Music Makes Your Toughest Video Games Even Harder
Each part of the video game is designed to evoke certain reactions in the players. The user interface, level design, and most importantly, the soundtrack all affect your emotional state while playing. While this can be helpful for immersion, intense music enhances the player’s sense of tension, making difficult sections of the game even harder.
Conversely, turning off music can make games easier, or at least less tiring.
I first tried this strategy when I was playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice . As a game developed by FromSoftware, Sekiro features challenging combat encounters, especially numerous boss battles. One particular boss, a two-part sword fight against Genichiro Ashina, proved to be a major setback for me.
After dozens of failed attempts, I searched the web for guides to the most effective combo attacks and other strategies to defeat him, and noticed several comments advising players with difficulty to turn off the in-game music. I’ve never tried this before, but it made sense. As with other FromSoft games, Sekiro’s boss music can be bombastic and even depressing. I thought the lack of an orchestral barrage would also make the fight easier, similar to how audiences can laugh at horror movies without background music signaling that something must be scary.
So I followed their advice and went into the Sekiro settings menu and turned off the music.
Did giving up music make Genichiro feel better? Actually yes.
Of course, it took a few more tries – and of course, refining the fight over and over again helped me learn Genichiro’s moves – but it was easier for me to focus on the timing of the attack and parry without the adrenaline rush to Yuki Kitamura’s epic soundtrack. Since then, I’ve used this trick for other difficult sections in games, such as Malenya in Elden Ring , the Nemesis boss in Returnal , or in most Tetris 99 online matches (look – the Tetris theme gets too hard, man).
Turning off the music is also a smart strategy for making scary games less stressful. For example, try turning the music off in the recent Dead Space remake if you’re struggling to keep your cool when facing hordes of Necromorphs.
It’s important to note that this is different from completely muting the game’s sound. Instead, you turn off the music, leaving the rest of the game’s sound unchanged. This way you can still monitor any important audio cues in the game. In fact, they may even be easier to hear without background music. This is pretty easy to do too; almost every game has separate sliders for music, sound effects, and voices in the options menu, so you can turn off the music without muting all sound.
It may not always be the right strategy, and it’s certainly not a cheat code, but turning off the music can make difficult or intimidating parts of a video game less intimidating. At the very least, it might make it easier to listen to something else in the background while playing .