Top 5 Video Game Soundtracks

Listen, I’m not just a gamer. I am a musician and someone who can’t live without music. Can you imagine playing a video with no music at all? It would be so boring and uneventful, so I came up with a list of video games that have some of the best soundtracks in them.

5. Minecraft
   Mojang Studios knows how to make one of the most simple games (or one of the hardest if you’re playing on hardcore mode) sound amazing. For their sandbox world game Minecraft, sound designer Daniel Rosenfeld, a.k.a. C418, sat down with Notch, the game’s creator, and created some of the best instrumental ambient music in the video game industry. Minecraft even won an award for its soundtrack back in 2011.

4. Halo Franchise (Bungie Era)
   Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori made quite possibly the most hyped theme song of my childhood. Anytime I hear that choir chanting the Halo theme, along with the epic drum beat and violins, it pumps me up. The Halo 2 version has the legendary Steve Vai ripping it up on electric guitar! I could go on for days about the Bungie era of the Halo Franchise and how awesome the soundtracks were, but we must continue.

3. Kingdom Hearts Franchise
   Square Enix and Disney did a fantastic job in hiring Yoko Shimomura to be the Composer for the Kingdom Hearts franchise. He is one of the main reasons I fell in love with these games, ever since Kingdom Hearts was released back in 2002 (On my birthday of all days!). His compositions put a twist on classic Disney music while incorporating his own style in order to make a nearly perfect soundtrack. Also, Mr. Shimomura introduced us to Hikaru Utada, who provided the amazing theme songs for the KH Franchise, including “Simple and Clean”, “Sanctuary” and “Face My Fears”.

2. Destiny Franchise
   Well, here we are again talking about Bungie, Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. The composing duo teamed up with C. Paul Johnson and Beatles legend Paul McCartney to create the soundtrack of the original Destiny. The original soundtrack was created using a 106-piece orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. Unfortunately, O’Donnell was fired from Bungie in 2014, but Salvatori is still the composer for Destiny 2, and he is still creating amazing music for the game today. I can not wait to see what he does for the Lightfall expansion.

1. Gris
   Oh my, there are so many great things about this game, and the soundtrack is definitely one of them. Nomada Studio’s Gris is an incredible platform adventure game. The studio brought on Barcelona-based composer Berlinist to create the music for this game, and the soundtrack is the most beautiful I have ever heard in a video game. It’s remarkably moving, at time both uplifting and sad, and it will make you feel emotions you have never felt before from a videogame sountrack. I highly suggest playing this game not just for the soundtrack, but for the story and artwork as well.

Let me know your favorite soundtracks in the comments!

Honorable mention: DOOM
Okay, Listen, I CAN’T leave DOOM completely off this list. In the 2016 reboot, and its sequel DOOM Eternal, Mick Gordon cranked the volume to 11 and blasted the heaviest soundtrack for a video game, period. As a huge fan of metal music, I thoroughly enjoyed these soundtracks. I have both of these soundtracks in regular rotation on my streaming playlists.