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Trigger Happy
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experience as immersive and (deceptively) “authentic”
as possible.
This concentration on “real” sounds in general
parallels what movies do. But just as a film with terrific
abstract sound design, like David Lynch’s Lost
Highway, is highly refreshing to the ears, so I think this
attitude of “realism” is narrow-minded in a videogame
context. The best audio engineering now seems to be
constrained to highly generic videogames such as space
shoot-’em-ups or science fiction racers, where the
fantasy world can justifiably be accompanied by
fantasy sound, all manner of lovingly crafted blips and
whooshes. An instance of particularly good
contemporary work is in the otherwise rather shallow
shooter Omega Boost, where, if you bump into
enemies, a grating metallic clang enhances the
momentary discomfort, and spacecraft whoosh past you
to fabulously alien stereo effect. The sonic mayhem
(with these effects unfortunately competing with a
musical score of Japanese heavy metal) effectively
increases the level of sweating tension in the player.
Such a strong division between games that enjoy
“real,” sampled sounds and games with an invented
sonic architecture, I think, is unfortunate. Surely, if