"Big Guys Don't Cry" from Shank on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows, macOS, Linux, Steam OS (2010)
Composer: Jason Garner & Vince de Vera
Album: Shank Official Soundtrack
Label: Humble Bundle
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Klei Entertainment
This song is a strange one. On one hand, it's a great song that I feel encapsulates the early stages of the game. Shank is running from one guy to the next, cutting, shooting, slicing, shanking his way through everything that runs at him on the screen. The action is fast, intense, and at times unrelenting. The music, on the other hand, often gets lost amid the background noise of guns blaring, chainsaws revving, and soon-to-be corpses of grown-ass men screaming. Rewatching videos of my playthrough, it's often hard to pinpoint a particular song, with the few exceptions such as "Other Side of the Tracks" and "Red Lights."
"Big Guys Don't Cry" has a lot of what makes the game itself fun to play. A bit of a slow build with distorted guitars, a pensive yet aggressive horn section, and frequent appearances by the marracas to remind you that the sepia-toned world you're in is likely somewhere in a fictionalized Latin America. Then, finally, at 1:20, we get a reprise of Shank's theme, appropriately heroic yet not as fast-paced as the rest of the gameplay loop. Then we receive a solitary chime, like a church bell, as the song fades out, which I really like, even if it doesn't lend itself as well to a video game where the songs are expected to loop.
It's just a good, solemn song that captures the feeling of the game, without all of the blood-soaked bodies lying in the dusty street as blackened vultures circle overhead.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
One Bullet in this Gun
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