"Emily created an amazing soundtrack for Brutal Legend. I thought I knew a lot about Heavy Metal, but soon after Emily started her research, she was uncovering bands I'd never heard of--Awesome bands that were perfect for the Brutal Legend. Emily found the right place in the game for each song, and edited them to match the mood, meaning, and interactive needs of moment. The result was an award-winning soundtrack that won over even the most skeptical metal fans. Especially me!"- Tim Schafer
"For Brutal Legend, the soundtrack is much more than just noise. It's not just the sound of a devil screaming, or an angel singing, or even the pounding of creations hammer upon the anvil of time. It's the soul of the game. It's the essence of its world. It's fucking awesome."
"Brutal Legend's soundtrack plays an important role. During key moments certain tracks kick in that absolutely send your heart racing, filling your ears with the atmosphere and feeling that the visuals on-screen only partially convey. You might think that a soundtrack composed of almost entirely heavy metal could get stale very quickly, but there's an enormous breadth of sound and diversity within this compilation."
"The only thing better than the graphics is the audio, both in content and quality. I have to give awesome kudos to the stereo in the Druid Plow. It sounds great while you're driving but when you hop out of the car you can still hear it just like you would hear a car stereo playing. You can even use this sound as a directional finder to locate your car as the sound pans around the 3D Dolby Digital environment. It's a great effect.
But we all know we came here to play Brutal Legend and rock out to the greatest game soundtrack in the history of games. The soundtrack plays out when you are in the Deuce, and you have full selection of available tracks. You can even go in and modify the playlist to disable songs you don't like. As you uncover more metal throughout the game the tracklist grows and you use the D-pad to move forward and back through the library while you drive. RTS battle sequences will have their own music and should you choose to explore the land on foot, there is a mystical and quite compelling orchestral score that accompanies your adventure."
"And if you think the voice talent is good, wait until you check out the game's epic soundtrack. Tim Schafer wasn't messing around when he and his team went to license classic metal cuts. The soundtrack features a staggering 108 songs from 75 different artists, making it the most comprehensive list of heavy metal ever put into a video game"
"Brutal Legend is essentially a love letter to heavy metal. "Music rules and the voice acting might be the best you've ever heard in a game, especially Ozzy"
Audio 9.9/10- Team Xbox
"It's the music that defines Brutal Legend. Every major set-piece is accompanied by a song from the soundtrack, often with a lyrical or thematic connection to what's happening on screen. This is a rare example of a licensed video game soundtrack being used specifically to complement the action, rather than just being played indiscriminately in the background. In one memorable scene, Dragonforce's 'Through the Fire and Flames' roars in the background as you steer The Deuce at breakneck speeds through a castle being torn apart by demons. When it was over, our hearts were literally pounding."
A game's audio track is a topic that game reviews tend to gloss over, but it's definitely essential to the BioShock experience as the soundtrack bears the heavy burden of establishing the oppressive mood of Rapture. The music accomplishes this feat brilliantly and with almost supernatural skill, despite the fact that it's used sparingly. Given BioShock's grim setting, the often jaunty music-it consists of old-timey 1940's and 50's pop tunes-comes off as both funny and creepy, a remarkable tightrope walk. The sound effects are also memorable: you'll often hear the steady drip-drip-drip of leaking water, a simple audio effect that will nevertheless make your skin crawl and your bones ache, but the echoing footsteps of your enemies will also haunt you throughout."
"The sound design is incredible, even when at parts there's nothing but dead ambience coupled with the sound of water. I feel as though I've done a great injustice by note having a bang-up 5.1 system or 64" HDTV to play it on. But I'm also proud to claim that on a stereo SDTV, it's still the best looking and best-sounding game I've seen this generation. I can only envy those who have a nice pair of headphones to further sink their shoes deeper into Rapture's world."
