Sonic Forces - Music Thread

[Soniman]

We've got to hear a few tracks so we might as well get the ball rolling with this.

So in a surprising upset, the music for a Sonic game has been seen as (like the rest of the game) very mixed by fans. Some liking what they heard, others finding it forgettable or just downright bad. 

So far we know that as usual, Tomoya Ohanti is heading the soundtrack and a another recently confirmed  veteran artist, Naofumi Hataya, who lenses his talents to th eClassic Sonic boss theme.

So far I'd say the music is pretty alright so far. The main theme has a nice kick, I really enjoy custom park Avenue simply because I've missed music in level lyrical tunes for Sonic despite its chessyness, and modern park Avenue is just good ol high energy rock which I'm always a fan of. 

However shit like Classic Green Hill sounds like a hilarious God damn mess lmao, sounds like a cacophony of random 16 bit instruments which vaguely has a melody (though Tomoya said its unfinished I can't expect THAT much change)  if this is how classic's music will be handled then I have another reason to be annoyed with his inclusion. Classic boss music sounds fine though. 

So what's everyone else think? 

[Sean]

I absolutely LOVE Park Avenue Custom, and I've had it on repeat for the last few days. It's so catchy, both of the vocals are excellent and set the tone perfectly, and the Sonic R-esque female singing made me lose my shit like you won't believe. This is the best vocal track to come out of the series in ages, and I'm not just referring to the absence of a vocal track in the past few games - I mean this is probably the catchiest motherfucker since the Adventure days. I dig.

I'm honestly shocked that few people are impressed by the song, at best it's had a pretty lukewarm reception. I think it's fantastic.

[SolFlint]

I'm mostly meh on Park Avenue (Custom Hero)'s theme. Its opening vocals I'm not too fond of, but the female lead singer's vocals I thought was good. Composition wise, it's alright, but it's not really memorable IMO and not sure if it's exactly fitting the setting of Park Avenue apocalypse.

Green Hill classic just sounds flat out bad to me. I'll admit that I like Sonic 4's soundtrack (moreso Episode 2). Weird instrument choices aside, I thought it had good compositions and catch myself singing along to its soundtrack whenever I hear it. Green Hill's theme in Forces sounds more like one of the ripoff Sonic songs from Lego Dimensions and the lead instrument is just annoying.

This is extremely telling to me, because I wasn't expecting anything grand from the game anyway, I tend to just look forward to the soundtracks. But from what I've heard, this may end up being one of the very few Sonic soundtracks that ends up being mediocre, in a series that's typically praised for it's music.

[Endy]

I haven't been much of a fan of the direction they've been taking with the soundtracks since Lost World and Sonic Runners. Hell, even Sonic Generation's soundtrack was mostly just okay. It's all slowly becoming more and more generic I find this sound more of a bore than almost everything they've had before. Every song we've heard so far sounds like a mess, the instrumentation they've been going with for this one sounds downright awful. All of it is very high pitched and screechy, and combined with the Classic Sonic's poor attempts at recreating a genesis sound and Modern Sonic's samey, forgettable buttrock, I doubt this soundtrack is going to make for a very pleasant listening experience.

[Baconjack]

I like Park Avenue - Custom. The song is rather catchy, and the lyrics are great. Gives me Sonic R vibes.

But Green Hill Classic - that poor excuse for a song is arguably one of the worst songs I've heard in a Sonic game. The main instrument sounds like a 16-bit kazoo.

The main theme is one of my favourite Sonic themes so far. Can't wait for it to get lyrics...

Finally, what I've heard from Park Avenue - Modern seems very similar to what I've heard in Unleashed.

[DiamondX]

I honestly LOVE all the songs we heard so far. 

Main Theme is amazing, can't wait to hear the lyrics.

Green Hill sounds pretty good and it's not a remix, but something new.

