Your name: Joost Blom
Pretty or ugly: (F)ugly!
Description: Operation Wolf finds it's roots somewhere in the late 80's, starting off as an arcade game. Like so many other arcade games from that era Wolf was played by aiming a lightgun at the screen and pulling the trigger. The game would have a moderate range of sound effects, mostly consisting of gunshots, ricocheting bullets and explosions. Sound tracks of decent quality were present, but would only be played while the main menu and level selection screen were displayed.

However in 1989 Operation Wolf was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but unlike it's predecessor the NES port would only know a tiny range of sounds. The crackling and clicking sounds the port offered were not at all reminiscent of the gunshots and explosions of the original arcade version. To make things worse a very annoying and hard-to-ignore 'beep' would repeat itself several times every second when the player was low on health!

Still Operation Wolf was a great title and unlike many other arcade games of it's time Wolf would follow an actual storyline throughout the entire game. The NES port however, even if being very entertaining, offered terrible sound. This makes Operation Wolf (on the NES) ugly!

Your name: Joost Blom
Pretty or ugly: Pretty
Description: It was 1993 and there came Kirby! Our pink inflatable made his debut earlier in 1992 on the gameboy and now would finally entertain us further on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). As never seen before Kirby could ingest his enemies to gain their skills and would then put these skills to good use to defeat or gobble up even more enemies!

But what also sets Kirby aside from many other NES titles is having some excellent and advanced sound effects. When inhaling, a hoovering sound would be heard, increasing in pitch if Kirby would keep inhaling for several seconds. Many other sound effects such as entering a door for example would make great use of fading out the sound effect. The music heard in Kirby's Adventure was of great quality and added to the experience of this game.

Great sound effects and fantastic music (that is, for the 8-bit era) make me rate the Kirby's Adventure as pretty.

Your name: D.Harmsen
Pretty or ugly: Ugly
Description: I love the game, but the constant "swooshswoohswoosh" drives me completelly insane. It ruines the background music as well. No that that is awsome inspiring music, but this is just to much random chaos. And the "oh help!" sound the princess makes at the start sounds very sampled and makes my toes curl.

Your name: Dennis Kloos
Pretty or ugly: Pretty
Description: The music in Painkiller is nicely linked to the gameplay. When you are just walking in the creepy areas a spooky, slow kind of music is played. When you encounter enemies, which happens rather often, the creepy music is replaced by heavy metal, composed by Marcin "Cedy–" Czarty–ski. This music doesn't only fit the gameplay perfectly, as it is quick and chaotic, but also fits within the dark story of Painkiller.

Your name: Brian Smit
Pretty or ugly: Ugly
Description: Although the overall sound of this game is really good, the sound of the car engines and stuff, the sound of the crashes are just not present at all.

When I saw this (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/tgs-09-gran-turismo/56836) video on gametrailers it really anoyed me that I didn't hear any kind of sound after the car hits a wall with like 200 km/h. Even when you hit other cars you hear nothing!

Sorry for the bad video quality by the way, they are cam recordings, but it's still pretty clear that there's a lack of crash sounds.

This game is not yet released but it predecessor didn't have crash sounds as well, so this could be pretty final regarding the sound. But I hope that they add some kind of a sound that let's you know you hit something in the final game because this just doesn't feel/sound right at all.

Game Title: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Your name: Paul Suurmeijer
Pretty or ugly: Ugly
Description: In my opinion, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War (1) is flawed in audio design. The game is an RTS and as you may or may not be aware a typical RTS player selects and deselects units often.

Units in Dawn of War respond with long 'motivational' sentences such as "For the Emperor" and the like when you select them or order them to attack/move. Some units give the feeling they're holding a speech.

Combined with an unvaried combination of speeches this makes for an annoying audio feedback system while moving and fighting with your army.

Game Title: Portal
Your name: Joram Wolters
Pretty or ugly: Pretty
Description: Man, whats not to like about Portals sound design? First of all theres the awesome voice (though maybe not voice-acting, as she is a pretty emotionless AI) of GlaDoS and the sentry droids. Then there's the soundtrack, even though ingame there's (hardly) any music, the catchy tune on the frequently found radios and the addictive end song are more than enough to make up for it. Other sound effects like walking, shooting portals and such are all in order as well.

Game Title: Deathrow
Your name: Joram Wolters
Pretty or ugly: ugly
Description: Deathrow is a pretty old xbox title, one of the first in fact.. But that doesn't excuse the horrible, horrible soundtrack, the extremely poor voice-acting and the overdone commentator. And don't claim the soundtrack is just a matter of taste, I love just about any kind of electronic music, but this stuff is just really, really poor.

Game Title: Metal Gear Solid
Your name: Jonathan Barbosa Dijkstra
Pretty or ugly: Ugly
Description: The sound of enemy choking takes the player out of the immersion of the game by being dreadfully designed. The player hears the same sound in quick succession, a sound effect not on par with the rest of the game.

PS: Dont mind the shitty recording, its really the choking sound im pointing out here.

Game Title: MegaMan X
Your name: Bas Dabroek
Pretty or ugly: pretty
Description: My favorite part from the first megaman game out of the megaman x series. It always pushed me to do it faster or do it better. The technic/factory-like sounds fit the environment aswell.

the music sounds like its a very challanging level, which I think is right.