"Frequently, the concept of good sound in a game is mostly concerned with cool music or that ever-so-satisfying cli-clack of a shotgun, but BioShock's audio puts other games to shame. The sound design in BioShock is fantastic and it probably doesn't hurt that Rapture is at the bottom of the ocean and therefore susceptible to an incredible variety of creaks and groans that scream of metal fatigue and the immeasurable pressures of the deep.
Again similar to System Shock 2, the disturbed inhabitants of Rapture wander around talking to themselves with haunting yet often nonsensically random comments. While negotiating the rat's nest of causeways, corridors, ballrooms and tubes of Rapture, you'll often hear the deranged mutterings of the city's occupants before you actually see them. Mumbling things like, "I wore it for you, father." or "We thought we knew what we were doing, but we didn't know... didn't know." They're constant reminders of the horrors that have occurred within Rapture that have doomed its residents to perpetual insanity in this waterlogged purgatory.
Of course, nothing compares to the unmistakable sounds of a Big Daddy (metal-clad slabs of humanity that protect the Little Sisters) that combine the aquatic call of a blue whale with the sound of a steel girder shearing in half. Their colossal footsteps shake Rapture (and your controller) from distances of ten yards or more, filling your heart with the same icy brine that surrounds your undersea prison."
"The audio portion of the title is also something to behold. When you communicate with other citizens via shortwave radio, the crackling and starchy sound of the voice is so authentic sounding you would swear they were really talking to you. Of course, it helps that this is a perfect example of what good voice work sounds like. The city's founder and king of the loony's is a man named Andrew Ryan, a man frustrated by the constraints of conventional thinking he went off an made his utopia, which is disintegrating much like his sanity. His honest-to-goodness paranoid character sounds like he's already past his breaking point and he's holding it all together by sheer will.
An exceptional job of character development, and of course, credit must go to a really unique plot that keeps you wondering just what the dickens is happening. Other voices are also top notch, but it's not only the voices, it's how they are projected. Sneaking around the medical wing, you can hear the echoes of a demented surgeon barking out orders of a botched surgery, so creepy, so good. The ambient noises also bring so much to the game, the creaking of an unimaginable weight bearing down on the structure, the skittering of splicers scavenging corpses that are lying everywhere, heck, even the little creepy girls working in tandem with their massive protectors, it's so natural sounding and really fills out the game. Those players with a big surround system can really become enveloped in the sounds by really cranking it up.
Sound: 10. You simply will not find a game with finer audio. From the murky and creepy background noises to the spot-on voice work, there simply is no better game on any system in any genre that sounds better then this."
"All this is backed by gorgeous audio. The sound effects are vivid, from the stomp of the Big Daddy (accompanied by a controller rumble) to the creaking of Rapture coming under pressure. The voice acting is topnotch, further building up the already-creepy nature of the game; you almost feel sorry for some of the splicers until they start firing at you, of course. The soundtrack also helps set the mood. Everything in Rapture has a 1940s-like art deco look, and the choice of music (including "Beyond the Sea, which plays in the lobby of Raptures entrance after you get away from the plane crash) helps you realize the type of environment that the underwater city's creator tried to build.
9.8 BioShock has many treats, but perhaps its strongest is the audio side. Evocative musical selections, fantastic sound effects and great voice acting all combine to build up the gameplay experience."
"The complete audio portion of Destroy All Humans! is Pox-level brilliance. First off, Garry Schymanís work on the original soundtrack is commendable for its similarities with Herrmann's work on The Day the Earth Stood Still. The orchestral movements contradict the retro-lectric sound of the Theremin, with the result being classic sci-fi movie track bliss. The sound effects are also perfectly retro and sound as if they were plucked cleanly from a black & white spacepeople flick. Keyboard hums, whistles, and other variable-pitch noises make for an interesting auditory experience every time Crypto fires a weapon or uses his psi-powers. And last, but certainly not least is a combination of dialogue and voice acting that could be considered second to none."
- Team Xbox
"...supreme audio both in terms of the Theremin-laced soundtrack and the unwaveringly top-notch voiceovers and a host of other little touches. There's so much love that has gone into Destroy All Humans."
- EuroGamer
