Music in Games: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

The games I've been into lately, and many in the past, have had such a great collection of music. LittleBigPlanet sports such a great set of licensed music that make it a joy to leap around playful environments. Assassin's Creed, which of course I've been into a lot recently, has some incredible original music by Jesper Kyd. Since so many games I've been playing recently have great music, I've been collecting tracks from soundtracks included with games (like Dragon Age), free downloads from the creator (Kyle Gabler), or via the Amazon MP3 store (which has great selection and no useless DRM). So I wanted to share some of my favorites below. Which games do you think have had great music, original or licensed?

My current list:

1. Sia - Breathe Me (Prince of Persia)
2. Lisa Miskovsky - Still Alive (Mirror's Edge)
3. Jesper Kyd - Venice Roofops (Assassin's Creed II)
4. The Daniel Pemberton Orchestra - Rock The Jungle (LittleBigPlanet)
5. The Go! Team - Get It Together (LittleBigPlanet)
6. Christopher Tin - Baba Yet (Civilization IV)
7. Jeremy Soule - Land of the Golden Sun (Guild Wars)
8. Jeremy Soule - Festival of Lyss (Guild Wars)
9. Jeremy Soule - Guild Wars Theme
10. Inon Zur - Dragon Age: Origins Theme
11. 30 Seconds to Mars - This is War (Dragon Age: Origins)
12. 30 Seconds to Mars - 100 Suns (Dragon Age: Origins)
13. Cafe Tacvba - Volver A Comenzar (LittleBigPlanet)
14. Kinky - Cornman (LittleBigPlanet)
15. Kyle Gabler - Best of Times (World of Goo)
16. Shira Kanmen - Downstream (Braid)
17. Jami Sieber - Maenam (Braid)

Return to Ostagar

New DLC coming out for Dragon Age on January 5th, entitled "Return to Ostagar." Should be a great opportunity to get some revenge on the horde that did some unkind things to some friends of yours. Price is $5, might be worth it if there's enough going on there. Should be some promising items available as well.

Dragon Age: Origins Complete

Though my problems with crash and loading bugs conspired to keep me down, I was finally able to finish the main campaign in Dragon Age: Origins.

The end battle and boss fight was a treat, properly epic and allowed you to see lots of character cameos. It was pretty tricky, too. Very well done.

I felt a little let down at the end, because a lot of my decisions drove off or doomed different characters or factions. I'm hopeful that in a second play-through I can improve the world a little rather than get by. I suppose that says a lot about how you can get emotionally invested in the characters and setting of Dragon Age, in that you can regret making the wrong decisions in a simulated world. I certainly did. But I was happy to finish. On to round 2.

Dragon Age: Origins

I took the plunge yesterday and picked up Dragon Age: Origins. Pretty much everyone else was playing it, and I just couldn't miss out. And I'm really glad I haven't. Even though I've only played a couple hours, the quality of this game has really shown.

I'm playing as a City Elf warrior, and I really liked the origin story. A tale of place and privilege, got to get my hands dirty against an abusive human, very satisfying. The origin stories both provide a good starting point to learn the game and mean a great deal as you go along. You never quite forget your origin, and everyone is always letting you know they know who you are.

Combat is fine, not the most satisfying experience. But it's competent.

The story and characters though is where it's at. I've enjoyed the immense amount of dialog and the number of cut scenes that show the action. Ferelden feels like a lived-in place, and if not quite as dynamic as GTAIV's Liberty City, still feels very much alive. And it certainly draws you back for more.

Dragon Age Journeys: The Deep Roads

The first installment of Dragon Age Journeys went live last night, and is now upon us like a horde of darkspawn. I played through the first chapter, subtitled The Deep Roads, over the course of a few hours last night. The best way to describe it is a flash version of Diablo only with turn based combat a la Final Fantasy. The gameplay is satisfying, and a neat feature is the unlocking of items for use in Dragon Age: Origins. Completing a certain quest can unlock an item, as does taking three short surveys throughout the course of the game. I thought that was an interesting idea... trade feedback for an in-game goodie. There is also a very nice helm that can be unlocked, but doing so requires completing 5 achievements. I've managed 3 of the 5 so far, with only one of them seeming to be dificult to accomplish: Killing an Ogre with full party health remaining. THAT will be a serious challenge. I've tried and failed several times. Regardless, it's a fun diversion. You can find it here.

Dragon Age chat hosted by PRC

For those of you interested, here are the logs of the Dragon Age chat we at the PRC hosted on our IRC servers yesterday. There are three... the main chat, the log of the questions answered by the Bioware folks in the background while the chat was going on, and the log of discussion after the channel was opened back up, which has a ton of info in the form of questions posed to Craig from Bioware and the PRC team.