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quite creative in using sound to enhance the player’s
involvement. Resident Evil, for instance, shows a
superb handling of sound effects that is directly
influenced by its movie forebears. One room is eerily
silent, whereas a large galleried hall is ominously and
stressfully dominated by the solemn ticking of a clock.
When the moans of zombies suddenly float out of
nowhere, or the silence is broken by the piercing sound
of a smashing window, you know you had better run.
Silent Hill, too, does this sort of thing very well. Early
on in the game, the player’s character is given a radio
that seems to be broken, but it emits a nerve-fraying
fortissimo jangling noise whenever a monster is
approaching. The evocation of fear is deliciously
heightened by this aural sign, as you run around
panicking when the alarm goes off, not knowing from
which direction the beast is going to approach through
the omnipresent fog.
Videogames’ musical soundtracks, too, are an
important part of the player’s aesthetic experience. But
oddly, in the far-off days of the Commodore 64 and
Amiga, videogame music was far more distinct as a
stylistic genre than it is now. The composers generally
had to wrestle with programming languages to force the
most sophisticated sound possible out of woefully
