Game Music; Almost all games have some kind of music to go with it. Some are purely background noise of little consequence, while others are simply inseparable from the actual game..

Most games have fairly uneventful music, some droning sound that inspires you about as much as a used set of dirty grey tiles, ie: Mass Effect(At least 1 & 2)..

But some games manage to produce excellent music that, not only fits well with the game, but gives you the proper feel for the situation, Half Life, especially HL2, and Unreal 1, had this effect..

Other games might have music that is just simply ghastly!, and doesn't make sense with anything, a grand failure in that case. However, I can't think of any right now that have had such an effect..

But which are the best, the most inspiring, most awesome, most glorious testaments to the proper way of doing Game Music?.

And contrary-wise which are the worst, most diabolical excuses for game music ever to grace the psychedelically strange virtual world that we know and love?..

Good:

Unreal 1
Half-Life 1/2
Doom 1/2
The Witcher had some good stuff
Quake 2!!
Diablo 2
UT99

Bad:

Bland orchestral stuff, which seems to seep into every AAA game these days. ♥♥♥♥♥ off...
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Music, similar to the rest of the game content, needs to have some uniqueness to it, something that gives your game a signature.

Mirror's Edge soundtrack. I think it's great.
Also Jazz Jack Rabbit 2 / Unreal Tournament music. Same author for those two. It has really unique tunes to it and lots of depth.

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Unreal Tournament! (Me too Bulska!)

Also Unreal has a very good BSO! Accompanies to the action, the village tranquility, the pressure... I love the "s3m" file format, it contains many samples in one file. It changes from the calm to the action.

Special mention of course for "Zebrahead - Lobotomy For Dummies" from FlatOut 2. Hell! I love kick ass Sofia in a Derbi with this song! lol.

Worst? Hmmm... I don't know any. All my games has good BSO.

I never really payed much attention to music... However the music for UT2004's menus is pretty cool. >.>

The various music for the Final Fantasy series is good, IMO.

Good?

Unreal Tournament
Serious Sam: TSE
The Ratchet and Clank series
The Neverhood
Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2
No More heroes 1 and 2


Worst?

Mass Effect Series
Call of Duty series

Hmm, I pretty much liked all the musics of the games I play /played.

I particularly like the soundtrack of:
Medieval 2: Total war
Runescape
Just Cause 2
SPORE: Galactic Adventures
Starcraft I/II

Some other games with good/bad music:

Daikatana
Quake 1 [not my favourite ST, but it worked in the game]
Left4Dead 1-2 [again, it had some unique stuff]
RedAlert had some good stuff

Bad:

CoD
Mass Effect 1-2
Age of Empires: All of them...

Unfortunately, the ones which are bad, are so often also the most forgettable; hence I can't remember them all

For me it depends on the games, but actually if I had to mention good / great music

Unreal 1, UT99
Deus Ex
Duke Nukem 3D
Doom
System shock 2
Earth 2150
Outcast
Red Alert 2

There's a special place in my heart for the music of Deus Ex, Goldeneye, and UT99. The Half Life series and Red Faction 1 deserve honorable mentions as well!

Unlike most people here, I really enjoyed the Call of Duty soundtracks. They're very well made and are by some of the best movie soundtrack composers. Hans Zimmer and Henry Gregson-Willams are extremely talented. I almost always buy the soundtracks to the games I like, and the CoD ones didn't disappoint.

Mass Effect 1 and 2's weren't as good, but they had some memorable tracks. Mass Effect 3's was noticeably better. Medal of Honor and Battlefield were unfortunately lackluster.

If it comes to game music i must say, i really love to be prepared for the game within the menu already.

While Empire Earth was a shit game, it had good menu sounds, which let you fly high at some point. The same goes for Battlefield 1942 -> shit game but great menu musics

From the shooter genre i like the music froms Duke3D, Deus Ex and Hidden & Dangerous 2.
For RPGs, the morrowind theme, the witcher and the several music composing from thief 1 to thief 2 need to be mentioned. ( In general thief has the greatest environmental sounds and game musics ! )

ShadowBlade should be able to make some crazy stuff

Deus Ex
Portal 1 / 2
Garry's Mod! (joke, it doesn't have any music)

@Sgt. Kelly. You pointed out there why exactly I don't like CoD's ST (and other such games that follow the same path); hire some expensive famous composer and make a professional soundtrack with no uniqueness, or soul, or whatever. I seriously doubt those guys care about the game they're composing for, probably don't even play games
Those soundtracks are so forgettable because they all sound so similar to each other; bleh!

I don't know exactly why, but I just dislike that approach. Get someone who has an interest in or cares about the game do the music.

I'd agree, it's a sad age in that respect now that games have become a way to make money and not the soulful personal taste creations of passion they used to be, and the music is a sign of this, nothing unique...

Some more good ones..

Diablo
The Witcher
Deus Ex
Dawn of War
Dungeon Siege
Oblivion..

Bad ones:

Age of Empires
Civilization

Ok I'm out of ideas..

I forgot to mention resident evil 1 - 3 !

Morrowind

Tower of Heaven
http://music.flashygoodness.com/album/t ... soundtrack

For me good gaming music goes like this:

Almost everything from Rareware: (GoldenEye, Donkey Kong Country series, Jet Force Gemini, Classic Perfect Dark ech.) before they were absorbed by Microsoft

Winback for the N64: I'm still trying to find the soundtrack or something close for this game even today with no luck so far

Timespliters 2 & Future Perfect: This is a no brainier because the dev house that made these games A LOT of the staff were Ex-Rareware guys

A lot of the stuff that Jesper Kyd composed from Adventures of Batman & Robin (one of his early works) to the Hitman games (why oh why are they not using him for the soundtrack for the upcoming game) and he even worked on the soundtrack for UT3 as well.

