The Wildcard slot is reserved for special award categories that may only be feasible to have for only this year and deserve further deliberation. This year, we are celebrating the good tunes that graced us in games with Best Soundtrack.
The [Wildcard] slot of the GM GOTY Awards takes a new turn this year with celebrating music, specifically. Usually, talks of soundtrack and music quality gets rolled into the all-encompassing Best Aesthetic award, so this year we tried something different and see if we can talk as much just about music alone.
Previous [Wildcard] Awards: Best Horror Game (2023)
Best Soundtrack Nominees
- 1000xResist
- Astro Bot
- Balatro
- Persona 3 Reload
- Stellar Blade
Deliberations Summary (How The Winner Is Decided)
Given this is new territory, the team cooked up wild ways to gauge how good the selected nominees’ soundtrack are. That includes how the music fare up when listened on a car’s stereo.
1000xResist and Stellar Blade sure had clear influences from one of our favourite games, GM GOTY 2017 Nier Automata, but in different ways. The former has more synths going for it, the latter has the melancholic serenades of a Korean singer singing in gibberish, both leaving us longing for something.
Meanwhile, Astro Bot’s soundtrack is just jovial all around. Unfortunately there’s no track that tops “I’m Your GPU” from Astro’s Playroom, but it got close. Though the looping dance rave of “Perseverance” as one repeat those platforming challenge levels is quite the anthem.
Balatro’s music is something else entirely. Composed by the developer literally going on Fiverr to have one done, the ethereal, low-key, comforting music is like the bass in a rock band: you don’t really feel it does much as part of the music, but when it’s not there you can immediately tell and it’s jarring to not have it there. We highly rate the soothing ambience of gamblecore, apparently.
So the winner here comes as a surprise. Initially, it wasn’t rank as high as this game is a remake, and as such, the core of the soundtrack has already been established for years. The new songs and re-arrangements are great, but we’re not celebrating something really new.
But then, the conversation went to a point that maybe because the songs are so evergreen, they still sound good and fresh as they were back in 2009, maybe it deserves a shout. It’s a soundtrack that the entire team is familiar with. The hip-hop beats still bangs. The epilogue music still stings real deep. And yes, Lotus Juice still brings the juice to the bar(s).
Best Soundtrack Winner
Congratulations to Persona 3 Reload for winning Best Soundtrack! The hip-hop, rock and pop beats by Shoji Meguro still hits as hard, and the new additions only makes it better.
Check out the Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2024 hub for full list of awards.