2006 Game of the Year: Sound
Music
and sound effects, go a long way towards creating
ambience in a game. In fact, they may even have more of an effect on the overall
game experience than the graphics.
While Indie games tend to lag just a touch behind when it comes to graphics, the music
in Independent games is as good as any out there. From Punk to
guitar-driven
Rock to more classically orchestrated affairs, this year's games cover a lot of ground and
sound great doing it.
5th Place - Tasty Planet
| Developer: Dingo Games | Players: 1 | ||
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| System Requirements: Windows 98/2000/XP/Me, 600MHz, 128MB RAM, 16 MB Video, DirectX 7+ | |||
Yum-Yum!
Tasty Planet is sort of a Feeding Frenzy meets Katamari game. Players
start as a microscopic spec eating other microbes and grow larger and larger
until they eat the universe.
The grey goo, despite not having a name, has plenty of things to say as it grows
and grows, giving it a definite personality that makes it endearing to players.
The music is also a strong point of the game, only showing a weakness in its
lack of variety. The two sound tracks featured are both very upbeat and
catchy. Our favorite was probably the one with samba/bossa nova feel to
it, as it really captures the game's essence of being somewhat similar to things
you might have played before, but completely different at the same time.
4th Place - Theseus: Return of the Hero
It
takes an awful lot of game to follow-up the award winning
Alien Shooter. Theseus, Return of the
Hero, isn't actually a sequel to Alien Shooter, instead it extends the
events happening in Alien Shooter to Hicksville USA.
Theseus is a gritty cowboy who looks like a Marine. Removing players from
the corridors of Alien Shooter, Theseus takes them through mostly out-door
environments.
Though the music and sound isn't quite as eerie as in Alien Shooter, it is just
as rocking.
Players will begin each level in the quiet, hearing only their footsteps as they
slowly survey their surroundings and start straying towards the darkness.
As the enemies start appearing in mass the music comes in guitar heavy and
frantic. The tunes are a perfect match for the insane action and intense
gameplay found in Theseus.
3rd Place - Bounty
| Developer: Total Eclipse | Players: 1 | ||
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Website |
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| System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, 128MB RAM, 800mhz CPU | |||
The
music for Bounty is really quite memorable. For whatever reason the sound
is rather reminiscent of Disney rides and movies.
Dimitrios Bendilas is credited with work on these pieces and should definitely
be commended. The short music tracks are whimsical and bring a lot of
character to the game's very well animated areas and somewhat odd characters.
Each of the sound tracks helps further the game's feel from the Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-esque title screen
music to the more quirky and endearing music tracks on
each level, the sound is well composed and well worth a listen.
2nd Place - The Shivah
| Developer: Wadjet Eye Games | Players: 1 | ||
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| System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP | |||
The
Shivah stands out as an experience totally unlike anything you've played in a
game before. Playing as a Rabbi having a crisis of faith, players unravel
a mystery regarding the death of a former member of the Rabbi's synagogue.
The storyline itself is very compelling, but the game play and the sound in the
game are the real reasons this game gets such high marks and has been mentioned
all over the internet.
All the dialogue in the game has been voice acted. It hasn't been casually
done either. The quality of the acting brings players in the door and
keeps them on the edge of their seats as each piece of the story unfolds
before them.
Each of the voice actors in the game uses intonation and emotion to convey
to players things that you can never get from reading text alone. From
Rabbi Stone's voice that gives the feeling of a hard man feeling beaten by the
world he was so honest with to Rabbi Zelig's guarded and slightly arrogant
nature, each of the characters comes to life under the strength of the acting,
creating a story that is as engaging to hear as it is to play.
2006 Game of the Year: Sound - Aveyond
| Developer: Amaranth Games | Players: 1 | ||
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Website |
Download |
Purchase |
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| System Requirements: Windows 98+ (Except Windows 2000); Pentium II; 256 MB RAM; DirectX 8.0+ | |||
Aveyond
opens with an introduction consisting of a simple dialogue/fight with pixelated
figures. It then follows a butterfly as it flies over ocean and land
to the place where the actual gameplay begins. As the butterfly lifts off players hear an
instrument in the background and suddenly one of the great things about Aveyond
becomes clear, the sound is not midi files, but is in fact recorded from actual instruments
being played by real musicians*.
Composer Aaron Walz is responsible for the stand-out music compositions in
Aveyond and he should be quite proud indeed.
The different sound tracks in Aveyond work very well with the game and provide a
very ethereal feel to the levels as players progress out of the initial
mountain town and into more foreboding areas where the sound perfectly
accompanies the on-screen environment. The selection of instruments, often
using a variety of flutes backed by everything from trumpets to harps, gives a
very airy feel to the tracks that provides a fantastic backdrop for the world of
Aveyond.
Each
track was fully composed to take into consideration the action on the screen and
the inevitable looping that would have to occur in Aveyond's extremely large
areas. The tracks repeat without the player even noticing and, for the most
part, provide an endless tapestry of emotion-provoking sound to carry the
story from the game into the hearts of the gamers.
The rich sounds of
orchestrated music take what was already a fantastic game and implants the game's
locations into the minds of the players in a way that only choice music can do.
We were truly impressed by what we heard and thought that Aveyond sounded like
the perfect game to present with our 2006 Game of the Year Sound award.
*Be sure to download the now optional
High-Quality Music Pack before you start playing!
Sound Game of the Year Award History
History:
2006 - Aveyond
2005 - Mexican Motor Mafia
2004 - I of the Enemy
2003 - Dr. Blob's Organism
By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Friday December 22, 2006
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