Strong Bad Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner review video

Strong Bad Episode 1 logoCharming. Suave. Awesome. These are the words Strong Bad would use to describe himself. In a world gone mad, only one man can be trusted to save the day. A man with an attitude. A man called Strong Bad. As the star of the Homestar Runner Web cartoons, Strong Bad has been answering e-mails (in boxing gloves), pranking his friends, pummeling his enemies, and making people with questionable taste snort milk out of their noses for years now.

Now he’s branched out to star in Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, a monthly five-episode series. In Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People — Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner, Strong Bad’s plans to beat the snot out of Homestar backfire, and he ends up with an unwanted houseguest cramping his style. Now he needs to get life back to normal by any means possible. But wait, there’s more: Teen Girl Squad comics, achievements, funny costumes and arcade games. You can even send pictures and messages to Wii Friends using Strong Bad’s computer. So how about it? Can you handle Strong Bad’s style?

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive people a series of episodic game based on the online animated series by Mat Mike Chapman for the Nintendo Wii’s WiiWare and PC, developed and published by Telltale Games. Watch this video review.

Click on the bottom-right corner arrow to view it fullscreen.

To quote the video review: “It’s the same stuff that any good adventure game is made of — travel between interesting locations, engage in conversation to receive valuable clues, and put everything together to form logical solutions — but in this world, everything’s firmly on the silly side. Strong Bad’s map is a colorful, nonlinear quick-travel button (you can place newly discovered locations on the map wherever you wish); discussions shun dialogue choices in favor of goofy icons (it’s much funnier when you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen); and oddball puzzle solutions make perfect sense when you start to think like a cartoon character.

Homestar Ruiner (and hopefully the balance of Strong Bad’s five-episode starting season) is a welcome evolution of everything Telltale learned from making Sam & Max, and Strong Bad’s quirky, colorful world is perhaps even better-suited to the format, in terms of both genre and storytelling structure. At times like this, it’s a wonder that adventure games ever went off the rails.”

Overall — 9.1