I was surprised by the release as well, given the length of the original album already put out, but some of the material on the extended set is absolutely essential if you're at all interested in the music here.

"We are Diamond Dogs"
"Regret and Acceptance"
"Paz is Dead"

Some of these tracks, after listening to them, left me absolutely flabbergasted that the first album didn't include them.

Even, you might want to check out the expanded soundtrack that was just put out digitally a couple of weeks ago.

I'll admit, I originally struggled a bit with this score, but with the recent release of that album, (which added over five hours of music), I decided to more thoroughly give it a go.

Its sound is fairly different compared to the past Metal Gear games, but after taking a while to adjust, I found it to be pretty brilliant. Thematically, I think it's actually very solid. The theme for Venom Snake is subtlety interwoven throughout most of the score. It just requires a bit of listening in some instances. It's definitely quoted a lot more than the tracks you pointed to.

Beyond the main theme though, there are some secondary themes that that really tighten things together, with the most illuminating being the numerous quotes of the Peacewalker theme from the past games that the first album mostly left out. It adds a ton of continuity that some people may find the first two disc set lacking.

I would definitely recommend though to anyone who might have found this to be a lukewarm listen to combine it with the second release, and take some time to digest the material. There's also supposed to be a third album coming out in March with the last few remaining tracks, so that should hopefully be pretty interesting too.

I recently bought this album, and I quite enjoy it.. But there's one big problem I have with it, along with most video game scores, it's the lack of thematic development. The biggest thing that frustrates me is that a composer will write a fantastic theme, only to have it pop up two or three times, or less. A lot of the assassin's creed scores suffer from this (aside from III and Unity). Ludvig composed an amazing main theme for Snake, first heard in "V Has Come To" and I was very excited on the first listen because I had been playing the game religiously in recognized the theme from the gameplay. As expected, the theme only appears a few times after the mentioned track. Its only appearances after track 2 are a brief moment in "You Can Call Me Ishmael", "Return", a very patriotic rendition in. "Shining Lights, Even In Death" and a final statement in the refrain during "Metal Gear Online. " regardless, I'd recommend for fans of Harry Gregson Williams's prior MSG scores. If anyone knows where I can locate some of the missing tracks, please share!

The cover dude looks like a cross-over between Ron Perlman and Tom Cruise lol