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: Gameboy Tune (Machinarium)


New week, new music. This week’s music is Gameboy Tune by Tomas Dvorak. Despite it’s overly-optimistic beeps and bloops, it’s a surprisingly mellow tune. It best accents the neon game arcade room in an otherwise old-and-rusty game, Machinarium.

Machinarium is a no-text, all visual point-and-click adventure of a weak but determined robot to get his kidnapped girlfriend back. During his travels, he learns the kidnappers has caused a ton of mayhem to the townsfolk, and even hung a time-bomb on a tall tower for a good measure. Frantically working to find a way to diffuse the bomb, our hero must…slowly help remedy each denizen’s misfortunes. Point-and-click at its finest.

Sarcasm aside, Machinarium is a rare game that successfully tells a story without a single use of text or voice acting. It’s puzzles — which ranges from distracting the guard to slip by him, to unlocking a door using a Rubik’s cube — can sometimes veer towards nonsensical and frustrating. Fortunately, there’s a consistent and easy way to find the solution of every puzzle in-game. The minor usability improvements helps guarantee that anyone can play this game.

Machinarium was originally released on the PC, Mac, and Linux in 2009. It has also been ported to iPad and Android as well.


Extra!

Title: The End [Prague Radio]
Game: Machinarium
Composer: Vojtech Zelinsky


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Strange Free Games: Souvenir


New week, new game. Here’s an incomplete student game that still feels polished and playable. Souvenir is a meta-physical recount of a girl’s experience at college. It’s M.C. Escher-isque visuals best conveys the confusion one experiences when living away from familiar, and traveling into the new.

The game begins on a stage, portraying an unnamed girl starting to pack. Not after long, you end up in a greatly distorted world, bleak and twisting. As you choose the 8 “things to pack,” you start recalling various different memories, some mundane, some happy, and some depressing.

Souvenir plays like first-person puzzle game. Clicking on a surface causes you to fall to that location. Due to the twisting nature of the game, you frequently end up upside-down or sideways on various different surfaces. Collecting different items provides a fade-in text telling a recount of the character we’re playing. This slowly fleshes out our character’s personality, problems, and resolves.

Souvenir is playable at it’s own website.
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Strange Free Games: Mari0


New week, new game. Here’s a Super Mario Bros. knock-off. It’s Mari0, a game about the trusty plumber, Mario and…a Portal gun?

Mari0 can be downloaded at StabYourself.net.

The nefarious Bowser and his army has turned the peaceful Toads into blocks, and only the magical Princess Toadstool can save them. Even worse, Bowser kidnapped Toadstool as well, leaving you, Mario, to save her.

Also, for some reason, Mario has a Portal gun. How handy.

Mari0 plays almost exactly like the original Super Mario Bros. You jump, run, run-jump, and throw fireballs. Different in this game is the obvious Portal gun, used to create shortcuts, going to unreachable locations, and conveniently defeat enemies. Furthermore, unlike the original game, you can actually backtrack the levels you’re in. The need to keep track of the portals actually makes this game harder than it seems, as physics tends to play tricks on you frequently.
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Strange Free Games: Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online


New week, new game. Lets talk about an MMORPG, shall we? Here’s one addicting, but queer RPG called Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. Why queer? Well, for a Japanese anime inspired game, the visuals are oddly gothic and religiously offensive. Unusual to this genre, the game even has some cinema-scenes, too. And the most interesting part? It plays a little likePokémon.

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online can be downloaded at Aeria Games.

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online starts off in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where the city has been leveled by demons. As the typical MMORPG trope, you are a Demon Buster, one trained to fight against demons. While investigating a ruin, your leader takes a significant blow as a gigantic demon emerges. You’re rescued, barely alive, and decide to take some vengeance against this boss.

It wouldn’t be a Shin Megami Tensei game, however, if you couldn’t befriend these demons. As luck may have it, you have a talent to convince demons to join your cause, and have them fight alongside with you. Some NPCs are demons themselves, proving once and for all how resilient the human species are.
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Strange Free Games: Void


New week, new game. Today’s free game is from the friendly team of students at DigiPen Institute at Singapore. The game? Void, a dimension-manipulating first-person puzzle game.

Void can be downloaded from the DigiPen website.

People who played Portal should feel very comfortable with this game. Void begins with our main hero, Artaith, desperately running away from the rubble, and investigating on its cause. Somehow, he’s gained the ability to create dimensional rifts into the past, as well as obtain eyeglass that allows him to see the complex he was in, pre-destruction state.

Artaith can create up to two temporary, spherical dimensional rifts on any surface. In doing so, certain floors and items may become visible, while others may end up being obstructed. As such, the player must carefully place the rifts to his or her benefit, without losing their footing. The puzzles becomes particular complex when water is introduced, allowing you to swim to higher locations that would be otherwise dry and difficult to climb.
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