Mass Effect 3 Soundtrack Review

• Name: Mass Effect 3 N7 Collector's Edition Soundtrack
• Label: EA Recordings
• Composer(s): Various
• Number of Tracks: 25

For each of the previous Mass Effect games, I've acquired the soundtrack and as a result, I've become even more of a fan of Jack Wall's work. Unfortunately, Mass Effect 3 doesn't have Jack Wall involved and instead has some subdued, mellow, piano music thanks to Clint Mansell. At first, I was going "What?! This isn't the Mass Effect I remember. Mass Effect is meant to have synth beats like you'd see in retro 80s sci-fi flicks!" However, I must admit that the music has grown on me and now Leaving Earth is now one of my favourite tracks and I daresay one of the iconic themes for this particular iteration of the series.

Fortunately, there is some continuity with the awesome music and themes created in the earlier games, thanks to Sam Hulick. Ones I particularly like are the epic The Fleets Arrive and the moving I'm Proud of You. The best of Sam Hulick's bunch of tracks has to be We Face Our Enemy Together which is played when Commander Shepard makes his last inspirational speech. It's also played during the main menu and is in fact based off the ME1 track, Victory.

The other artists (Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikicyan and Chris Lennertz) have also contributed some pretty solid tracks to this great sci-fi music album. The character creation music, aptly titled Creation, is probably the best character creation music in the Mass Effect series. It manages to incorporate the original Mass Effect theme yet make it sound fresh.

Score - 7/10

You can grab the album off Big Pond Music although it's not actually the Collector's Edition soundtrack (so it misses a couple of tracks). You could always buy the N7 Digital Deluxe Edition if you're planning on buying the game anyway, although it's $20 more - so it really depends if you want the other stuff.