Park Avenue with CaC is just incredible. Vocals are back and I hope we get more. (I think GHZ with CaC also had some)

Modern Park Avenue sounds great but you can't really hear the song because of the sounds effects.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

My current jam is the Park Avenue (avatar) theme. The tunes and the beat are so good, and the female vocals made the track even better. The main theme of this game sounds nice too! I just hope the vocals won't be messed up. 

But I will admit that the Green hill (Classic) theme didn't sound so well. The beat's there, but they should've picked a better instrument for it. 

The songs that I want to hear next is Modern's Park Avenue theme. I managed to hear some of it in some gameplay videos, and from what I heard, it sounds really promising. Here's hoping we get a higher quality version of it!

The vocals from the Green Hill (Avatar) theme sound crazy, from what I heard...

[JezMM]

I love most of the music so far, Classic Green Hill is a bit dodgy but I like the melody of it, just hoping they polish up the pace and instrumentation etc.

 

My only KINDA disappointment is I was looking forward to each stage having a consistent theme that is remixed into the three different styles, like typical Sonic Zone/Act music.  Seems they're going the full Sonic Adventure 2 route where each character has their own musical style and a completely unique theme for each environment.  That's fine too, but it does just make a bit of dissonance between location and visuals sometimes.  The main issue is that the pace of all three characters is much more similar.  Meteor Herd and Final Rush having totally different music despite using the same environment aesthetic made sense because the pace and feel of the levels is very different.  The same isn't quite so true of Sonic Forces, which not only has characters all of a similar pace but literally re-uses maps between characters.

 

Still, the songs are solid and we'll get a bunch of them it seems, so can't complain too much.  I also dig the way the Avatar's Green Hill theme actually encompasses a few pastiches of original Green Hill in a creative way.

[Dizcrybe]

From what I've heard so far I only really dislike Classic's music. If it really is just a placeholder, I want a full instrument overhaul by the time the game drops. Modern sounds great, Avatar is corny but Sonic vocal music is corny pretty much by default.

[Dannymax440]

I wonder if character vocals will be available.

Liking the soundtrack so far.

 The result screen music appears to be taking a few cues from Unleashed.

[doctorbenMD]

Modern Park Avenue I love. Can't wait to hear the full track without the sound effects.

Classic GHZ is grating on the ears. Like someone said, it sounds like a kazoo. It's literal ass that's trying to say "look! whee! fun throwback!"

Avatar music is okay. I like the female vocals, but the male vocals are a little cringy. 

Hoping for some Crush 40, since Jun was with Tomoya in California for the sound mixing a few months ago.

[PC the Hedgehog]

I love the majority of tunes thus far. It seems like Ohtani is going for a more classic-style Sonic soundtrack as opposed for the more contemporary work he did in 06, Unleashed, Colors, and the like, and just about everything I've heard so far is as catchy as any classic Sonic track.

Except classic Sonic's Green Hill music. Much as I hate to say it, it's awful.

And wait, Naofumi Hataya is gonna be helping compose? Yes!

[Blue Blood]

This is pretty bad.

[Nepenthe]

It's a cute song to me; gives me cheesy Sonic R-ish vibes.

It just...doesn't really fit?

[Bobnik]

From what I heard, the soundtrack looks to be a big improvement over Lost World. Modern and Custom Park Avenue sound really good to me. Green Hill Custom also sounds nice, especially at the final part of the level with the giant enemy crab, reminds me of Zero Gravity OST somehow.

Classic is... weird. Green Hill has an okay melody, but the instruments sound ear-rapey-ish. The Eggman boss fight music sounds better, but still not as great as I'd like. Then again, these songs are not as bad other bad songs of this franchise, so eh.

[MainJP]

 

At 0:32 the Park Avenue theme sounds a bit like Column Dive (specifically at 0:25 and 0:37) from Columns lll on the MegaDrive.

Anyone else hears it?

[FriendBot]

I'm in good terms with Forces' music and its direction so far.

Rock for Modern, chiptune for Classic and EDM with vocals for the Custom Hero.

