Weekly Game Music: You Can’t Handle My Style (Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People)


New week, new music.  I’m feeling the summer laziness, so lets go with a silly song this time.  Here’s a really long song title, You Can’t Handle My Style from the equally ridiculously titled game, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.  By now, it should be no secret that the song was sung by Matt Chapman himself, the voice of Strong Bad from the comedy flash website, Homestar Runner. The music itself was penned by Jared Emerson-Johnson from Telltale Games.

Strong Bad’s life is…certainly abnormal, even for a cartoon character.  From beating the snot out of Homestar Runner; taking over other character’s self-declared countries; proving himself to be the best rock band; making an indie (in this case, horrible) action spy movie; and fighting a dragon created by his skills of an artist, Strong Bad is all about awesome(ly bad).  The humorous game makes mischief and naughty tricks an essential necessity to progress.

True to Telltale’s style, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People is an episodic point-and-click adventure game that, surprisingly, contains little text.  Dialog trees and items are represented by icons, and observations are made almost always through a dialog.  In an interesting twist, traveling to different locations involve “unlocking” them via conversations, plotting them on any location of the map, and teleporting there.  Much like the flash website, the cartoony game contains hilarious and witty dialog (if we disregard the first episode, that is…)

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People was originally released on the Wii and PC in 2008.  It was later ported on the Playstation 3.
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Weekly Game Music: To The Ends (Small Worlds)


New week, new music.  A while back, I mentioned a flash game called Small Worlds in Strange Free Games.  It’s music, it turns out, are from Kevin MacLeod‘s collection of Creative Commons compositions.  The one below is called To the Ends, a mysterious music that slowly draws you in.

Small Worlds can be played in your browser here.

“There is too much noise.”  An odd beginning for a game. As a 3-pixel high character, you traverse through each world, heavy under a dark fog.  By traveling farther, however, the fog slowly gives away, providing an after-math of a certain event. Since the story lacks any other narrative, however, the player must come up with their own conclusion in what the game meant, and what each landscape stood for.

Despite this ambiguity, it’s atmospheric gameplay is intriguing.  Nothing can kill the 3-pixel character, so you can explore at your own pace, at your own leisure. The character can merely move and jump, but by doing so, your width of vision increases. As a consequence, the game begs for exploration, even to dead-ends, as more and more of the stage is revealed.
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Weekly Game Music: Some Like it Red Hot (Viewtiful Joe)


New week, new music. This week’s music is Some Like it Red Hot, baby!  Two cool dudes, Masakazu Sugimori and Masami Ueda, manage to capture the exciting and flashy nature of a city.  It best fits the rad superhero action game, Viewtiful Joe.

Viewtiful Joe, is, like, an action game about a stupid nobody named Joe.  The loser is such a hopeless fanboy of Captain Blue, man!  Even ends up being the only audience in a movie re-run, with his, you know, hot girlfriend Silvia.  Poor girl.  Anyway, Silvia totally gets kidnapped into the movie world, and Joe gets sucked into it by force.  But wait, it gets better!  Joe gets this rad V-Watch, turning him into a red-suited action hero.  Man, those pants are tight!

Anyhoo, Viewtiful Joe is this action-packed 2.5D beat’em-up all the cool kids are talking about.  To spice up his action, Joe can make time run slower or faster, allowing him to solve puzzles, cream enemies, or just look plain wicked.  On top of that, the game has this sweet cell-shaded graphics that totally makes it look like a cartoon.  It’s just how Joe rolls.

Viewtiful Joe was originally released on the Gamecube in 2009. It has also been ported to the PS2 as well.  It’s hardcore, dude!
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Strange Free Games: Dear Esther


New week, new game.  Since indie game Dear Esther is all the rage these days, it’ll be great to look back at what started it all, Dear Esther prototype version.  So, without further ado, lets get started with the intro

Dear Esther is a first-person narrative that adds vocal interjections as you travel and observe the island.  Each narration is supposed to be relevant to the view at hand, including writings on walls, landscapes, etc.  Frequently, the narrative will contradict itself, leading to a surreal and disjointed experience.

The free, Half-Life mode can be downloaded at Mod DB.com.
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Weekly Game Music: Around the World (The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift)


New week, new music.  This week: a music track from a game based off of a movie. Around the World, composed by Atlus Plug, provides a speed-inducing experience using Asian instrumentals.  A fitting composition for the frankly titled game, The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift.

As expected from the title, The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift is a simple racing game that takes place on Japanese highways.  Apart from your own rival you’re driving against, you have to swerve around non-racing cars, lest you spin out inappropriately.  As with the movie, Tokyo Drift opts for realism, using real-world models for racing.

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift was released on the Playstation 2 in 2006.
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Strange Free Games: Katawa Shoujo


Warning!  I am about to introduce a Japanese-style erotic visual novel, better known as eroge.  While this game does offer an option to turn off the adult portions, be well aware that this is made for a far more mature audience. And by “mature,” I mean emotionally.

New week, new game.  This week is about Katawa Shoujo, a visual novel from the members of 4chan, no less.  As a love simulator, this game has one simple twist: every girl you can date is handicapped.  While I’m sure many of you will find the origins of this game uneasy, I can affirm that the subject matter is handled very delicately.  By the end of it, it’ll make you realize the truth behind a frequently told but rarely understood point: the difference between a normal person and a disabled one is only skin deep.

Katawa Shoujo is playable at their own website.

You play as Hisao Naoki, who one day collapses from a sudden heart attack.  Upon recovery, he learns he has a fatal condition called arrhythmia: a disorder that causes the heart to react erratically.  Forced to stay in the dreadful hospital for months, he’s finally given a decision one day to move to the Yamaku boarding high school, an educational school specialized in tending students with medical conditions.  In an attempt to start life anew again, Hisao agrees, and ventures into the high school for disabled students.  Little does he expect a huge emotional roller-coaster when trying to make friends in this initially-peculiar high school.

As the genre “visual novel” implies, Katawa Shoujo reads a lot like a choose-your-own-adventure novels. The majority of the game is devoted to characterizations and observations, but occasionally the game gives you a few branching choices that determines how the story progresses.  While that seems like a chore at first, several features in the game helps alleviate the hours-long text.  First there’s an auto-mode that automatically clicks through the text for you at an adjustable pace.  For the really impatient, there’s the skip-mode that fast-forwards to the next multiple-choice question.
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