Yes, shooters are violent games with shooting being an important part of an overarching narrative, but there is an art to even the most gruesome of shooters, which lies in—among many aspects of the game—the soundtrack.
It is the soundtrack that flows between and beyond sounds and conversations, breathing life into what might otherwise be a string of noises with a story.
Here are seven soundtracks from shooters that leave you wondering if you replayed the game for just the gameplay, or the score as well:
Call of Duty: World at War
While it was the soundtrack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare that truly began to deviate from the games’ heroic scores, World at War took the darkness to another level to show the hopelessness of the last years of World War II.
What sets Sean Murray’s score apart, and gives it this hopelessness, is the use of voices in a way that makes them feel disembodied, giving you a mental image of the war not as a victory march, but rather a desperate fight for survival in a hostile world.
Battlefield I
The fact that people fondly remember the Battlefield 1 soundtrack despite all the sequels that came in the years after, is testament to just how powerfully it gripped them, and showed them the emotional side of World War I.
Indeed, through the score, Patrick Andrén and Johan Söderqvist manage to show you the hell and sorrow of the war, while also celebrating those who fought it with gradual spikes in intensity.
DOOM
If you could channel energy from hell into a score, that score would be what Mick Gordon cooked up for DOOM.
Featuring a diverse mix of four-tier-distorted, downtuned guitars, an aggressive vintage Russian synthesiser, cinematic sound effects, and heavy industrial beats, the music from the game became so wildly popular and overanalysed that it actually created a subgenre of electric music: argent metal.
Red Dead Redemption 2
One of Rockstar Games’ most famous titles has a soundtrack that creates a world of its own—a massive achievement for a game already famed for its worldbuilding.
Composer Woody Jackson utilised over 110 musicians to create more than 60 hours of ambient, dynamic music—only a fraction of which made it into the final game. Shifting seamlessly between lonely harmonica whistles and tense, percussion-heavy shootouts, the soundtrack worked as advertised: it is the definitive sound of a dying American West.
Max Payne 3
The score for the third game in one of Rockstar Games’ most underrated franchises called for a lot. Luckily, the rock band HEALTH delivered above and beyond, exactly like how nu metal group Limp Bizkit did for the theme of the movie Mission Impossible II.
Featuring an eclectic blend of instruments such as the cello, cembalo, and a whole lot of Brazilian percussion too, each part of the soundtrack was designed to ebb and flow with the game, giving you a regular rhythm that is at once haunting, weary and charged.
Halo 2
Few soundtracks have managed to grasp popular culture the way those from the Halo franchise did, especially in Halo 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved.
Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori knew the recipe for just the right amount of awe-inspiring Gregorian chants and guitar riffs that will have you return to Master Chief’s world long after the game is over—just for the score.
Metro Exodus
Part of what makes Metro Exodus so famous for being atmospheric is Alexey Omelchuk’s evocative score, which becomes an important part of Artyom’s search for humanity outside post-apocalyptic Russia.
The Metro series has always excelled at atmosphere, but this one takes it to the surface. Omelchuk uses ethnic instruments, strings, synths, and piano letters to create an incredibly varied mix of sombre, hopeful, and devastating tunes.