We ran every game through the same listening pass with the same headphones and the same reference level, then compared quiet dialogue against loud combat. In twenty-three of thirty-eight, the gap was wide enough that following a conversation and surviving a fight required different volume settings.
Each review records the dialogue-to-effects gap, positional accuracy on headphones and speakers, dynamic range across quiet and loud scenes, and the quality of the subtitle implementation.
Sound underwater should be directionally vague, and this game commits to that while still letting you locate what matters. We tested it blind, navigating by ear alone, and completed two sections without looking at the screen.
The game ducks every other sound when the radio speaks, which is genuinely frightening for two hours and mechanical for the next six. A brilliant idea applied without variation until it stops being one.
Thirty-eight games, one set of headphones, one reference level. Quiet dialogue against loud combat, with the gap in decibels and a note on whether a separate dialogue slider existed to fix it.
A rhythm game whose entire input window depends on a transient that speakers smear into inaudibility. Excellent on headphones, close to unplayable without them, and the game never says so.
We graded subtitle implementation in all thirty-eight games on size, contrast, speaker labelling and whether effects were captioned at all. Nine passed everything. Four failed on contrast alone.
Long stretches with nothing but wind and footsteps, and then a single sound that means something. The dynamic range is the widest in our table, which is a compliment and a warning about late-night play.
Note
Five city-builders measured for how often an alert interrupts the ambient bed. The worst averaged one every eleven seconds at moderate city size, which is not a soundscape but a smoke alarm.
Note
Continuous noise with no rhythm is difficult to make interesting and easy to make exhausting. Four mountaineering games, four different failures, and one that solved it by simply using less of it.
