Unoriginal Soundtracks #66: Ticket To Ride

Every other Wednesday, I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Searching for relevant terms on Spotify is a great way to discover new music and uncover hidden gems. Make requests to @USPodcast on Twitter.

The German-style board game turned video game inspires a bifurcated playlist -- one part modern rock, spoken word, and IDM and one part rootsy blues, folk, and jazz. But every song is about trains, North America, or trains in North America.

Unoriginal Soundtracks #41: Braid

Every other Wednesday, I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Searching for relevant terms on Spotify is a great way to discover new music and uncover hidden gems. Make requests to @USPodcast on Twitter.

Braid is welcoming and hard to approach at the same time. On the one hand, its rewind mechanic and bypassable puzzles remove most of the frustration associated with puzzle-platformer games -- but on the other, its message is obfuscated by verbose writing. For those willing to read its text a couple of times, and devote some thought to it, Braid talks about the ideas that inspire a moodier playlist than usual, full of blues-rock, soul, and new wave.