Great games with terrible soundtracks?

[Gilder]

I had watched this Watch Mojo YouTube video titled "Top 10 Worst Pieces of Video Game Music" and it got me thinking. There are many games that are considered bad/terrible, but have incredible soundtracks (Off the top of my head, Silver Surfer for the NES). Are there any games that are good/great but have either terrible or at least mediocre soundtracks?

[vnisanian2001]

Sonic CD (North American version)

[wyrdwad]

I'm of the opinion that Monster World IV has a pretty terrible/grating soundtrack, but that game is frigging AWESOME.

-Tom

[Bumpyroad]

There are few tracks in Streets of Rage 3 OST which stand out,but as a whole - it's too "schizophrenic" to my ears.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Doom 32X, Zero Tolerance, Flicky on MD, parts of Killer Instinct and Sonic Adventure.

Bad sound design: Phantom 2040, Worms and Mazin Saga on MD, Desert Strike and Der Langrisser on SNES

[windfisch]

It's really difficult for me to think of great games with terrible music, because terrible music usually lessens my enjoyment of the experience significantly. So even though the rest of a game might be excellent, the game as a whole does not feel great anymore (unless you have the option to switch the music off and the game works just fine without it).

One example I can think of is not terrible music per se. On the contrary: the music itself is great. But it is the same track over and over and over and over again...:

Apr 13, 2017 4:06:44 GMT -5 ommadawnyawn2 said:

Doom 32X, Zero Tolerance, Flicky on MD                

Do you honestly consider these to be "great"?

Sure, I agree that Doom is a great game. But the 32X port?

Edit: Sorry, just read that "good" also counts. So just forget most of what I just wrote. But I'm still curious: do you enjoy playing Doom 32X?

[ommadawnyawn2]

Well, I wouldn't call them classics but Doom was a pretty good port besides the music, Zero Tolerance was impressive for the MD, and Flicky is just a simple fun 80s arcade game. No, I wouldn't play Doom 32X today but there are many ports I could say the same for. I explained myself more at first but accidentally deleted my post.

[Null0x00]

• Streets of Rage 3/Bare Knuckle 3
• Any Ridge Racer game excluding Type 4
• Sonic Chronicles (worst soundtrack ever)
• King of Fighters 2001
• Marvel vs Capcom 2
• Quake 3 Arena

[ommadawnyawn2]

More bad sound design games:
Maximum Carnage on MD, of which I'm not a fan myself but the game is pretty popular. They made a decent lead guitar sound and then they kinda stopped caring.

Aladdin on MD - Really bland default stock sounding instruments and it lacks the percussion in the PC/AMI version too.

Beyond Oasis has a few nice sounding tracks but overall it's hard to believe it's by Koshiro and at times it's really grating and unfitting of the what's going on, sounding more like an old matiné adventure movie.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I think Capcom's SNES and arcade games were pretty lacking in terms of sound design. Aladdin sounds cheap and wonky overall, MMX guitars sound cheap, SF2 has a bunch of off key samples and their FM synth stuff was often kind of grating or subdued sounding. Super SF2 on MD sounded pretty awful compared to the prequel, with below average FM drums, and those early MD ports by Sega could've sounded much better overall considering the original games also used 4op FM with similar channel limitations (and you can say this about a lot of MD games compared to arcade games of the time, though these games especially stand out to me).

Edit:
Tekken 3 - While the production is pretty great, and actually improved on PS1 I never cared for this particular blending of styles that was popular for a while in the 90s and it just comes off as cheap showmanship and cheese most of the time, while some earlier tracks in the series are memorable and evocative, and part of why I preferred it to VF. I remember Tag Tournament having some ridiculous tracks too, and after that I kinda stopped caring about the series so I can't say. 

Chrono Cross - I was kind of shocked to find that such a sappy, cliché and sentimental ost was so popular over here and on YT. I mention it now since I would've just forgotten about it otherwise, honestly it's your fault and you can't get mad about it. 

Crash Bandicoot - Again I'm not really a fan of the game myself. This pretty much sounds like someone's first attempts at music with only something like the DKC games as a reference point for what to do, and I struggle to remember any hooks or melodies at all. 

SFA3 - Again I struggle to remember much about it, but unlike with CB this sounds pretty good and has some good musicians behind it. It's like they were specifically told to make stuff that didn't stand out at all, and it's not that I don't like ambient music, it's that overall this just sounds like the skeletons of rock/pop/jazz songs with the melodies and catchy riffs either taken out or never written into them to begin with. 

[eatersthemanfool]

Apr 13, 2017 7:39:51 GMT -5 windfisch said:

It's really difficult for me to think of great games with terrible music, because terrible music usually lessens my enjoyment of the experience significantly. So even though the rest of a game might be excellent, the game as a whole does not feel great anymore (unless you have the option to switch the music off and the game works just fine without it).

