Nerd Mentality

REVIEW: Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People

Posted March 15th 2009 by Adam Glasgow.

It's been a long time since "www.homestarrunner.com" grazed the address bar in my web browser of choice. Although never a rabid fan, I have found the zany antics of Strong Bad and Friends amusing at times. Regardless of my long absence from the site I was intrigued when I heard that Telltale Games, in collaboration with the two guys that run Homestar Runner dot com, were throwing together a season of Strong Bad themed point-and-click adventure games for Wii Ware and PC. Telltale Games is the team behind the Sam & Max episodic games, which helps to account for my interest rising with their name dropped. There are five episodes total in the Strong Bad season of games, the first two of which I have played. Are they worth your time and precious Nintendo points? Or should Strong Bad continue his lowly existence in the back of everyone's mind?

To figure out the answer to these questions, you'll have to ask yourself a few more. 1)Do you like Grim Fandango style point and click adventure games and 2) Do you think Homestar Runner is funny? If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, you can stop reading this review and start playing the game immediately. You'll probably like it a lot. However, if you answered a hard "no" to both of these questions, you can stop reading this review right now and kill yourself for not liking Grim Fandango. If you fall somewhere in between or you just aren't sure what to think, take my hand, dear friend, and let's explore the first two episodes of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People together.

The Game

As far as point and click adventure games go, SBCG4AP is fairly standard when it comes to style of play. You spend the bulk of your time solving puzzles that usually amount to talking to the right person at the right time and using the correct item at the correct time. If this doesn't sound terribly exciting to you, that's no surprise.

I imagine conceiving an exciting point and click adventure game is a more daunting task than coming up with riveting ideas for a game about shooting aliens, which helps to explain why so few point and clicks get made while games about shooting aliens are so abundant that most of us are currently using them to prop up the short leg of the coffee table. For the few point and clicks that do get made, various attempts are made to make up their inherent lameness. This game is no different, and luckily most of what Attractive People attempts to do works well. This includes well balanced puzzles that are challenging enough to not be easy, but not so challenging that they're frustrating, easter eggs that are actually worth looking for, cleverness and humor. Be forewarned that the upcoming paragraphs might contain slight spoilers, but I promise to keep it light, so as not to ruin much.

At the heart of any good point and click adventure game are the puzzles, and SBCG4AP is a good point and click. The puzzles revolve around you getting Strong Bad out of tomfoolery, into tomfoolery, or out of tomfoolery caused by the tomfoolery you just got him into. The solutions to puzzles are clever and funny (some aspects I'll go into more in a bit), which make them entertaining to solve instead of a chore. Examples of puzzles that can be found in the game are lighting things on fire, figuring out ways to trick Strong Sad into thinking he has a non-existent disease so he gets his pretendix removed so you can sell the fictitious organ on the black market, and rigging the annual "Race to the End of the Race." If these puzzles sound awesome it's because they are. As previously mentioned, you will have to play around a bit to figure out what to do when the solution isn't obvious, but a competent player should be able to figure things out before they get frustrating. And if they do, you can always use gamefaqs, although doing so sacrifices the satisfaction you get from figuring it out for yourself.

Even if you're just a moderate Homestar Runner follower, the easter eggs in Attractive People are great. Pretty much all the characters and places from the cartoon make appearances, including many minor ones. References to ongoing Strong Bad jokes pepper the game, some of which I'm sure I didn't get, but I enjoyed the ones I did. Collectibles include ideas for "Teen Girl Squad" comics which you can mix yourself later to design your own custom issue of TGS, ripped out pages of video game manuals, and other things of a similar fashion. If you're a completionist there will be plenty for you to do, and if you're not, you'll enjoy the things you end up casually collecting.

The Jokes

The one thing that will make or break SBCG4AP for people, other than the puzzles and Easter eggs, is the humor. The game does an excellent job translating the sense of humor of the online cartoon to the gaming world, which is a good thing if you like Homestar Runner's brand of funny. On the surface that kind of humor seems Saturday-morning-cartoonish and slapsticky. The characters are straight forward and two dimensional. They all have their shticks and they rarely stray from them. In this way, HR is very juvenile.

While this isn't an incorrect observation, it also isn't a complete one. Homestar Runner is sharp satire that rarely cuts. It pokes fun at it's subject while still generally retaining a sort of nostalgic reverence for it. Take for example early video games, probably HR's favorite topic. Early video game jokes are everywhere in Homestar Runner cartoons and likewise in SBCG4AP. In the first episode you can play, on an old looking video game system in Strong Bad's room, a game called Snake Boxer 5. In this game you, yep, box snakes. In the second episode you can pop in Math Kickers: Featuring the Alge-bros, a beat 'em style game with a focus on algebra. The boss fights consist of punching equations until they're factored completely. While these games (along with many of the things in the Homestar Runner universe) are parodies, the goal doesn't seem to be to make fun of anything specific -- although if you think for long enough you can usually figure out the specifics that inspired the parodies. HR is more reflexive and culturally driven that just that. Anyone can make fun of Double Dragon and Math Blasters. That's easy. The goal here seems to be to poke some fun at the time and place they came from, while simultaneously helping you to remember what it felt like to live through it. Sometimes it is laugh out loud funny, but more often it just makes you smile and think about what it felt like to be a kid. In this way Homestar Runner is much more subversive and clever than I think it usually gets credit for.

The Rest

As you've likely already guessed, I really enjoyed the first two episodes of the five part Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, and I will certainly be buying the remaining three parts. On WiiWare each episode costs about ten bucks a piece. If you buy all five, you've essentially bought a new Wii game off the shelf. To me, the game is worth it. Buying it on the computer is fiscally a little better – you can buy all five parts as a package for thirty five bucks (pre-ordering the episodes yet to be released) or separately for about nine bucks a pop (you can upgrade to the package later if you buy the first game separate). It should be noted that each episode can be enjoyed individually as its own sort of miniature game, as each episode's story is stand alone, so you don't need to worry about getting ripped off for spending ten bucks on a small piece of a game.

Closing Comments

It's hard to flat out recommend this game to everyone. The point and click adventure is a niche genre and the humor in Homestar Runner is the same way. Luckily, the people who enjoy one of these things tend to enjoy the other, so if you're into one, or both, I'm giving this game a big fat "buy it" stamp of approval. Worse case scenario you try the first episode and hate it, which only puts you out about ten bucks (or less if you buy it on the PC). SBCG4AP is episodic games done right, and I'm happy to see it on WiiWare. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch some Strong Bad emails at homestarrunner dot com. I've got a lot of catching up to do – it's been a long time since I've taken time out of my busy Internet schedule to cruise over there, and after playing the first two episodes of this game, I feel like that time is well deserved and long overdue.

Tags: PC, WiiWare, Strong Bad

Posted in: Gaming, Reviews

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