern-day games is either ambient tunes (hey there Oblivion), your typical throw-away themed garbage, or just mellow music that somewhat works...but doesn't really go anywhere (Call of Duty1/2 for instance).


I mean, of course the music presented is reflected upon the chosen genre, but even with that aside, I've still yet to hear anything I'd call home about, which nowadays all I see myself doing it going on about how crappy my PC is running the current state-of-the-art game because its visuals are too freaking gorgeous.

I crank up the speakers for Myst and Morrowind.

I found Myst's music to be more ambient from what I've played of the series (some of those logic puzzles make me want to throw my PC out the window), and Morrowind's themese just repeated over and over throughout the game with nothing new coming into play, and that's ignoring that a few of the tracks are just one measly minute long, which includes the theme track unfortunately.

half life and deus ex (1) music are semi-demi-godly!

republic commando music was OK, a bit melo-dramatic tho

All of the Hitman games have awesome music, and have indeed won a number of awards for their music. I fully expect that Kane and Lynch: Dead Men will be up to the same standard. My personal favourite score is Freedom Fighters, but that's not *terribly* recent. The score to Chrono Cross was pretty darn fantastic too, but again, not *very* recent.

Old games had good 'catchy' music - I still remember Xenon 2 and Bubble Bobble's music very well, can't remember music from any recent games I've played.

Check this place out if you love retro tune-age.

http://www.bitfellas.org

Two old tunes that etched themselves into my brain:

Canon Fodder. War -- Never been so much fun!
Chuck Rock

I think part of the problem is that SID or Paula were offering a more unique sound than you could hear outside of the computer games world. Today it sounds more or less the same and so it's more likely that you also notice weaker compositions.

Nothing's rocked my jocks off like the C&C series music. I mean I only got into C&C cuz the music rocks.

Katamari Damacy series. My signature would be shorter without it.

Other soundtracks whose music resides in my Winamp playlist and actually deserves to be there (not because I'm a music hoarder):
Diablo 1 (don't know anyone who doesn't like the town music and the dungeon music is awesome to code to. In the dark)
GTA 1, London, 2 and 3 (sure most of 3 was licensed but it still had the same feel of classic GTA radio, something more recent releases have failed to grasp for me)
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 + 4 has some very nice tracks
Theme Hospital. Shameless MIDI fun.
Monkey Island 1, obvious reasons

- I quite like the tunes inside the PlayOnline Viewer, the front end for FFXI... And despite what many others think, pretty much all the tunes from Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9 and 10 have a place in my heart.

SimCity 3000 has a really nice soundtrack
The Sims 1 + expansion packs (Build, Buy and Makin' Magic music is awesome)
TrackMania Sunrise. All licensed but a damn good selection of tunes. Needed to grow to love them tho
TrackMania United. Doo did some really nice work.

Games are becoming interactive movies, and games are thus threated like movies. I know half a thousand movie scores by now, and as old composers die (Goldsmith, Poledouris, Bernstein) or simply retire (Barry), the new horde of youngsters moves up the ranking. Those new ones are so very different and they're changing movie music from leitmotif-based structures towards more of an ambient style or library. I'd even dare to say 'safe zone', following the temptracks from the director, doing what others do. It had to be a John Williams who decided to do the strings ostinato for Jaws (dun dun... dun dun... etc.) or the 5-minute ouverture for The Towering Inferno. I wouldn't be able to come up with composers who make such choices these days.

I guess the same can be said for games.. somewhat..

Deus Ex had awesome music, I remember cranking my speakers to this track.

yuck, you call that awesome? :S

O! I forgot!

Katamari Damacy = freaking weird but auwzum!!

The music from Deus Ex (I prefered "hong kong streets";) )was mostly written by Alexander Brandon (used to call himself Siren). One of the best musicians in the business (imo). He also did a lot of the original unreal Tournament music with Andy Sega (used to call himself Necros - also a musical genius see www.irismusic.com for his latest stuff) and I *think* Basehead...bit of a guess there. You should check out all of their pre-game stuff on www.modarchive.com since it's just as awesome!

Andy Sega also did the music to "Crusader No Remose/Regret" which was awesome.

I've always been a Nobu Uematsu fan too (final fantasy 1-10 and now blue dragon). There's just something about his melodies :)

I also agree with Theme Hospital music being awsome, I still hum tunes from that hehe

I've got loads of Basehad mods, they are cool.

Gotta say pretty much the last I loved game music was on the Amiga (but only some of it) and before that the C64. Nothing on the PC does it *that* much for me. I think it was because those old sound chips were so primative that when you heard something good, you knew it was good. Nowadays, a PC can play ANY music so it's down to like personal taste same as your music collection.

Oh I did like the music to Holiday Bonus, that was classic ;-)

holiday bonus.. holiday bonus .. oO .. what?

:P

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was the last game with an outstanding soundtrack that I've played. Ok, the songs were licensed, but nevertheless great. The good news was that they had the mp3 files on the game DVD. :)