One example I can think of is not terrible music per se. On the contrary: the music itself is great. But it is the same track over and over and over and over again...:

Apr 13, 2017 4:06:44 GMT -5 ommadawnyawn2 said:

Doom 32X, Zero Tolerance, Flicky on MD                

Do you honestly consider these to be "great"?

Sure, I agree that Doom is a great game. But the 32X port?

Edit: Sorry, just read that "good" also counts. So just forget most of what I just wrote. But I'm still curious: do you enjoy playing Doom 32X?

You know, I don't think I've played Bubble Bobble with the sound on since some time in the mid 90's but any mention of it and that damned tune gets stuck in my head.


Also, I loved Doom 32X.  Because it was the only version of Doom I had access to at the time.  Yea it's a shit port, but it wasn't as bad as Doom for SNES.

[windfisch]

Apr 15, 2017 1:36:59 GMT -5 eatersthemanfool said:

Also, I loved Doom 32X.  Because it was the only version of Doom I had access to at the time.  Yea it's a shit port, but it wasn't as bad as Doom for SNES.

Sure, I can see that. I have not played a lot of 32X Doom but I'd agree that it's not the worst port, probably even better that the 3DO version. (Though the latter certainly qualifies for the "terrible games with great soundtrack" thread - love the redbook audio soundtrack!)

[eatersthemanfool]

Apr 16, 2017 13:25:52 GMT -5 windfisch said:

Apr 15, 2017 1:36:59 GMT -5 eatersthemanfool said:

Also, I loved Doom 32X.  Because it was the only version of Doom I had access to at the time.  Yea it's a shit port, but it wasn't as bad as Doom for SNES.

Sure, I can see that. I have not played a lot of 32X Doom but I'd agree that it's not the worst port, probably even better that the 3DO version. (Though the latter certainly qualifies for the "terrible games with great soundtrack" thread - love the redbook audio soundtrack!)

As I recall, (granted I haven't actually played it since I got a PC), graphically it was quite good.  The only graphical difference I remember is enemies not having back and side view sprites, which didn't really affect game play at all.  
Control was also about as good as you can get without shoulder buttons and dual analogue.  

The only real drawback to the 32x port (and it was a bad one) is that they cut out a lot of levels.  a *lot* of levels.  

[windfisch]

Apr 16, 2017 21:47:43 GMT -5 eatersthemanfool said:

Apr 16, 2017 13:25:52 GMT -5 windfisch said:

Sure, I can see that. I have not played a lot of 32X Doom but I'd agree that it's not the worst port, probably even better that the 3DO version. (Though the latter certainly qualifies for the "terrible games with great soundtrack" thread - love the redbook audio soundtrack!)

As I recall, (granted I haven't actually played it since I got a PC), graphically it was quite good.  The only graphical difference I remember is enemies not having back and side view sprites, which didn't really affect game play at all.  
Control was also about as good as you can get without shoulder buttons and dual analogue.  

The only real drawback to the 32x port (and it was a bad one) is that they cut out a lot of levels.  a *lot* of levels.  

The resolution was lower, too - a bit like the low res mode of the original PC version. This makes spotting enemies in the distance much harder. (And I think it was not full screen by default either - though I'm not sure if there was an option to turn that on).

Not having side and back views of enemies may not have a huge effect on gameplay, but maybe a little: One of the cooler features of Doom is enemies attacking each other. And not facing the player directly was often an indicator that they were attacking some other creature. (I'm not even sure if the 32x version had that feature)

[eatersthemanfool]

Apr 19, 2017 8:31:21 GMT -5 windfisch said:

Apr 16, 2017 21:47:43 GMT -5 eatersthemanfool said:

As I recall, (granted I haven't actually played it since I got a PC), graphically it was quite good.  The only graphical difference I remember is enemies not having back and side view sprites, which didn't really affect game play at all.  
Control was also about as good as you can get without shoulder buttons and dual analogue.  

The only real drawback to the 32x port (and it was a bad one) is that they cut out a lot of levels.  a *lot* of levels.  

The resolution was lower, too - a bit like the low res mode of the original PC version. This makes spotting enemies in the distance much harder. (And I think it was not full screen by default either - though I'm not sure if there was an option to turn that on).

Not having side and back views of enemies may not have a huge effect on gameplay, but maybe a little: One of the cooler features of Doom is enemies attacking each other. And not facing the player directly was often an indicator that they were attacking some other creature. (I'm not even sure if the 32x version had that feature)

Enemies could attack each other in the 32x version.  It was definitely harder to tell, though.  

Apparently it wasn't full screen.  I don't remember that but all the youtube videos I'm seeing show a bordered screen so I must have blocked that out.  The resolution was a bit lower, but not as low as the SNES version.

[Weasel]

I love Just Cause 2, actually quite a lot. It's a perfect game for just wandering and exploding things. That said, the score is extremely derivative Hans Zimmer kind of stuff and it's best switched off and replaced with theme songs from 80s films like Predator and Robocop.