Music.

From what depths comes Dopefish? Only the Oracle knows.

Anyway, the genres I know best are metal and VGM.

Been a VGM fan for a long, long time, and the trend toward licensed music worries me as well. I rented Gran Turismo 4 to test my HDTV's 1080i picture quality, and while the game was alright (not a fan of racing games), the soundtrack was horrendous. My exposure to racers has been Wipeout and Outrun. Where was the original chiptune or trance-techno soundtrack? Where was the little "finish line" riff? And what was this cacophony that was raping my ears?

On the plus side, soundtracks have been getting more epic and grandiose, and that's a good thing. Ace Combat is a good example of this, as is Magna Carta. There have been some good weird/experimental soundtracks in recent years too: the gothic rock sound of Nocturne, the quirky jazzy only-in-Japan-would-this-ever-rock-so-hard Katamari Damacy, and the "noise horror" of Silent Hill. Hell, for that matter, even Final Fantasy 8 had some unorthodox tunes in it, when Waymatsoo was at his peak and playing with different concepts. It's probably for those songs that the FF8 soundtrack is my favourite of the series.

I think the only soundtrack I didn't mind using licensed music (to a certain extent) was Indigo Prophecy. Being able to play Lucas' stereo added properly to the mood, and "Sandpaper Kisses" playing in Carla's apartment helped to establish her character and lifestyle a bit. They were licensed songs, but at least they were intelligently chosen and placed. Plus, for all the potential faults of the licensed portions of that soundtrack, the car chase/apartment-flying-objects music more than made up for it.

As for metal, I'm a sucker for anything operatic/epic/grandiose, and I'm glad a lot of symphonic bands are heading that way. After Forever and Epica spring to mind, as well as Therion and some later Nightwish. I'm inhumanly pissed off at After Forever for the DRM on their latest CD, as I can't add it to my collection, but I do await Epica's next release with baited breath. If their trend continues, and the next one is as much an improvement over CtO as CtO was over Phantom Agony, they look to ascend to a higher plane of existence within the next 5 years and then inevitably make guest appearances on Stargate Atlantis.

Jam it back in, in the dark.