I am a videogame music purist who cannot mute even the most diabolical tracks, help me
Welcome to Soundtrack Sunday, where a member of the PC Gamer team takes a look at a soundtrack from one of their favourite games—or a broader look at videogame music as a whole—offering their thoughts or asking for yours!
It doesn't matter if I'm eight hours deep into a raid in Final Fantasy 14, labbing combos on the same Tekken 8 stage for days on end, or leaving my latest game running while I potter around my apartment—the videogame music stays on during chores, baby.
I've always been a bit of a VGM purist, to my own detriment. I've recently been suffering progressing through Final Fantasy 14's newest savage-difficulty raid tier, and found myself getting gatekept by group after group, unable to do one specific mechanic during the second fight against Red Hot and Deep Blue. The joys of being a staticless raider.
I mention this because the song for this raid is, well… I can best describe it as surfer-dude-2000s-Tony-Hawk-pro-skater-BMX-pop-punk-core. It's something pre-teen Mollie would have gone crazy for on Kerrang! Radio. But 30-year-old Mollie, who has been trying to clear the fight for the last several hours while some Blink-182-adjacent vocalist wails, "Look in the mirror, look in the mirror, look in the mirror and tell me what you see. Saw the me that I wanna be in the mirrooooooor, right where we oughta be"?
It's maddening. I'm sorry Soken, it can only be a banger for so long before I start to lose my mind.
I imagine my complaining about the song driving me mad was also driving my pals in my Discord server mad, because after my fifth or sixth grievance, one of them asked the all-timer question: "Why don't you just mute it?"
Erm, no? Why would I ever do such a thing? Mute a videogame song that's causing me to slowly lose my sanity after the 300th repeat? Isn't the insanity the point of hardcore raiding in the first place?
I don't know why the thought had never occurred to me. Did I mute it? No, I continued to let the song burrow deep inside my brain until I cleared the fight and then spent the next three days muttering "look in the mirrooor, look in the mirrooor" around the apartment despite my partner's protests to please stop.
Sometimes I'll pop into a friend's Discord stream only to see them playing a game overlayed by their own music. It doesn't fit the vibe! What are you doing?! The mood isn't right!
I know, it's what floats your boat. But for me, videogame music is such a huge part of the overall experience that I simply can't find it in me to give it up, no matter how resentful I become about particular tracks. Even if the memory I associate with them is negative, to me, that's still part of the fun. Good or bad, I like to remember the memories I experienced while a certain videogame track was playing.
But what about you? Do you insist on absorbing every single note, rhythm, and melody a videogame throws your way? Or do you put that "Music" volume slider all the way to zero and stick a Spotify playlist on instead? Let me know in the comments. I promise I'm not judging you if you do the second.
Well, maybe a little.