Game music wouldn’t be what it is without rock and metal—here are the legendary tracks you should add to your playlists immediately
Soundtrack Sunday
Welcome to Soundtrack Sunday, where a member of the PC Gamer team takes a look at a soundtrack from one of their favourite games—or a broader look at videogame music as a whole—offering a little backstory and recommendations for tracks you should be adding to your playlist.
July 22, 2025 saw metalheads everywhere go into mourning as Ozzy Osbourne—the Prince of Darkness and early pioneer of heavy metal alongside his band Black Sabbath—died at the age of 76. Just 17 days after returning to his hometown of Birmingham for one final farewell show that raised $200 million for charity.
While his direct involvement in videogames over the years was fairly minimal, it’s hard to deny how much his influence has trickled down into our much-loved hobby. As a Sabbath lover and fellow Brummie, Osbourne’s death has had me reflecting on my own journey with metal music, and the formative years spent playing videogames with all manner of heavy riffs that went on to shape my weird little emo nerd self.
While games have been well-known to borrow all manner of rockin’ licensed music, there’s also a plethora of incredibly neat original scores that pull from the alternative scene. Here’s a few of my personal favourites, plus recommendations from the PC Gamer team that I listened to and really loved.
Otherworld – Final Fantasy 10
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Final Fantasy 10 is a game often scored by sad piano twinkling and delicate strings. After all, it’s a game all about sending a young girl to her death while we, as the protagonist, slowly fall in love with her. It’s a pretty heart-wrenching story!
It also makes Otherworld stand out even more among the rest of its soundtrack. A heavy metal piece that plays during the game’s very first cutscene, opening things with a bang. It’s penned by legendary Square composer Nobuo Uematsu, with lyrics by localiser Alexander O Smith and performed by xtillidiex frontman Bill Muir.
After being lulled into a false sense of security by To Zanarkand playing on the title screen, Final Fantasy 10 opens up in almost dead silence. The camera slowly pans down onto protagonist Tidus, zooming in on his eye. It opens, and with it the tough-as-nails riff to Otherworld comes crashing in. We get to see Tidus playing Blitzball while Auron gets to, you know, look all cool and mysterious and stuff.
Not only is it a ridiculously hype way to kickstart a JRPG, the song rips in its own right. It’s been a mainstay in my gym playlist for a hot sec, for good reason. While the Final Fantasy series has experimented with metal tracks in subsequent games, nothing has ever quite reached the highs of Otherworld for me.
The Instinct – Killer Instinct Gold
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It’s safe to say that Killer Instinct Gold on the Nintendo 64 is probably the very first time my young ears bore witness to rock and metal music. The Instinct is a real masterclass in building tension—seeing the N64 and Rare logos flash up on screen as the theme song quietly bubbles away in the background, only teasing with a couple of instruments.
Then the title screen blasts up on screen, kicking the song into full gear as a melodic guitar wails away in the background. Composer Robin Beanland absolutely cooked on the original Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct 2 soundtracks, even managing to wrangle the N64’s inferior audio card and limited memory to create something that was staggeringly close to the latter’s arcade version.
Mick Gordon also did a fantastic job of recreating the theme when Killer Instinct had its revival in 2013. He manages to take The Instinct’s core DNA and build upon it, making it punchier while successfully retaining that tension in the initial buildup by playing on the theme’s iconic riff, layering different instruments together before kicking into the main meat of the track.
It’s real good, and Gordon talking a little to Hold Back to Block about the process of reimagining the song is super interesting—you even get to hear some earlier concepts he put together for the track, none of which hold a candle to the final product if you ask me.
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Have I ever played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Sure haven’t! Do I think that Rules of Nature is a sheer masterpiece? Sure do!
It’s another one of those songs that really helps to set the tone for the game, as I’ve been told by countless of my Metal Gear Rising enjoyer pals. If you couldn’t already tell, I’m a total sucker for rock and metal songs that slowly build the tension with layering instruments and vocals, and Rules of Nature is no different.
Jason Charles Miller—a truly iconic vocalist who’s not only done a bunch of stuff in the music industry but has lent his voice to a handful of songs in the likes of Guilty Gear and Final Fantasy 14—kicks off with some super melodic vocals before shouting out the iconic song title, and the whole thing kicks into the chorus.
It’s one of those songs that has since propelled itself to meme status with the likes of ‘Rules of Nature Goes With Everything’ and hell, it sure does. Funny enough, Miller wasn’t even aware of the meme for several years. Likely a byproduct of his vocals not being credited on the track until much later down the line.
Herald of Darkness – Alan Wake 2
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Okay, this is an incredibly niche pick. I also have to admit I haven’t quite gotten around to Alan Wake 2 yet, with this recommendation coming from our senior editor Robin Valentine. After giving the 13-minute long version a listen to (there’s also a version that’s 30 minutes and one that’s three), I can certainly see the appeal.
