NOW! That's what GR calls crap music

Game graphics can be bad. But how many times have they been so bad you've looked for an option to turn them off? Never. That would be stupid. But sound, on the other hand, often has an 'off' option. It's like the developers have realized there's the teeniest, tiniest possibility their soundtrack may start to grate after extended play. Take this as a warning.

You know the story - you're stuck in one area of a game, at first excited by the challenge of a puzzle or a jump you can't quite make. Then you realize the music's stuck on a loop. Hmm... it isn't very good. Actually it's getting irritating. Minutes pass. No progress. Music loops. Stop it. Minutes pass. Music loops. Make it stop. Music loops. Make It STOP! Music loops. Aaaaarrrrgh! Cue smashed game disc, trashed living room and fractured mind.

But suffering alone is no fun, so we thought we'd share our pain with you. We've got the creme de la crap of gaming's music all lined up and waiting to be endured. So click on through if you dare - seriously, some of these may leave mental scars that won't ever heal. You have been warned.

Justin Towell

Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.

Latest in Games
Balatro
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Kingmakers
Kingmakers is a strategy game about taking on medieval armies with a gun, but its devs thought the giant mech was too much
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
A misty, forested mountainside in Prologue: Go Wayback!
PUBG creator's wilderness survival game actually draws inspiration from an unexpected place - a whole raft of zombie games like DayZ, Project Zomboid, and Left 4 Dead
Latest in News
Balatro
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Kingmakers
Kingmakers is a strategy game about taking on medieval armies with a gun, but its devs thought the giant mech was too much
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
Daredevil recap: The Defenders
Marvel fans are discussing which of the Netflix series characters would have survived the Blip