Originally featured on leeksplays.com and in collaboration with EllexMay
It seems like forever ago that my lovely friend Elle and I sat down and decided that we wanted to do a blog collab of some sort, but we just weren’t too sure what we wanted to write about. After countless conversations and exploring a number of different ideas, we ended up on a topic that neither of us had really explored in much depth before. This topic happened to be soundtracks from our favourite video games.
We spend a lot of time talking about our experiences with a game, how it looks, and how it plays, but we don’t always take the time to think about the soundtrack that accompanies our adventures.
Over the years, I’ve found myself slowly adding video game soundtracks to playlists on Spotify. Some are from games I played years ago to more recent releases. Like Elle, I was always around music. I learnt to play several instruments over the years and even studied music in more depth at school and college.
Music has a way of telling stories and helping bring them to life but also allows you to experience a number of different emotions.
For this collaboration, Elle and I chose songs from our favourite video games to talk about. I have to say this was both easy and hard to do, as there are so many I wish I could’ve chosen. Our chosen soundtracks not only represent ourselves but also reflect the many games and genres that we love to explore in gaming.
Elle picked several great pieces of music from her favourite games, and they truly do reflect her love of video games as well as represent who she is.
Firstly, there are two songs from Beyond Two Souls. Jodie’s Suite and Black Sun.
Elle’s third and fourth songs that she chose came from none other than Assassin’s Creed II. This time, Elle chose the songs Ezio’s Family and Dreams of Venice.
Elle picked some great tracks! Even though I’ve played both games that her chosen songs are from, I had never really taken a moment to appreciate the music as much as I have in other games.
You can read Elle’s part of this collaboration here!
The process of choosing my songs was long but interesting. I, actually, discovered a lot of new songs to listen to during this. After narrowing down the games I wanted to work with, I eventually made that list even smaller before ending up with the ones I’m going to talk about below.
My first choice should come as no surprise to many of you. I’ve been a fan of the franchise since the start, so it only felt right to include a little something from The Sims. So here is my first choice, The Sims 2 Main Theme.
You might be wondering, The Sims 2 Main Theme? Well, it’s mainly for nostalgic reasons. It holds lots of memories, both good and bad, from in-game and real life. It makes me laugh, makes me smile and even makes me cry sometimes. Even though the song itself is pretty upbeat, it at times takes me on a rollercoaster ride.
I won’t lie, the whole of The Sims 2 Soundtrack is pretty nostalgic to me and it is regularly found being shuffled on Spotify.
Now, my second choice song is a bit more recent, and the soundtrack was one of the reasons why I picked up the game in the first place. I had heard a few of the songs, and something was telling me I needed to check this game out at some point. I love the game, don’t get me wrong, but even now it still remains unfinished, and it probably will do for a long time before I actually finish it. The game in question is Death Stranding.
I found it difficult to choose a song from this game, as there are a lot of favourites to choose from. I loved the Death Stranding: Timefall album as well as the in-game soundtrack. In fact, I ended up choosing one song from each.
The first of the two songs I chose was Bring Me The Horizon’s song Ludens from the Death Stranding Timefall album.
For me, it captures many of the aspects that the story of Death Stranding is all about. It’s as though the song describes every high and every low that you experience during the story of Death Stranding. The struggles, the unknown and everything in between. The search for what is right and trying to fix and overturn what has happened over the years.
While I love listening to the Death Stranding: Timefall album, I’ve also loved listening to Low Roar, which features in the in-game soundtrack. They are another artist whom I also listened to regularly since discovering their music.
I mentioned towards the start of this post that I found this incredibly challenging as there were so many games that I wanted to choose from but also from that, so many songs that I would want to have talked about. I had songs from the Final Fantasy series as well as Animal Crossing, Pokémon, Destiny and Xenoblade Chronicles. Maybe we’ll do a part two in the future, as this was lots of fun? Who knows!
Be sure to check out Elle’s portion of this collaboration. You can check it out here and why not take a look at many of her other posts too!
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