I’ll let Robin tell you what’s just so darn good about this track. He does a much better job than me:
Robin Valentine
Heavy metal occupies a special place in Remedy’s shared universe of games. Fictional band Old Gods of Asgard not only contributes to the soundtrack in all three Alan Wake games and Control, but its members also appear as pivotal characters—aging rockers whose music has quite literally changed the world. Their songs, performed by real Finnish band Poets of the Fall, underpin arguably the most memorable moments in all four games. Alan Wake 2’s Herald of Darkness sequence in particular is incredible—a playable rock opera, using music as a campy window into Alan’s mind and the surreal limbo he finds himself trapped in. You couldn’t mistake it for anything other than a loving tribute to the studio’s relationship with heavy metal and classic rock.
Rip and Tear – Doom 2016
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It would’ve been remiss of me to talk about sick videogame tracks while totally ignoring one of the most metal videogames out there. Now I’ll admit I’ve never played Doom, but has that stopped me from rinsing its soundtrack top-to-bottom? Of course not.
Mick Gordon has already technically made an appearance on this list, but it’s for a good reason. His work is stellar, a bona fide metal composer in the videogame space. He also did a bunch of work on one of my all-time favourite EPs, Bring me the Horizon’s Post Human: Survival Horror.
His work on Doom 2016 is some of my favourite, and Rip & Tear is one of those tracks I go back to time and time again. The guitars and drums are meaty as all hell, and it surprises me to learn that id Software didn’t actually want Gordon using guitars at all—apparently the studio didn’t want a metal soundtrack, worrying that it would be “corny” despite the original game going all-in on heavy metal.
Thankfully it’s okay to be wrong, and Gordon was able to wrangle some shredding into the mix to produce a ripping, tearing, uncorny metal OST that, from my countless watch-throughs of Doom Let’s Plays, feels like it oozes the game’s DNA.
You Can’t Stop Us – Nikke: Goddess of Victory
![You CAN'T STOP US [GODDESS OF VICTORY : NIKKE OST] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/w-BhQxGk34o/maxresdefault.jpg)
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Alright, alright, put your anti-gooner pitchforks down. Nikke: Goddess of Victory has a lot of, well, boobs and butts—it’s the same developer as Stellar Blade, after all—but it also packs a surprisingly gripping story and, more crucially, a killer soundtrack.
That’s because a huge chunk of Nikke’s songs are concocted by some real legends in the rhythm game scene—Korean composer Cosmograph is with Shift Up full time these days, with a handful of contributions from NieN who features right underneath this entry.
Cosmograph plays with a whole bunch of genres across Nikke’s score—some of my favourite non-metal tracks are The Harvester, Splinter Heated, and Khamsin Upper Mix—but You Can’t Stop Us is one of the heavier tracks to make an appearance.
As most rock and metal scores are, You Can’t Stop Us is the theme for a pretty prominent boss who features heavily towards the beginning of the game: Chatterbox, a devastating Rapture (think corrupted machines) who causes quite the kerfuffle at the beginning of the story and continues to be a menace for quite some time afterwards.
The song starts heavy and maintains that high-octane energy throughout, which feels more than fitting for such a fearsome foe. Just ignore all of the jiggly butts shooting away at him while you’re trying to rock out.
Stay Alive – DJ MAX Respect V
As a rhythm game sicko I couldn’t complete this list without at least one entry from my favourite genre.
Something I absolutely adore about rhythm games is just how eclectic any one’s library of songs can be. You’ve got eurodance, drum and bass, house, pop, R&B, and of course, a little bit of rock and metal.
DJ MAX Respect V is one of the rhythm games that really does it all, and you can almost chart Korea’s fondness for different music genres across the years with each game in the series over the years. It admittedly took DJ MAX a while to start embracing the heavier side of things, but it now sports some absolute bangers, much like NieN’s Stay Alive.
It’s one of the songs featured in V Extension 4, and almost sounds like something I would have expected to hear on Kerrang! Radio back in the 2010s. It kicks in hard with heavy drums and a shrieky guitar riff, before toning down into something more ominous and then ramping right back up again for the chorus, switching back and forth between deep growling vocals and more melodic lyricism.
It’s one of my must-picks whenever I play an online lobby with friends, and yet another mainstay on my ever-growing videogame gym playlist. Just, er, ignore the strange AI-generated music video. It’s better for your health to pretend it isn’t there.
Marionette – Guilty Gear
Guilty Gear is the king of rockin’ fighting game music, and it was hard to pick just one song from almost three decades of musical excellence. But I got there eventually, and if I had to pick one it would be Elphelt Valentine’s theme: Marionette.
She was introduced in Xrd, and her theme song is essentially a rippin’ six-minute guitar solo that has me hooked for every single second. It’s composed by Daisuke Ishiwatari, who is responsible for a whole host of bangers across the series. Oh, and he’s also the guy who literally created Guilty Gear. Almost forgot that little fact.
Marionette feels oddly old-school despite only being around a decade old, and that blend of vintage riffing with modern-day mixing gives the whole thing a real unique vibe. There’s also something I kind of love about the juxtaposition of Elphelt’s cutesy bridal appearance and her theme song, too.
I absolutely implore you to scope out the rest of Ishiwatari’s work across his series, as well as some of the tracks he composed for BlazBlue. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to learn how to play Elphelt while listening to Marionette on repeat for the next several hours.
