I recently started playing GTAV again and sometimes I’ll get in my car and let the radio stations play while I do house stuff. Favorite stations are the 80s one with Kenny Loggins, and West Coast Classics and Rock Radio.
The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour remain top-tier for me. The music was half the experience, turn it up and just enjoy that creepy vibe while solving puzzles. And they’re all on The Fat Man’s Bandcamp now!
Also, there’s an industrial rock cover album on vinyl currently looking for funding on Kickstarter. I’m super excited!
My dad and I used to play 7th Guest together. What a classic! It’s been a long time since I played that one. Had it on CD-ROM. Now I need to go find the soundtrack.
The full soundtracks to both games are on the Fat Man’s Bandcamp, which I linked up above. Also, the “greatest hits” collection album 7/11 is on Spotify. It’s surprisingly easy to listen to these days!
Nier Automata and Nier Replicant, also Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. Id mention more but my other picks are probably already mentioned here.
I’m surprised not to see any of the Monster Hunter games yet! Maybe that’s because most MH soundtracks are more a collection of individual themes than a unified soundtrack for a world, but a lot of those tracks are pretty great.
I don’t know whether it is considered polite to link to youtube recordings of tracks here. My particular favorites from World are all zone themes: “Rulers of the Wildspire”, “Dancer in the Coral Highlands”, “Roars across the Hinterlands”. You hear these tunes a lot - whenever you’re fighting something in that zone that doesn’t have its own theme - so they’d better be good. Fortunately almost all of them live up to that standard!
The Dig, FFVII, Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis, Morrowind, Quake.
Lots more, especially classic midi tracks but those are my top 5 (subject to change of mood and season).
Shout out to Morrowind. That opening menu BOOM, BOOM-BOOM gives me chills.
Also Final Fantasy VIII, X, XII are some of my favorites of the series. But the franchise really has a lot of top-tier music.