Soundtrack September: Forsaken

Game: Forsaken (1998)
Platform: PlayStation
Composers: Dominic Glynn, Stephen Root (as The Swarm)

Forsaken was a zero-gravity FPS in which the player traversed non-linear levels on a futuristic "bike." It had a punishing difficulty level and an unfortunate Mature rating from the ESRB (solely because of a completely unnecessary, violent but cheesy pre-rendered opening cutscene), which may have hurt its success. It's also worth noting that the game came out right after the movie Titanic, and featured a woman on the cover who looked a little like Kate Winslet.

Tattoo my face like one of your French girls.

The Playstation version's soundtrack, stored on the game disc as Red Book audio (and therefor playable in a normal CD player), consists of nine electronic tracks, most of which have aged remarkably well. Nothing to scoff at, really; try listening to an electronic album you liked fifteen years ago and see if it's still any good to your current ears.

After setting the tone with the breakbeat title track, the album wanders in and out of drum and bass territory with some house elements. My favorite is "Reactor," a black-sheep ambient track in the middle of the album, which mixes thick layers of reverberating synths with samples of air valves closing to narrate one of the games uniformly eerie, abandoned locales.