I went to the Playstation Concert! ft. music from The Last of Us, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn & More...

I love attending live orchestra performances of movie/tv scores (even if I always forget to write about them here) - in the past few years, I've enjoyed performances of the music from Whiplash, Into the Spider-Verse, Hans Zimmer, Marvel, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Last of Us, Joe Hisaishi, and a few more! And this weekend, I attended the official Playstation Concert...

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The concert kicked off with a personal favourite soundtrack of mine: Horizon Zero Dawn, an open-world post-apocalyptic action game with robot creature (are you sold already?). Joris de Man, The Flight and Julie Elven's music has accompanied many hours of writing and working for me, and I love both games a lot. The creators of this show clearly looked into my brain because, in addition to Aloy's main theme, they performed two of my most replayed tracks: 'City on the Mesa' and 'The Good News' (the music during a memorable cutscene in which the fascinating origins of the machines are revealed). Both are brilliant, the first leaning into the tribal, ancient feel of the world's apocalyptic civilization, and the second capturing the futuristic sci-fi vibe of its story.

Throughout the concert, the onstage screens transition through visuals from the game which, though impressive, worked for some sections more effectively than others. I found it best when they used the in-game artwork and gameplay, rather than some slightly basic moving images - but it's a minor quibble and it was generally very engaging!

Next up, hearing Ilan Eshkeri's main theme from Ghost of Tsushima, a Samurai open-world action-adventure, was amazing - you might remember it accompanying the absolutely brilliant title drop after the game's prologue. This section also included motifs for the game's supporting characters and villain. The use of drums here was particularly great, as were the visuals (no surprise given how beautiful the game is).

(The first half also featured segments for Helldivers, Bloodborne and Journey, which I am familiar with but haven't played myself - I enjoyed these sections anyway!)

We came back from the intermission and started with the iconic adventurous theme from Naughty Dog Studio's treasure hunting blockbuster series, Uncharted, which I'm actually surprised didn't get a bigger section compared to some of the other games given how popular it is.

After that, we reached what I would say are the two star features of the concert, the first being The Last of Us. I'd been lucky enough to see Gustavo Santaolalla's orchestral performance of his music at Southbank last year which was an emotional, atmospheric mood board of the game's soundtrack. This weekend's concert captured the same raw, haunting sound of the world of TLOU, but also featured a more upbeat performance of 'Sadie' by Crooked Still (which plays during the barn dance in Part II). Also given the, um, recent events of the HBO show, the 'All Gone' theme - which is devastating on the best of days - hit like a ton of bricks, especially alongide clips of Joel and Ellie.

Perhaps the showstopper of the entire evening was Bear McCreary's God of War soundtrack. McCreary is one of my favourite composers working today (check out my article about his music here), and God of War is one of his best pieces of work - epic and mythical, but also hauntingly sad. Though the choir portion was pre-recorded (which may be a disappointment to some), the power of the music positively boomed, and with the accompanying gameplay, made for a fantastically impactful segment. Highlights were the haunting 'Memories of Mother' theme, 'A Son's Path' from Ragnarok, and a cover of Hozier's Blood Upon the Snow, which ends with an absolutely electrifying blend of song and score.

The last game before the encore was the 'Game of the Year'-winning platformer AstroBot, which was so much fun. 'I'm your GPU' is such a brilliantly fun bop (that I legitimately wanted to sing along to); I'd listen to a whole other concert of AstroBot bops... Astrobops?

The finale of the night was Marvel's Spider-Man, which I almost forgot about as a major Playstation title, but was glad to see here. John Paesano's heroic theme has a special sense of nostalgia for me, as the first Playstation game I played - and the title that properly got me into gaming in the first place back in 2021.

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Overall, the Playstation concert was a great time! Though some of the pre-recorded backing tracks and lack of 'classic' titles may be a disappointment to some, I really enjoyed hearing the music from some of my favourite video game soundtracks.