The Best Uses Of Licensed Music In Video Games

Summary

• Brutal Legend’s rock and metal soundtrack complements its open-world aesthetic and cameos.
• Gears of War’s use of “Mad World” in the trailer conveys atmosphere and tone effectively.
• Rayman Legends features musical levels resembling a platformer version of Guitar Hero.

The soundtrack of a video game is absolutely vital to setting the atmosphere of the piece. From how the game is sold to its audience in the first place to the opening track, all the way to the credits. While all games have their own audio made explicitly for the game, many also make use of already licensed tracks to great effect. There is an underappreciated art to this matchmaking of the two mediums.

In an attempt to achieve a little more variation, certain franchises such as Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row have been left out, as while they are undoubtedly excellent at picking licensed music to suit the games, there is so much variety that how it is experienced is completely down to player preference. Whereas the picks for this list, while still varied, have a much more directed setlist.

8

Butal Legend

You Can’t Kill The Metal

Brutal Legend is a game that was to be made or broken by its soundtrack. Thankfully, not only did Brutal Legend have a solid array of rock and metal tracks to peruse as players adventured in the RTS open world – an open world which nailed the aesthetic of acting like a collage of the fantastical cover art for rock/metal albums – but it also had many legends of the genre providing cameos as characters in the story.

Having Ozzy Osbourne acting as the shopkeeper in an underground lava lair is the kind of mind-boggling moment that everyone should be thankful has happened and is now preserved in history for our experience.

7

Gears Of War

Tears Are Filling Up Their Glasses

When the first-ever trailer for Gears of War dropped way back in 2006, it changed things. Naturally, it created huge excitement around the game, it boosted the popularity of Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World,” but it did much more than that. It conveyed a change in the medium of video games from both within and outside perception. For an action game trailer, there is precious little action. Instead, it focuses on delivering atmosphere and tone.

By having the song feature from the first moment – and becoming its unofficial theme – it also allowed for it to create a huge impact in the third game, where an instrumental version was used at the climactic point of a character’s story, and many a tear was shed in response.

6

Rayman Legends

The Thrill of The Fight

Rayman Origins felt like the perfect revival of the series, and at the time, it was hard to imagine how it could be improved upon. Then came along Rayman Legends with a whole range of answers to this question. The musical levels of Rayman Legends are an absolute treat to beat, playing like a platformer version of Guitar Hero.

The themed covers are well-made and enjoyable to listen to by themselves, though they will have been played alongside the level so many times that players will probably be instinctively pressing buttons in their mind alongside it anyway.

5

Death Stranding

Don’t Suffer Alone

Hideo Kojima’s games always have a great soundtrack and more often than not will feature at least one or two licensed tracks placed at just the perfect moment to transform a scene from great to unforgettable. So much so that this whole list could be taken up with his games. The reason that Death Stranding is the pick of the bunch is due to the unique nature of the setting and gameplay, and just how well matched its soundtrack is for this.

On paper, a game primarily about slowly and awkwardly traversing an empty landscape to deliver packages shouldn’t have much emotional resonance and yet that moment when Port Knot City comes into view as Sam crests the hill and, “Asylums For The Feeling”, begins to play tugs on the heartstrings in a mysterious yet poignant manner and it is here where the game really starts to come together as an experience.

4

Life Is Strange

We Were Younger

When Life Is Strange came out, there weren’t many gaming stories like it, with a focus on younger characters in a coming-of-age tale that was a mixture of mystery and small-town social life with a tone that was somewhere between Twin Peaks and Paper Towns. While there was much to enjoy about this episodic game, the soundtrack was a particular highlight that really helped in setting the wistful, nostalgic tone and the underlying sorrows of life in Arcadia Bay.

A particular standout moment was the reuse of an early track in episode 1, but played backwards, cleverly playing on the game’s theme of time and moments relived in repetition in the mind, wishing things could have been different.

3

Spec Ops: The Line

Will You Still Miss Me, When I Am Gone?

Right from the first moment, before any shots are fired or first steps taken, the title screen’s twisted version of “The Star Spangled Banner” acts as a musical alert to the player that all is not as it seems.

Spec Ops has a brilliant original soundtrack, and the several licensed tracks throughout are perfect accompaniments for both creating an atmosphere but also continuing to push the themes of the game through every aspect of its delivery.

2

Hotline Miami

Adrenaline Pumping Gameplay With A Soundtrack To Match

Off the back of the highly influential 2011 film Drive came the hit game Hotline Miami, a sensory experience of high-octane and fast-paced violence, a kaleidoscope of colors, and tons of amazing 80s/90s-inspired music of hard drums and bass and the hardest going disco tunes that the mind can handle.

Hotline Miami is an absolute whirlwind of an experience and this is reflected in the music as the player decimates the Russian mob with household blunt weapons alongside a track that acts like a hypeman and then the next moment they can relax back into their seat as combo and scores for the level rack up and lazy stoner music takes the forefront.

1

Tales From The Borderlands

So Show Me Why You’re Strong

Continuing the Borderlands series tradition of fantastic opening sequences accompanied by a banging track, Tales From the Borderlands applies this to each of its five episodes, and every single one outdoes the main series counterparts.

Not that the main series does them poorly, but Tales From the Borderlands is just that good that narratively and stylistically, that it blows the rest of the Borderlands franchise out of the water. Each song pick is a banger, the choreographed intros are amazing, and it made waiting for the next episode release go from hard to excruciating.