Pirates of The Caribbean Online was a MMO type game that was based off of Disney’s Pirates of The Caribbean movie series. In the game you make your own pirate, and with your own pirate you can slay the undead, the Navy, hired assassins, and wildlife bent on killing you, you can complete quests and level up your pirate to unlock new weapons, clothes to customize and expand your gameplay experience. You can also buy ships and customize them with your own sails and hulls granting you special abilities making you a fearsome pirate of the Caribbean. This game has a special place in my heart since this was a big part of my childhood. Most time between my preteen years was spent on this game, where I had tons of fun. Now all these years later, and with quarantine coming into our lives, I found myself coming back to this game. The original game was closed done in 2012, but there were multiple remakes of this game that popped up and the one I chose to go on was titles TLOPO (The Legend Of Pirates Online), since it was free and I have been enjoying reliving all of the nostalgia of my childhood and experiencing things I haven’t before. I have also met people in the game who make the game so much more fun for me that previously didn’t have when I was younger.

Going more in depth with the game, it even has a looting system, with different levels of variety. In order it goes Crude (brown), Common (yellow), Rare (green), Famed (blue), and the best rarity being Legendary (Red). Legendary weapons are the only weapons worth talking about, since they’re the best in the game. The only problem I have with them is the incredibly low chance of getting them. It’s about a 0.00085% chance to get one in a Skull Chest, which is the best chest in the game to get loot in. It could take anyone anywhere from a week, or a couple of years to actually get a legendary. There are players who have played the game from start to finish on the original game who’ve never gotten a legendary because the drop rate is so low and that’s my only serious gripe with this game. Legendary weapons exist for every class of weapon in the game, but some are for exclusive Halloween events.

SCP-Containment Breach is an old game, being released almost 8 years ago, based on the SCP Foundation, which is a large collection of creepy pastas all contained within the same universe, monitored by said SCP Foundation, in which SCP stands for ‘Secure Contain. Protect.’. Their mission is to contain, study, and protect the world from entities that seem to be supernatural in nature, or nature’s we cannot explain and pose a threat to the world. These entities that are contained are also called scps, and are given numbers after them, and example would be scp 096, or scp 078 etc. Now these entities are of the fan-base’s own creation, keeping the SCP universe as a whole alive for this long, with thousands of scps on the website. Taking a deeper look into SCP- Containment Breach, it takes place from the point of view of a D-class inmate, which is basically a slave who is forced to work for the scp, and by work I mean do everything they say, and will most likely die being part of an experiment involved with one of the scps. That is exactly how this game starts, waking up in your cell, guards come to grab you and two other D-class inmates, and they escorted you to scp-173, a statue that moves when nobody looks at it and will kill you if you blink. Anyway, when sent inside the cell, there was a malfunction at had occurred and the lights went off and the gate opened, when this happened 173 killed the two other D-class in the cell and left you alive and has escaped. Now with this containment breach in place, and due to the commotion, other scps are being freed, as the D-class, you are all by yourself to escape, with the scps trying to kill you, and if any security guards find you, they kill you on sight.

There are other scps, such as scp-049, The Plague Doctor which kills you if he even touches you. Another is scp-096, The Shy Guy, who if viewed with any medium, be it a picture, or video, it will know, freak out, and run to you, no matter where you are, and kill you. The game provides a fantastic horror experience for the player, making you feel you’re the one running through the facility trying to escape, and not ‘just some D-class inmate”.

The Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy follows two characters, obviously named Jak and Daxter having adventures and saving the world on numerous occasions. ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’ follows Daxter, suffering an injury to a substance called dark eco, which turns him into a Ottsel, a fictional creature which is a mix between an otter and a weasel. Eco in the game is basically the life-blood of the entire universe, and dark eco is connected to destruction, while its counterpart light eco is connected to creation. Now there are four known other variations of eco, blue, green, red, and yellow, and for each eco type, there is a Sage of that type. Now think of Sages as a sort of expert over their specific type of eco, and a character named Gal who is the Dark Eco Sage, along with his sister Maia (pronounced my-ah) are the only ones capable of possibly restoring Daxter to his human form. On their way traveling towards Gal and Maia, the other experts, or sages as they’re called, of the other various types of eco are found missing and without it chaos would ensue. Later it’s revealed that Gal and Maia were corrupted by dark eco, and tried to unleash it into the world and destroy all life by making a giant robot fueled by the other sages eco powers. Needless to say, Jak and Daxter, defeat Gal and Maia and save the world from utter destruction, although sacrificing Daxter’s chance to be human again. This game is holds a special place in my heart, because it was won of the first games I had ever played, and undoubtedly one of my favorites.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an open world game set in the late 1890s, taking place in the wild-west. In the game you play as Arthur Morgan, The right hand man to Dutch Van Der Linde, leader of the Van Der Linde gang, a band of notorious outlaws known for countless robberies through the country. With this obvious theme of the wild west, there is plenty of music that goes along with it that fits the theme of the era. After a job gone wrong, they find themselves on the run, travelling almost like nomads. During this running away, Dutch decides to plan multiple bank heists, most go off with minor complications, but one in particular had a drastic affect on the gang as a whole. The job was robbing the main bank in the fictional city of St. Denis, but it went sour since someone sold them out and it turned into an absolute mess which resulted in the deaths of some of the gang members, and everyone being split up, some still outside the city, some still inside the city and forced to escape by taking a boat which then is sunk by a storm. Even after all that, they land on an island controlled by Spain and is ruled by a tyrant military leader. Thankfully they were able to escape the island, but Arthur’s life was devastated because the gang members who died were very close to him, and one of the pieces, titled ‘Unshaken’ shows this, and he starts to question the life he is currently leading and if he should change for the better.

