Memorable Music in Gaming - August Genre - RTS

This month we are featuring music from real-time strategy games, or RTS as they are listed on many gaming websites, forums, discussion groups and so on. These will probably take you back quite a few years, but these games are still enjoyed even today! 

Nick

Jamie Christopherson and Bill Brown - The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth

There’s a lot to enjoy about this 2004 real-time strategy game. It has a typical structure built around factions and the tug-of-war between resources and military expansion. The overall reception was quite positive, and it helped that the game had such a strong tie-in to the popular movies of the era. This was primarily evident between short clips in the movie and likenesses of popular characters such as Pippen, Merry, Legolas and more.

However, the music for me was a standout, as I adored the music from the movies. Now, normally when I talk about memorable music in gaming, I try to focus on original music and not just importing something popular from another source (like the Guitar Hero games). While it’s true that The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth does contain music composed by Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there are original scores to be found here as well. These pieces were composed by Jamie Christopherson and Bill Brown.

Jamie Christopherson has had his work show up in film, television and video games with a lean towards action such as The Crow: Wicked Prayer, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, the Bionic Commando remake and Lost Planet 2 to name just a handful. Bill Brown’s claims to fame span multiple types of media as well such as CSI: NY, several Tom Clancy titles and some of the Command & Conquer games. Perhaps most notably however, Bill was responsible for many of those iconic boops, bleeps, tunes and tones that came with Windows XP. 

So while these two men had quite a variety of genres and media in their working history, it is impressive how they were able to come up with nearly two dozen tracks for the The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth video game that felt like they belonged with the popular music from the movies. Tracks like Hordes Attack would feel just as at home in those classic Dungeons & Dragons video games as it does in this one, swelling in one moment after softly building up to it. The horns and tempo found in Unstoppable Evil would have certainly worked during battle scenes in the movies and are an excellent compliment to the military skirmishes found in the game. Most of the songs are relatively short, looping when necessary or used to compliment a brief scene, clocking in at around a minute or so each. My favorite however has to be the sweeping Riding The Plains, which is a bit over four minutes long and manages to stand out in my memory despite fitting in so well with the rest of the music from the game and movies, and is definitely worth a listen to by itself. 

 

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Susan

Russell Brower - Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm

Who could have seen this coming? Of course my music choice for the RTS genre is going to be Starcraft related (although, Warcraft is also right up there in the genre as well!) And there are several reasons for this. I haven't played a ton of RTS games to begin with - thus options being limited for me - but I feel as though the genre has dropped out of favor in place of other genres like action, adventure, cozy, and simulation games. I find there are a lot more shooters out there, even though many pale in comparison to the viewership levels of esport shooters.

In giving a little love to the RTS genre, Russel Brower is my choice from Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. While the music in the base game is fantastic, I only played Terran to get through the base game story. Heart of the Swarm is where my heart truly lies as everyone should bow to the Queen of Blades (And I don't mean Scarlett, the pro player who has previously been dubbed the same. Although, she is pretty awesome.) 

Unlike Wings of Liberty or Legacy of the Void, Heart of the Swarm had everything I was looking for as a zerg player. (It may be fun to note here that all my Discord main roles are named after zerg units!) It came with units that I loved for their abilities and for their strategic uses. The ability to burrow your units into the ground like the roach made me happy. (I'm not going to talk about swarm hosts, which at one time were so ridiculously over tuned that Stephano and Petraeus had a THREE HOUR GAME live on stream. It was way back in 2014 and all of us sat there wondering if the game was going to end. Spoiler alert, it did.) Anyways, I found that playing the swarm made a lot more sense to me than the other two races in the game. Even before the DLC came out, I was sending waves upon waves against the enemy so that I could overwhelm them. Needless to say, swarm tactics are kinda my thing :D 

The music for Heart of the Swarm was quite impressionable as I ended up listening to it the most during the time of Starcraft II's heyday. And while the other two soundtracks are just as kickass as this DLC, Wings of Liberty I only played through once and never went back, and Legacy of the Void's campaign I didn't touch at all. (Would you believe that even the couple of missions you play as Protoss in the Heart of the Swarm campaign, I failed a couple times? Yes? Mmhmm. PROTOSS SCUM!) Now before continuing, I will mention that Russell Brower wasn't the only writer for many of the tracks on the volume one. He contributed to the last four tracks called: Phantoms of the Void,  He Had it Coming, Ascension, and Whispering of the Stars. All of those songs are fantastic and I definitely relistened to all four of them while writing this. On volume 2, Brower contributed to every song and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that my favorite song would be aptly named 'Queen'. The track starts off with an eerie almost orchestral build into a heavy hitting and gritty beat. In fact, the song became the titular track preceding many professional Starcraft II games. Honestly, if that doesn't tell the tale of the song, I don't know what would. It speaks for itself.

 

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Valerie

Gregory Alper - Warcraft: Orcs & Humans

My composer for this Memorable Music Collective is Gregory Alper, and I thoroughly enjoy the music he composed for Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Mr. Alper is still making music as it's his life's career of over 4 decades now. He's dipped his toes into the music genres of Country, Jazz, Latin, R&B, African, Calypso, and Big Band Swing over the years. He also composed the music for Mech Commander 2, another fave game of mine!

Recently, there is a remastered version of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans that I hope to get my hands on just to be immersed in that universe again. I've always played the orcs campaign. I got a royal kick out of the orcss and their 'Work complete' to 'We're being attacked'. The music that ran during the gameplay amplified the atmosphere of the Warcraft universe and set the bar for the games that came out later. I played the PC98 version since I didn't have any of the consoles, with the exception of playing with my kids on the Nintendo.

When Gregory had composed the Warcraft themes he followed an action, driving, and orchestral plan. You can hear that in all of the tracks, but I especially love Orc Victory. The driving of the drums just pounds away at my orcish soul.

That 'where is he now in his career' question came to mind while I was researching for this article. On his website (https://www.alpermusic.com/biography) in his bio I read this: "Teaching young people to play jazz is like navigating the discovery of a new world. Ensemble playing and improvisation explore new territory, the expansion and feeling of freedom through personal expression allows the soul to speak." So awesome to know that he is passing on his greatness to the younger musicians who absorb all music like the sponges they are! And on an ending note, I didn't know that he had played with another musician I love listening to: the great Ella Fitzgerald! 

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