Against my better judgement, I’ve been getting into MOBAs a little bit this year. Unfortunately, mucking around in League of Legends’ ARAM with my veteran pals felt like a hydrogen bomb (them, the videogame) versus a coughing baby (me playing any champ that wasn’t Yuumi).
Critical Hit
Welcome to Critical Hit, where I (or someone else on the PC Gamer team) celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears tingle.
So when they all decided to get into Deadlock a few weeks ago, I took it as an opportunity to dive in alongside them—partly thanks to being utterly inundated with Rem-related posts from one of my close pals in the days prior. And you know what? It’s good. I’m admittedly a bit of a MOBA disliker—from the outside looking in, it’s an awful lot of faff and jargon and a high skill ceiling that I’m not traditionally ready to work towards.
But where Deadlock is concerned? I might just put that effort in. It’s not just because of its gameplay (which is very good, mind) but the fact that Valve has created one of the coolest, vibe-iest games I’ve played in a hot sec. It looks great, it feels great, and most importantly for this here column that you’re reading, it sounds amazing.
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From the very first moments of the main menu’s playfully ominous jazz notes, I was sold. It perfectly encapsulates this strange, eerie 1950s New York that’s all about performing rituals and summoning elder gods.
If Valve knows how to do anything with its music in Deadlock, it’s how to perfectly build this sense of anticipation and foreboding. The track that plays when you’re in the Hideout—Deadlock’s lobby, essentially—is subtle. Almost so subtle that you might not notice it over the chaos of your pals spamming ultimates off cooldown in the adjacent training room. But it sports this mysterious finesse befitting of a supernatural gang preparing to unleash havoc across New York.
That tension builds even further when you get into the character select screen, which dials up the creepiness just that touch more. And then, finally, searching for a match layers even more instruments on top with this delightful little drum beat that dances between each ear. Having the track slowly unfurl the way it does across the process of loading in and searching for a match? It’s honestly bloody brilliant.
For me, though, two tracks stand out above all others: For the King, and Street Brawl’s item draft jingle.
For the King is a mere 41 seconds(!!) long, used when you’re placed on the Hidden King team for your match. It’s got this gnarly riff that almost sounds like it’s being blasted through the broken speakers of your high school sweetheart’s secondhand car, but it’s good. It’s the perfectly evil vibe, and has me secretly wishing I’ll get Hidden King over Archmother every time I load into a game.
And it is such a shame that I do not mesh with Street Brawl, because the music that plays while you’re picking your items between rounds? Hoo boy. I cannot overstate how clever it feels as a track. It once again digs deep for that sense of mystery—fitting, considering all of your items are random—but the entire time, in the background, you can hear the ticking of a clock. It permeates through the rest of the track at random intervals, but it’s always there.
That ticking feels like such a brilliant little detail, considering you only get a short amount of time to flip through each item set and pick the ones you want to add to your arsenal. Take too long to pick? The music switches up, becoming more urgent and almost uncomfortable to listen to as the clock ticks down to the round beginning.
I know I shouldn’t have underestimated Valve considering all of the very good music it has made over the years, but I wasn’t expecting to be so thoroughly impressed with Deadlock’s soundtrack as I am. It’s some of the most thoughtful, exciting, charismatic composing I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in years, and the fact that it actually makes me want to play a MOBA even more? That’s just good song crafting.