Modern Park Avenue sounds good from what I heard. While the instrumentation is a bit weird, I do like the beat of Classic Green Hill. Destiny Lies Before You is probably my favorite track out of them all, corny lyrics with some dope EDM count me in BOI! The Main Theme is also pretty good stuff as well! Didn't hear much of the Classic bossfight with the Egg Dragoon but it's decent, I guess? Not my personal favorite from Hataya. I do like what I'm hearing Custom Hero's Green Hill but I guess that's just because I really do like EDM and any sort of electronic music.

[JezMM]

On 15/06/2017 at 7:22 PM, Blue Blood said:

This is pretty bad.

 

On 15/06/2017 at 7:26 PM, Nepenthe said:

It's a cute song to me; gives me cheesy Sonic R-ish vibes.

It just...doesn't really fit?

If you listen carefully though it's literally a partial remix of the original Green Hill Zone theme (which is kinda bizarre considering Classic Sonic's Green Hill ISN'T that and in fact uses bits of Splash Hill).

This is an issue with going back to the Sonic Adventure 2 style though, in which each character as a set instrumentation style.  It wasn't so jarring in that game since each level was a unique map with it's own personality or small twist on whatever the shared aesthetic was, but here it's kind of weird that (at least in Park Avenue's case) a totally different song is being used for the same environment depending on what character you're using.

[Indigo Rush]

On 6/15/2017 at 2:22 PM, Blue Blood said:

This is pretty bad.

You just don't realize

That you can do it if you try

[Pawn]

5 hours ago, JezMM said:

 

If you listen carefully though it's literally a partial remix of the original Green Hill Zone theme (which is kinda bizarre considering Classic Sonic's Green Hill ISN'T that and in fact uses bits of Splash Hill).

This is an issue with going back to the Sonic Adventure 2 style though, in which each character as a set instrumentation style.  It wasn't so jarring in that game since each level was a unique map with it's own personality or small twist on whatever the shared aesthetic was, but here it's kind of weird that (at least in Park Avenue's case) a totally different song is being used for the same environment depending on what character you're using.

Even though each of SA2's musical styles were tied to characters, care was taken to make sure the individuals songs matched the environment and/or narrative context. The Avatar's Park Avenue and Green Hill could be swapped and I wouldn't feel any different about them.

[ChikaBoing]

The orchestral mix of the Main Theme is very nice (you can hear it on the results screen), prefer it over the rock version.

[Celestia]

The only tracks I'm not feeling are the classic ones. I don't need to go over how bad Classic's GHZ is, but that boss theme is...weird. It's actually not bad even, it's just weirdly...empty? Wouldn't be surprised if it was a WIP too.

[Sega DogTagz]

The vocal tracks seem to fit in well in our franchise. Some of them will be earworms for no other reason then the fact that they are weird. To this day I can't look at a pumpkin without thinking "I'm not gonna let it get to me".

I'm fine with what I've heard out of Forces so far. I'm pretty smitten with all the Park Ave stuff we've got. Got a long way to go if it wants to stack up to Unleashed or Gens soundtracks (although Gens should get omitted for having awesome interchangeable music and a ton of remixes). I hope they bring back the option to choose your song for a stage in all the milestone games. Silver's Boss + Ungravityfy is the stuff dreams are made of. I love finding music and stages that work together just through trail and error.

[ChikaBoing]

http://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/soundcolumn/ohtani/20170623_001369/

Tomoya Ohtani made a short comment on Custom Park Avenue. The genres (Dance) is new to him. An interresting detail is that it is based on the demo tape that he used for the application at Sega, or at least the feeling of it is the same.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Reviving this thread with some new shiz:

Metal Sonic's boss theme has been dubstepped. The tune here is nice, but imo, the dubstep could be toned down a notch.

And some older tracks if ya missed them: Infinite's theme and Fistbump's vocals.

Yeah, Infinite's theme is still pretty good. The rock/orchestra (?) instrumental is solid.