Game of the Year 2023 – Best Original Soundtrack

thesixthaxis.com:

Music is an increasingly important part of modern video games, able to elevate an experience to new heights, adding real emotion to scenes and engaging the player on a more subconscious level. What’s particularly delightful is when it goes beyond merely being an added element alongside the action that takes place on screen, but rather an integral part of the game, right down to its very conception. Of course, just being good music that you can happily listen to outside of a game-playing context helps as well…

Music is a special part of the Alan Wake 2 experience, as it’s threaded in and out of a truly multimedia experience. On the one hand there’s the often haunting atmospheric soundtrack composed by Petri Alanko to accompany the regular gameplay’s blend of calmer scenes and survival horror action, ramping up the emotions and tension excellently, but then there’s the times where the music breaks out of the box.

Evoking TV show inspirations that Remedy have loved to toy with, each chapter in the game concludes with a moment of musical limbo featuring lyrics written to tie back into the narrative and moments you’ve just been experiencing. It starts off with the wonderfully chilled Follow You into the Dark, featuring RAKEL.

Then there’s the returning Old Gods of Asgard, an in-game alter ego band of Poets of the Fall, and some really fun twists found within Alan Wake’s Dark Place.

Brilliantly creative, Alan Wake 2’s soundtrack is our best of the year.

Listen to Alan Wake 2’s Original Soundtrack on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music.

– Stefan L

In a game built around music, it sure is helpful that said music is frankly awesome. Now, Hi-Fi Rush has a series of headline licensed tracks, racking up hits from Nine Inch Nails