The Last of Us

An Oscar-winning movie composer turns his hand to video games - with haunting results

Gustavo Santaolalla is perhaps best-known for winning Oscars for his film soundtracks, but his first major foray into video games has opened him up to a new audience.

The Last Of Us is a tense, inventive survival horror game set in a post-apocalyptic America and, as you might imagine, its soundtrack is extremely important when it comes to creating and controlling that delicate atmosphere. Gustavo Santaolalla, who won the Best Original Score Oscar two years in a row for Brokeback Mountain and Babel, is ultimately responsible for making it all work.

Many see the game itself as a modern classic and evidence of video games moving closer and closer towards cinematic tactics, and Santaolalla's soundtrack certainly backs this up.

Delicate Spanish guitar, mournful string lines and atonal buzzing sounds all emphasise the difficult situations in the game itself – it's premium mood-building and amazingly immersive.