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London Philharmonic's new album -- "The Greatest Video Game Music"


BardicKnowledge
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While the title is obviously a marketing plot, I think that this album is largely fantastic. I haven't had the chance to listen to it in its entirety yet, but what I have heard sounds like different arrangements than the Video Games Live shows, which is ideal -- not that VGL is bad, but having only one orchestral arrangement of such flexible work is not desirable.

Surprisingly, the Tetris arrangement is a really standout track. The best parts of the album, however, might be the under-covered songs -- the piece from Bioshock is excellent. Of course, our old favorites remain excellent in this format also, the best of them this time around being the Super Mario Galaxy arrangement of the Gusty Garden theme, which is phenomenal here (and one of my favorite Kondo pieces of his entire repertoire).

In any case, what did others think of the album? Full review to come sometime tomorrow, during my wait for Skyrim to drop...

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Is there even any music in Angry Birds? I've played it for a while and I can't recall a single tune from that game at all. Even after looking it up on Youtube, I still can't say it deserved to be on this album.

Seems to be included simply because the game is popular, not because it has better music than lots of other games.

Also, Call of Duty gets two songs, as does Mario and Final Fantasy. Those extra spots could have been used for other games that deserve more coverage. Chrono series, Metroid had a few tunes that could be orchestral. Maybe something from Street Fighter?

It's a good overall list, but it's a shame they doubled up on some series and tossed in a token popular game rather than giving those slots to music more deserving of it.

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Some of the choices seem odd, yes. Personally, I feel that they should have included only one CoD track (from 2, not 4, but that's just me), and put in one of Ryu or Ken's themes from Street Fighter II.

In any case, while the choices are certainly questionable (especially under the pretense of "The Greatest"), the music itself it largely pretty good. Both Uncharted and Elder Scrolls don't feel as fleshed out here as they do ingame; maybe it's just me, but they are the underwhelming tracks thus far.

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Got this album, too. Some of these are repeaters! From over 15 years ago! Listen to your "Orchestra Game Music" albums. But!! This is a great album. The sound is very nice, the recording is very nice and the new stuff is very welcome.

The Damned, not sure what the deal is, but these games have music. And there have been many versions of it over the several iterations of the game. It is very popular and has been downloaded to more phones than there are people in the United States. I think its place on this disc is deserved.

And here's my band's version of it:

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