Little disclaimer…These reviews are my opinion on sound as a player and what engages me into a game and doesn't annoy me while playing a game. I will be rating my sound review on close-to-real as possible on certain genres. I will not rate anything on gameplay like graphics or mechanics. I am just rating sound. If I miss anything that you would like me to review on, comment or tweet me and I will update the review accordingly.
Rating is as follows: 1 through 10
1 Being BAD, what were you thinking, horrible sound.
10 Being the Best sound element ever!
Ok, let's review the sound for the game Trenched
Music: Menu music has a military snare drum sound to it and that is about it. It was subtle and not too annoying. There was a low tone rumble while in game play to keep the tension and stress up but other than that, that was it when it came to music. It would have been cool to have options to play various rock music as you fight the waves of enemies. Since I use a hybrid headset system, I can plug my rock in and play with the game sound as well. (But I only did that AFTER I did a sound review.)
Music gets a 7.5 just due to lack of music throughout the game.
Ambient: Ok, what lacks in music sure makes up for in ambient. Double Fine did an awesome job handling the ambient sounds in this game. There were very diverse sounds for each unique portion of the game. Everything from being on the ship to being on the ground fighting. While on the ship, you could hear the water, the seagulls, the mechanical noise, siren/warning sounds and even the running on the deck. Menu sounds were cool with the metallic switching sounds. What I did find interesting was the subtle surround sound processing based on where you were looking to hear the appropriate sounds coming from behind you or in front of you. Good job on this for something that really didn’t need it but helps with the depth of the overall game sound design and engineering. Now while on the ground fighting, the blurping engine sound from the trench was entertaining. The walking noise of the trench was decent along with the other misc sounds that occur when you fortify/lockdown the trench. Now the one thing that I didn’t understand was the “noise” that occurred when enemies start their approach. There was no surround sound processing so you had to look around to see where they were coming from with the visual cues and their sreetching sound was very loud and the same for each enemy. It would have been better is the volume was not so loud and the noise had surround sound processing that way you had to listen to hear where they were coming from and maybe something different for each enemy. Other than that, the ambient sound did very well for this game.
Ambient gets a 9.5
Dialog: The voice overs were done very well. Kept it simple and for this type of game, it worked well. The digitized voice of “Dad” was done in a way to work with his character in the game s well as Vlad. The other voices were again simple, and kept to the overall story of the game. Good job on this one as the VO was designed and engineered well.
Dialog gets a 9
Vehicles: I won’t count the ship as it really sits in the ambient part of my review so I will focus on the Trench. The trench certainly had attention to detail to it to its fluttering engine sounds, it’s movements when you are moving about the battlefield and when it needs repair by you. J I noticed the enemies had no sounds when they moved. Is this by design? Didn’t make sense but would have been a nice detail. The weapons were all unique and reloading had some pretty cool sound but could have been a tad louder to hear the cycle of the reload. Other than that, overall a good job on the vehicles.
Vehicles get an 8.5
Overall Sound: Double Fine’s sound team headed by Brian Min did a great job with the overall sound design and engineering. There was some small issues that I wish could have had the same attention to detail as the ship got mainly the enemy sounds but all in all, no major issues with the sound. For a XBLA game, this game certainly didn’t lack in the department of producing a sound for a game that keeps me wanting to play more. There was nothing major to annoy me and I like to play this game as the sound is good and fun to listen to.
Overall sound gets an 8.5!
Trenched overall review: 8.5
That is all for now, Raptor Claw 141 out.
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