Doom 2016 was a reboot of the classic franchise Doom, which brought with it a myriad of fun, action, gore, and awesome music. But first, a run down of what Doom is besides just a fast-paced first person shooter. Doom 2016 tells the story of the Doom-Slayer, an unknown entity in a suit called the Praetor suit, waking up in a Mars facility owned by the UAC, or United Aerospace Corporation, currently under a demonic invasion due to the scientists trying to use hell to produce Argent Energy, a infinite, clean energy source that exists in hell, and that didn’t exactly end well, since when you wake up, you’re one of only 3 people left alive in the facility. Your mission as the Doom-Slayer is to close the portal to hell and kill every single demon in your way with a ton of weapons to use, and listen to a great soundtrack while doing it. Doom’s soundtrack adds a whole new level to the experience that is this game, taking it from a mindless gore-fest, to a mindless gore-fest where you actually feel like a badass like your character truly is. See, the Doom-Slayer is feared by all demons, so much so that there are little tablets scattered throughout hell that tell his story, and that no demon could match his strength, and when meeting one of the second type of enemies, the Imps in the game, the first one screams in fear when it sees you. When a demon screams in fear when seeing your character for the first time, you know you’re scary.

The game is completely different with or without music:

Dark Souls is an Open-World, RPG, type of game, it’s hard to describe it since its in a category in of itself. The whole gist of the story is that there is a fire called the First Flame that brings light to the world, but it is fading, to relight the fire, a powerful being would sacrifice themselves to reignite the fire and keep the Age of Fire going, those who complete this take are then called Lords of Cinder. During the time of Dark Souls III, the fire is fading once more, and the current candidate for reigniting the flame has refused, so four former lords have been resurrected, and they too have refused to reignite the fire, so your character has been resurrected, an Unkindled, one who was charged with linking the fire but failed in doing so. Now this post isn’t exactly going to be about the entire story, that would take forever. No, today I am going to talk to you about the soundtrack. With each boss you encounter throughout your journey, each of them have a score that enhances the personality of the boss, making them feel more alive rather than another obstacle in your way. A good example of this would be the Abyss Watchers, one of the previously mentioned Lords of Cinder. The Abyss Watchers’ name is pretty self explanatory, they watch the Abyss, a force that is the First Flames opposite, while the flame is light, the abyss is the dark, and it corrupts people into monsters. Any sign of corruption of the Abyss in any Kingdom would result in a swift end by the hands of the Abyss Watchers’, by any means necessary. In the end however, they too were beginning to be swallowed by the Abyss, as shown on their armor.

This in itself is shown in the music for this boss. A song of camaraderie and a fall from grace into corruption. There is a quote that goes very well with the theme of the Abyss Watchers’ story,

“He who fights monsters should be careful lest you become one yourself, for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” -Friederich Nietzsche

They were soldiers who guarded the world from darkness, yet in the end, they were swallowed by the same darkness they swore to fight against.

Minecraft may seem like a childish game to at first glance, and it is, an entire world made of blocks with lost of colors and fictional creatures, where one is forced to gather supplies and craft tools and build in order to survive. The only limitation is ones imagination in what can be created, that’s why it is one of the most popular game ever created with it being second in the world for most copies sold with 176+ million people buying it. But one of the greatest aspects of the game I will be talking about isn’t the game-play, no, I will be talking about the soundtrack which ranks as an all time favorite of mine. The soundtrack was developed by a man named Daniel Rosenfield, known as C418, in early 2011. He wasn’t apart of the actual company which created the game, Mojang, he was employed as a freelance sound designer. The most notable songs off of the soundtrack is the track called ‘Wet Hands’ which would play usually during sunset, and the other song being ‘Sweden which would play during sunrise.

Music like this helped to elevate the experiences when playing the game, fear when night comes, and relief when day comes, elevates to new heights when music is involved. For old players like myself, this soundtrack also provides a source of nostalgia from early childhood during summertime.

This blog will be posting what I find to be the best soundtracks, bands and video games in genres that I find to be the best in certain genres of music(rock, rap, etc.) and genres of games(Fps, Rpgs, MMO’s, etc.) In addition, I will discuss on how the music of these games compliments the game itself, such as the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption 2 making the player feel more immersed in the game and make them feel emotion for certain parts of the game whether happy or sad.