All-time Favourite Games
Below are my favourites. The bold words resemble my character on the job in today's world too.
Top 5 Favourite Games (of all time):
1. The Submachine Collection - A Point & Click Internet Game that has a breathtaking but creepy atmospheric soundbed. Submachine is a relatively easy game of the escape-the-room variety that will engage your puzzle-solving skills. And if you haven’t played this one already, you’re in for a simple treat! My utmost favourites out of the collection are The Lighthouse and The Lab - (Note: There are way more rooms and the puzzles are a lot tougher!)
2. Theme Hospital - The levels are different hospitals, progressively getting larger, which the player must build rooms, hire staff and meet the set requirement for winning that level. The set requirement, getting more complex per level, are aims that the player must meet in order to pass the level. These are things such as curing a certain amount of patients, raising the hospital value and maintaining a great reputation.
3. Wilson's Heart VR - You become Robert Wilson, a patient who awakens in a 1940’s haunted hospital to the shocking discovery that his heart has been replaced with a mysterious device. As the hospital hauntings intensify, you and your fellow patients must traverse increasingly maddening corridors, overcome frightening environmental hazards and work together to defeat the sinister inhabitants in your pursuit to reveal who stole your heart...and why.
4. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - An unforgettable Video Game. I also downloaded the soundtrack because it was also catchy. The next chapter in the Sands of Time universe. Visiting his brother's kingdom following his adventure in Azad, the Prince finds the royal palace under siege from a mighty army bent on its destruction. I must say, the most challenging mission in this game was to multitask different controls all in one go!
5. Pokemon GO - I'm sure everyone has heard of this... it's a craze that I still continue to play. Pokémon are out there, and you need to find them. As you walk around an area, your smartphone will vibrate when there’s a Pokémon nearby. Take aim and throw a Poké Ball… You’ll have to stay alert and pay attention to detail, or it might get away! Not only are pokemon AR too, but you also hatch eggs, walk them, and train them into battles... it's a whole new world in your pocket!
Top 5 Favourite Games for Sound Design:
1. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - A frightful terrifying horror video game that can be played in VR. The sound compliments the visuals extremely well, in fact so well that it's classed as "horror that you can actually hear". By this it means, you can hear everything! From the foundation of the built creaky house to the footsteps gradually getting closer to you from the other side of the door. You are so immersed in game, that you feel as if you're there! The use of strings were used for most of the score, along with the orchestra in an atonal key, which built so much intensity and suspense! This combined with all the binaural sound effects and voice acting truly results to being a part of an unforgettable story.
2. SimsCity: Build It - A simulation mobile game where you can build your own city as you design and create a beautiful, bustling metropolis. I start with the music first... usually when playing mobile games, I listen to music from iTunes or Podcasts, however with SimsCity... there's something about listening to the making and design of a city soundscape that's so peaceful. So peaceful that it makes you really aware of the game and when building your own city. Although, beware, the music is very catchy! The sound design nests out every sound you would here from a construction site or being in town with the use of moving vehicles, blowing horns, the sound of the air... and whilst being on this subject, the weather sound effects are truly out of this world... and only this is when you realise you're playing a game. A very addictive game!
3. Beat Saber VR - Which leads me onto addictive games... Beat Saber VR is one hell of a competitive music-driven VR game. Your goal is to slash the beats with saber-like swords, which perfectly fit into precisely Drum & Bass music. There's not much going on here with sound design, but I must comment on the great music tracks that were created specifically. I love DnB in general, but these music tracks take it to another level, that makes you want to download the soundtrack instantly!
4. VR Worlds: The London Heist - I highly recommend this short VR game from Sony Creative Services Group. One of the sweetest things was the amount of thought and detail with regards to the audio. Even straight away, the pub scene is set with great ambient music and sound design. You can interact with almost anything in front of you, the coolest of which is the cigar and lighter. Now, not only can you light the cigar and wave it around, but there is also a cool audio feature here. Using the mic on the PSVR headset, the audio team have made the game able listen to the level of your breathing so that if you breathe in and out loud enough whilst holding the cigar to your mouth, you smoke it! This may seem simple but it’s things like this that really excite me about VR. A personal question of mine has been the potential of using the mic within the gaming world for higher levels of immersion, which is stuff like this! The voice acting in this game is very well done too. You automatically feel like you're a gangster, although the amount of swearing incorporated into the script is unbelievable.
5. Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Another horror, but room escape game created for PC. The build up in this game evolves in such matter it gets the player freaked out just from the first paranoia strike Daniel (the main character) suffers. And funny enough, it takes (what it seems to be) a long time to see some real scary events, due to the sound design and music being so powerfully balanced. The game-play is quite an experience and unforgettably immersive! Tapio Liukkonen (the sound designer) had made incredible recordings for the monster and visions effects. There is a call and response effect between some elements in the game, visually and sonically, for example in the rooms where there is a piano (you can open it but not play it) you start hearing it being played moments after you just left for checking another room, and then you remember there was a sound strike when you first had it open. Your BPM are almost instantaneously increasing! Last but not least, the audio programming of objects colliding works well more than 90% of the time and it provides a variety of textures that completely fills the visual expectations. Along with the whole sonic experience balance, this is where it stands out, the results of good engineering. Definitely a favourite, but don't have the guts to play again.