Red Faction Armageddon Soundtrack Review

The use of percussion in many of the songs sets a good pace for the story that was being told by the composer but which was unfortunately not as fleshed out in the game itself.

While many recent game soundtracks have had a massive and epic orchestral feel and sound, Brian Reitzell went for what feels like a more personal and enclosed sound. Few instruments give the sense of close quarters and with the majority of the game taking place in the caverns below Mars’ surface this was spot on.

The only spot I thought that the soundtrack might have been different deals with the similarity of many of the songs. Several of them start out with the same sorts of instruments and sounds and it makes them hard to place in the grand scheme of the game’s story. While a soundtrack should definitely have a cohesive sound and feeling I thought that, at times, the songs were too similar and some tended to plod forward in an almost anonymously clone-like way. That’s not to say that the songs are bad, just that I thought a bit more variety would have gone a long way to make the tracks stand out from one another.

Overall, the heavy feeling of the songs gives a great, personal feel to the music and considering that the Red Faction Armageddon story dealt with Darius Mason’s mostly solitary trip through the caverns beneath the surface of Mars, it fits extremely well with that. Some of the tunes sort of run together and get muddled in my mind’s eye but still the whole experience and the story telling (because I believe that the soundtrack should also tell the story) is well done. Of course, given his background in film soundtracks (he’s worked on 30 Days of Night, Lost in Translation and An American Werewold in Paris) I think he fully understands that soundtracks also tell the story as well as become part of its fabric.

The soundtrack is available through Sumthing Digital for $9.99 which also nets you three bonus tracks (which did not come on the CD we received for review. a pity).

No score will be awarded to soundtracks because everyone’s interpretation of music varies even more widely than our interpretation of video games.