Examples of bad game music is licensed video games a majority of them from the NES/Sega Mega Drive/SNES Era were they do a lazy half-assed port of the themes in question or they don't bother and do their own thing with the music. And also the CoD games as everybody has stated before. The soundtrack from those games is like something from a Michael Bay film and most of his recent output is easily forgettable.

I actually like the music in Age of Empires 1. It has a peaceful tone to it, which is nice while you're building and stocking up on resources.

My favourite game soundtracks (in no particular order*):
Serious Sam FE/SE/2
Unreal 1
UT99
Quake 2
System Shock 2
Deus Ex
Red Faction 1
Demonstar
Jazz Jackrabbit 2
Half-Life 1
Descent 2
Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

* Serious Sam and Unreal 1 are at the top of the list for a reason, the rest of the list is unordered.

Some games I can think of with music I liked:

Unreal 1 - I think this is the shining beacon to which everyone else should be trying to aim. It was unique and interesting. Really added to the atmosphere of the game.
UT99 was also ok. The newer UTs didn't get up to par with the old Unreals' sounds and music.
Doom was one of the first games where I really liked the music. Some other midi games like Raptor were also quite decent. They sometimes did more interesting things when they couldn't just hire a contractor to churn out a generisoundtrack.
Half-life's music was good because it was 'half-lifey'.
I really like Quake 2's music!
Quake 1's music was fitting for the game.
Quake 3
Red Alert had awesome music! ...mostly. It was quite interesting for game music. The theme song is just killer!
The Witcher had good music for the atmosphere.
Diablo 2 had decent music, but most importantly, it was unique. It helped give the game it's distinct 'Diablo-y' feel.

What music I don't like?
Generic soundtrack stuff. Not enough games try to do anything unique or even just good to listen to. I think big expensive soundtrack music is fundamentally flawed because it is produced by an expensive, well known hollywood composer who knows and cares nothing about the game and likely thinks games, in general, are just stupid toys for kids. It's just another job for them. I would much rather the music was produced by some dude who just uses a PC and/or other cheapo methods and, most importantly, actually has a passion for the project.

UT99 and Total Annihilation had the best in my limited gaming experience.
UT2004 has some pretty good soundtracks in the various custom maps...

Here's a mixtape of sorts someone did last year using the N64 GoldenEye music but added various rappers vocals over all of the tracks and it works VERY well for the vocals he used in relation to the game music. It's Alex Kresovich in Golden N' Fly

Someone played MDK 2?

Good action music! And good game of course!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGA-2Sur ... ure=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Uzgvog ... ure=relmfu

Saints Row The Third = Good
when you are attacking an enemy base for one of the missions, being a one man army - Power by Kayne West, a song about a man having so much power like a super hero

When you are saving the day in one of the last missions, needing to rescue someone from a horrible death - Holding Out For a Hero- Bonnie Tyler

And other than that, a radio station system where you can pick your own music

~w~ I like...

Mal

P.S also... Stand and Deliver - adam ant is on there ~¬~

No one's mentioned any of the zelda games. You can't tell me they're bad, though I'm usually not a fan of looped short songs like anything pre-GC was, twilight princess actually had a good score to it. That i can remember anyways. I don't usually focus on the music of games too much. Though, I do really like the music from Borderlands. It has appropriate themes and flares and such.

... though I doubt you can call it a score, I enjoy listening to Spore's music. And L4D. I like how it's not really ever the same twice.

I'll add my mix of diablo/Torchlight/diablo 2 and quake 2 to the mix that everyone else has already said also. I recieved two passes to the diablo 3 beta, so I've heard the music there as well, it still is fantastic. Castlevania! And what's with all the hate for mass effect? Is it really that bad? I don't remember any of it. Maybe that's y'alls point. Hm.

Oh! All you doom fans out there, I have something shiny for you. http://doom.ocremix.org/.

I will also add to this list of ours the HALO series, DESPITE my own lack of interest in the game's series as a whole, (it was entertaining, but... I didn't like it) has a memorable score that was actually relevant to what was happening.

Haha, ocremix is awesome. I like the Doom 1 album, but the doom2 album didn't feel like it was real consistent as on one album, felt more like a collection of songs.

Absolutely in love with the 3 Sonic albums though.

Shadow of the Colossus, GodHand, Castlevania (Symphony of the Night in particular), Megaman (Main series and X series), Blazblue, Guilty Gear XX Slash, Koumajou Densetsu (1 and 2), Legend of Mana, Super Meat Boy, Klonoa, Painkiller, Hokuto no Ken: Shinpan no Sōsōsei, Rocket Knight Adventures.

All great OSTs (and games) ,just off the top of my head

As for "bad" music, I have a special hatred for generic orchestral scores
(Yes, I'm looking at you Hans Zimmer ).

Whats with the Orchestral music hate? The sound tracks from Halo and The Elder Scrolls series are some of my favorite soundtracks ever. Certainly more memorable to me than the majority of most other video game music.

I said GENERIC orchestral tracks !

Incidentally, I also very much enjoy the Halo and Oblivion (only Elder Scrolls I have played) OSTs.

("Rock anthem for saving the world" and "Athmosphere 8" being some of my favourite tracks from any game)

I wasn't sure if you meant generic orchestral tracks as in orchestral tracks in general are generic or as in specific orchestral tracks that are generic. Hard to tell which was intended with only text.