Posted September 02, 2012
TLDR? PC games with the best overall audio that you've played, including ambience, surround, positional cues, music score, etc.
I'm gonna sneak in and create one more thread while I have the down time. Something which is in short supply for me these days.:/
To me the importance of audio quality in a game is at about the same level as the quality of the graphics. Positional cues, ambience, surround, 3d (if available), FX, sound track, etc. Lousy flat audio is a deal breaker for me, usually. If it's an isometric view strategy game, then I can be a little more forgiving, as well as some older games, but otherwise substandard game audio breaks immersion and the atmosphere is dead to me.
I wish MS hadn't removed the audio HAL from Vista onwards and deprecated DirectSound3D. I game exclusively with headphones nowadays. Current gaming audio is nice, but I can only imagine how it would sound now with 3D positional audio over headphones. There are a few modern ones out there that use it, but I haven't played them. Nowadays you have to take multi-channel and down sample that to virtual surround with headphones to get surround, but 3D > than virtual surround.
Anyway, I'm curious what you think are the best sounding games that you've played.
I'll list a few of the ones that I think have great sound, or at least had.
Bioshock - Excellent atmosphere if you can get it working correctly (Vista/Win7 user may have to do a little tinkering). Very good ambient sounds as well as positional cues. It uses FMOD but can pass through OpenaAL for 3d, and EAX if you're hardware supports it, but EAX is long dead. OpenAL isn't dead, but hardly any devs use it. I wish it was used more often, but it hasn't been updated in a couple of years and it's too much of a hassle for devs to deal with considering what other API's are offering now, from my understanding.
Speaking of OpenAL, the more current games that use it that I know of are Codemaster's racing games and Frictional games. LOTR online does as well as D&D online, or did. I assume they still do, but not sure. Other than that, it's mostly open source games that use it.
F.E.A.R. - Haven't played it in while, so I can't really compare it to current games, but from what I recall, in its time it had some nice sound effects (bullets whizzing by) and ambience.
Mass Effect - Uses OpenAL. This game you have to tweak the sound groups in the bioengine ini, as well as making sure that it's using the correct audio device and the proper amount of channels. Basically the guns and FX are too loud and the voices are too low imo, but these can be tweaked in the sound groups. There are several other sounds that you can modify too. If you can get it sounding the way that you like it, it's not bad at all. It's got a nice sound track as well. This is more of an honorable mention since it took me a while to get it sounding right. :P
Dead Space - Never finished the game, but I remember it having very good sound fx.
Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 4 - I've got a friend that only plays FPS games. He's a got a killer surround sound setup and I thought these two games sounded very well when I was watching him play.
I'm gonna sneak in and create one more thread while I have the down time. Something which is in short supply for me these days.:/
To me the importance of audio quality in a game is at about the same level as the quality of the graphics. Positional cues, ambience, surround, 3d (if available), FX, sound track, etc. Lousy flat audio is a deal breaker for me, usually. If it's an isometric view strategy game, then I can be a little more forgiving, as well as some older games, but otherwise substandard game audio breaks immersion and the atmosphere is dead to me.
I wish MS hadn't removed the audio HAL from Vista onwards and deprecated DirectSound3D. I game exclusively with headphones nowadays. Current gaming audio is nice, but I can only imagine how it would sound now with 3D positional audio over headphones. There are a few modern ones out there that use it, but I haven't played them. Nowadays you have to take multi-channel and down sample that to virtual surround with headphones to get surround, but 3D > than virtual surround.
Anyway, I'm curious what you think are the best sounding games that you've played.
I'll list a few of the ones that I think have great sound, or at least had.
Bioshock - Excellent atmosphere if you can get it working correctly (Vista/Win7 user may have to do a little tinkering). Very good ambient sounds as well as positional cues. It uses FMOD but can pass through OpenaAL for 3d, and EAX if you're hardware supports it, but EAX is long dead. OpenAL isn't dead, but hardly any devs use it. I wish it was used more often, but it hasn't been updated in a couple of years and it's too much of a hassle for devs to deal with considering what other API's are offering now, from my understanding.
Speaking of OpenAL, the more current games that use it that I know of are Codemaster's racing games and Frictional games. LOTR online does as well as D&D online, or did. I assume they still do, but not sure. Other than that, it's mostly open source games that use it.
F.E.A.R. - Haven't played it in while, so I can't really compare it to current games, but from what I recall, in its time it had some nice sound effects (bullets whizzing by) and ambience.
Mass Effect - Uses OpenAL. This game you have to tweak the sound groups in the bioengine ini, as well as making sure that it's using the correct audio device and the proper amount of channels. Basically the guns and FX are too loud and the voices are too low imo, but these can be tweaked in the sound groups. There are several other sounds that you can modify too. If you can get it sounding the way that you like it, it's not bad at all. It's got a nice sound track as well. This is more of an honorable mention since it took me a while to get it sounding right. :P
Dead Space - Never finished the game, but I remember it having very good sound fx.
Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 4 - I've got a friend that only plays FPS games. He's a got a killer surround sound setup and I thought these two games sounded very well when I was watching him play.
Post edited September 02, 2012 by JohnnyDollar
