As your dropship lands, you can hear fighting in the distance, the bark of machine guns, and the shrieks of launched missiles. Your worries and fears slip away as you hear that familiar mechanical whirl of servos all around you and stand up, a towering behemoth made of metal and weapons that will turn the tide of battle, a mech.
Syrinscape produces apps that provide amazing, highly immerse soundtracks for use in your Roleplaying Games (RPGs). Fanboy Comics’ Jason Enright wrote a great write-up of the Fantasy Player, but it is by no means the only toy Syrinscape has available.
The Sci-Fi Player introduced two new soundsets recently, Mech Battle and Nuclear Submarine, and damn are they cool. If you play Battletech or another mech-based RPG, you need their Mech Battle soundtrack in your life. The sound controls provide sounds not only for the mechs themselves and the many, many weapons they can bring to bear, but ambient sounds of distant combat, the quiet of a city before the battle, even tanks moving in the distance, or the pitiful (at least when compared to particle cannons and rockets) sound of small arms fire uselessly bouncing off your armor.
Better yet, all of these sounds can be raised or lowered, started and stopped, to suit your needs. There are four preset options that raise and lower certain sounds to create the various environments in which giant robot combat could occur. One-time sounds, such as a critical hit, are easily accessible through hotkeys. (Pro Tip: Spamming the Major Impact button results in a wonderful exploding mech sound.)
The Nuclear Submarine soundset may be a little less sci-fi, but I can see a myriad of uses for this set. It was eerie switching from the blasting, roaring sounds of combat in Mech Battle to the much quieter Submarine set. Ambient ship noises, the steady hum of the engines, and the sonar pings every few seconds are perfect for building the tension of a Red October-esque fight between submarines (or with some adjustments, even a spaceship. I can see these clunky mechanical sounds fitting into an Edge of the Empire game with some finesse). Switching to “Battle ‘Neath the Waves” mode brings the ship to life with an alarm at the start of battle that wakes everything immediately. Nuclear Submarine includes less default combat sounds, relying more on the operator to signal when attacks and hits are made, thus there’s no danger of losing the tension you’ve built because of a rogue torpedo sound.
I also want to take a moment to back up and talk about the sounds on the Sci-Fi Player itself that carry over between soundsets. Having a “Distress Call” sound at my fingertips makes me so happy. Explosions, blasters, and scanners round out the set which can add some extra sound to a set like Mech Battle or add that spice of science fiction to the Nuclear Submarine set.
The Syrinscape Sci-Fi Player (Mech Battle) can be found here, and Nuclear Submarine can be found here. Stay tuned to Fanboy Comics for future Syrinscape product reviews.
