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Game music hall of shame: what’s your most HATED video game song?

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb


Sorry I know everybody loves this game but my vote goes to Overcooked 2’s map theme. It’s this insipid cutesy guitar that is just so bland and repetitive.

It evokes the feeling of waiting hours in an airport terminal for a delayed flight while some insurance commercial keeps looping on TV circa 2009.

What’s your most hated game song?
 
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kunonabi

Member
Honestly the first thing that comes to mind is Tender Sugar from the Silent Hill 4 OST. I absolutely love that game's music, and only the music, but Tender Sugar is the absolute worst thing on it and I get unreasonablely angry at how bad it is every time I hear it.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Honestly the first thing that comes to mind is Tender Sugar from the Silent Hill 4 OST. I absolutely love that game's music, and only the music, but Tender Sugar is the absolute worst thing on it and I get unreasonablely angry at how bad it is every time I hear it.
Song is incrediiible, damn I had no idea someone could hate this song this much.
The "bah bah" stuff from New Super Mario Bros is the first thing that comes to mind.
I love the bah bah stuff so much I tend to add them to other songs that aren’t even from Nintendo 😂
 

killatopak

Gold Member
Hmm yeah I was really feeling it for the first half then I was like “OKAY I GET IT you can stop now!”
There’s also gameplay implications to this song. It’s final boss music. An action rpg with a mix of panzer dragoon and dynasty warrior has a final boss where the whole battle is a rhythm game. And you guess it, that‘s the music for the battle. The bells are a metronome and all the other notes are button prompts.
 

Paltheos

Member
A popular one to meme on in JRPG, particularly Tales circles, is (or was, at least, idk if it's too old at this point) is Lying in Darkness from Tales of Graces. It's the infamous tomb theme from the prologue that's notable for how droning and repetitive it is and is the example I point to that shows Motoi Sakuraba at his absolute worst, when he's both working outside his element and is completely uninspired. He can do good ruins/tombs themes - he has it in him (Zao Ruins from Tales of the Abyss is great) - but Lying in Darkness feels like he just phoned it in completely and never bothered looking back.

More recently allot of the work from Mitsuo Singa has come under my eye for scrutiny and disdain. He's a contractor that at this point composes 1/3+ of the OSTs for Falcom games and his quality ranges from pretty good to impressively awful, usually favoring the bad side, so it's tough to pick just one. Welcome to Chaos from Ys 9 might best capture how unstructured his tracks are and trash his rock is, with metal riffs thrown in at random and with awful progression, and how disjointed his compositions can be. On the other hand, his EDM is somehow even worse than his rock, and so shit like Synchronicity #23 from Trails of Cold Steel IV is burned into my ear drums - The harsh, blaring sounds he uses at :45 and the long, stretched out synth notes through 1:18 were so bad the first time I heard them that I removed my headset and muted the dungeon music shortly after (muting in a Falcom game :messenger_persevering:). The man can do good work - Iclucian Dance from Ys 8 is I think everybody's favorite Singa track and I personally love ADD's smooth sax in Marionette, Marionette from Ys 9 (the famous Singa "buzz" isn't even that bad here although I want to believe Singa could have picked a better instrument to accompany the sax). All largely consistent too since piano, violin, and esp. saxophone (stuff jazzy and gamey) are usually where Singa is best, but man is his track record bad otherwise.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
A popular one to meme on in JRPG, particularly Tales circles, is (or was, at least, idk if it's too old at this point) is Lying in Darkness from Tales of Graces. It's the infamous tomb theme from the prologue that's notable for how droning and repetitive it is and is the example I point to that shows Motoi Sakuraba at his absolute worst, when he's both working outside his element and is completely uninspired. He can do good ruins/tombs themes - he has it in him (Zao Ruins from Tales of the Abyss is great) - but Lying in Darkness feels like he just phoned it in completely and never bothered looking back.
Ahh I was trying to find that song from Tales of Graces. He really phoned it in for a lot of that soundtrack. I could probably whip up something better in a few minutes using Garage Band on an iPad.
 

skit_data

Member
I can’t think of any obvious example but I really really started to hate the songs playing on the radios in Cyberpunk 2077. Especially the ones coming from the small crappy radios that sounds like highpass filtered shit versions of NIN songs.

Edit: And this song, damn I got tired of it:


It sounds way less crappy listening to by it’s own but I remember thinking
”I’m so fucking tired of this iFucKYoUiFuckYOuiFuckyOu song playing all the damn time” because somehow it felt like that’s what the whole song consisted of.
 
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Spaceman292

Banned
I can’t think of any obvious example but I really really started to hate the songs playing on the radios in Cyberpunk 2077. Especially the ones coming from the small crappy radios that sounds like highpass filtered shit versions of NIN songs.
That Pon Pon song was fun at first but it got tiresome very quickly. I know it was meant to be annoying, but still.
 

skit_data

Member
That Pon Pon song was fun at first but it got tiresome very quickly. I know it was meant to be annoying, but still.
Yeah, that one too, definitely but I remember it being mostly tied to driving for some reason. I don’t know why but it felt like every place where there were enemies you had more of the industrial metal thing going on and while I have nothing against the genre it felt like there were only 2 or 3 songs playing and it got so damn tiresome!
 

Fuz

Banned
I can't find a clear version without someone talking over it, will update if I do.

Here's mine.
From a game that has a fantastic soundtrack (well, it's an easy "best of"), every time this one comes up I mute my phone. It's awful. The composition and singing are so "constructed", fake and so bad that it's offensive. It's cringe tryhard. I hate it with a burning passion.



EDIT: Reddit found it for me




Bonus: any Jpop/Kpop. May their fake creators burn in hell forever.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
I have a problem calling a music BAD. Making a music you listen to and can genuinely think "i hate this" is an artform itself.

What i call bad music is stuff thats utterly forgetful, like many pop-songs for example, or things that can't be called music and just feel like random noise, like that Crazy Bus theme. In the case of games and movies, maybe a music that isn't necessarely BAD, but feels out of place. There's also the case of someone with no skills trying to play a music.

Usually, BAD music is DESIGNED to be BAD. And in their BAD-ness, they can end up being charming or memorable in their own way. Be with the use of annoying and unpleasant sounds in a melodic way, or a purposefully out-of-tune melody meant to cause discomfort.



 
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Kilau

Gold Member
I have a specific one that i hate and people love, so better not post...Im too lazy to reply tons of quotes...

do it jewish GIF


i'll quote you until you give it up then
I agree
 

Thabass

Member

This makes the song listenable.

Also I found remember my real post now:



Final Fantasy X's Wandering (also called Wandering Flame) HD Remastered version completely ruins the original song.

Some of the FFX HD Remastered versions are...not good. I can see what they were trying to do, but the mystique of the song is just ruined from the original versions. I used to be able to listen to this song when chilling on my deck of my old house and just vibe. I can't vibe with this version and it just ruins the overall effect of the song for me.

This isn't the only song that I think was really ruined in the Remastered OST. Really a shame, because how good the original soundtrack was; I don't think a Remastered version was necessary.
 

Fbh

Member
Oh just remembered the Boss Battle theme in Blue Dragon.
Adding to me overall disappointment with the game I was expecting some cool Uematsu style boss music instead I get Ian Gillain seemingly having a stroke while singing gibberish



(also every time he says "you can't" it sounds like "chicken")
 

poodaddy

Gold Member
Oh just remembered the Boss Battle theme in Blue Dragon.
Adding to me overall disappointment with the game I was expecting some cool Uematsu style boss music instead I get Ian Gillain seemingly having a stroke while singing gibberish



(also every time he says "you can't" it sounds like "chicken")

Man those instrumentals are fuckin sick....and completely goddamn ruined by the vocals lol.
 
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Fbh

Member
Man those instrumentals are fuckin sick....and completely goddamn ruined by the vocals lol.

Yeah the instrumental are good but the vocals are just awful.
I swear people who say they love the song just feel obliged to do so because it's Ian Gillain
It's ok guys, you can dislike this and still be Deep Purple fans.
 
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