Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People – Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner (WiiWare) Review
Ever since the launch of WiiWare we’ve been provided with several brilliant titles as well as a lot of pretty average ones. When Telltale Games announced their plans to bring an episodic game series based on the extremely popular flash cartoon, Homestar Runner, fans of the series were extremely pleased. The series itself is known as “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People”, and the first episode is named “Homestar Ruiner”, a title that is relevant to the events that unfold in the game.
So, how does it play?
Well actually, its a pretty standard adventure game, but it still has some charm that fans of Homestar Runner, and newcomers, will enjoy.
Homestar Ruiner takes place in the typical Homestar Runner universe. Strong Bad, the constantly failing villain of the series, is tending to his daily schedule of “just being awesome” only to come across his arch nemesis, Homestar Runner, who he finds out is entering the Tri-annual Race to the end of the Race. Although Strong Bad originally sought out Homestar Runner to pummel him (as his calendar says), he postpones said duties in order to learn more about the race. Naturally, Strong Bad wants to make sure that Homestar Runner fails his ambitious task so that he may win the ultimate trophy for himself. Thus begins an epic adventure that sees Strong Bad attempt to outdo his rival.
Included in Homestar Ruiner are all your favourite Homestar Runner characters, including Marzipan, Coach Z, The Cheat, Strong Sad, Bubs and The King of the Town. Although many players may at first feel alienated due to a lack of knowledge about these characters, the game does a good job in establishing the personalities of the characters for newcomers.
Since the original Homestar Runner cartoons took place entirely in two dimensions, Telltale Games have done a very good job of ensuring the graphical art style of the series has not been ruined in return for three dimensional environments. Instead, the characters have all been given an extra class of depth in order to give them three dimensional appearances without compromising the brilliant design seen in the original flash cartoons. The worlds are colourful and vibrant, the characters look amazing and express emotion as you would expect them to, and the strong and fluid framerate makes it something really worthy of the WiiWare service. It’s almost exactly the same as watching the cartoon itself on the internet, albeit much more interactive.
From the moment players first boot up Homestar Ruiner, they are given the option of completing a tutorial. The tutorial does a really good job of assisting the player in developing their understanding of the game’s mechanics, while still being interesting and engaging. The tutorial level starts off with Strong Bad losing his beloved “Lappy”, a laptop that he uses to regularly check his emails. Through several dialogue and item trading quests, Strong Bad retrieves his laptop and congratulates the player. The tutorial level is something that I, as a newcomer to the series, found a great in helping me “catch up” with the long-running series. It is definitely recommended for those new to the Homestar Runner universe.
So, how does Homestar Ruiner actually play? The easiest way to explain it is as a point-and-click adventure title, with options to change the dialogue with characters in the world as the player sees fit. Pointing the Wii Remote at an area and pressing a button will move Strong Bad to that area. In addition, players can access their inventory in order to show items to characters to elicit different responses, or view their map which is fully customisable. In addition to that, it is possible to converse with characters in different locations and choose to give “positive” or “negative” responses. Naturally it is important to compliment a character if Strong Bad needs something from them, but it’s pretty fun to just choose the negative responses to have a laugh, as the game definitely delivers in the humour department. Movement from area to area is done by pulling up Strong Bad’s hand drawn map, which is pretty crudely drawn by the little red villain himself. Whenever Strong Bad becomes “aware” of another location he has to visit, he just draws it anywhere on his map. This doesn’t affect gameplay directly but makes the game feel like a bit of a more personal experience. A nice feature, none the less.
In addition to the main gameplay, there are a lot of little secrets and fun references hidden in the game. One of these is the ability to play on Strong Bad’s Atari 2600, which he calls a “FunBox”. Unfortunately there is only one game on the FunBox but it’s something that every gamer should try, Snake Boxing! To put it simply, it’s a very primitive game which is pretty much a reskin of the classic 1980 title “Boxing”. Players can also go on a hunt to find the pieces of the Snake Boxing instruction manual so that Strong Bad can enter a cheat to unlock additional modes. There’s a lot of room for development in these side quest type tasks too. In addition, Strong Bad can also read his very own home made comic book, Teen Girl Squad, in which players need to find a way to use several objects in order to kill four teenage girls in specific situations before the story ends, in order to gain maximum points. Possible methods include using excessive sun tan lotion on one of the girls during a beach scene in order to see her burnt to a crisp. It’s all very dark humour but still very funny none the less.
The voice acting in Homestar Ruiner is top notch. All the respective voice actors for the original characters reprise their roles in Homestar Ruiner (and to be honest, it would be quite disheartening to see them not returning). The quality of the voice acting is exceptional and it really adds to each of the characters personalities that are developed throughout the game. In addition, the music is pretty sparse but what is included in the original package is not too hard on the ear, although some players may find the music annoying (there is an option to turn it off).
There aren’t too many things wrong with Homestar Ruiner as a game. Although sometimes what must be done can be quite ambiguous, as all adventure games can be, but the game isn’t too outlandish in the solutions it requires unlike a certain other adventure series (we’re looking at your, Mr. Wright). However, sometimes players may find themselves wandering around the same areas looking for something different to advance the game. Sometimes it can really mess up the pacing of the game and make it seems like the game is a long one when in fact it isn’t. The second and more technical side of the problems with Homestar Ruiner are that it takes up in excess of 300 blocks, which is more than My Life As A King, the previous record holder for WiiWare titles. As previously said with titles like LostWinds, it was very possible for Telltale to limit the game because of the platform it’s being delivered on, but it’s very promising to see them NOT diluting the game to reduce the game space, as all the voice acting and vibrant graphics really add to the Homestar Ruiner experience.
Homestar Ruiner is the first of what I expect to be some high quality, very humorous episodic gaming. Being the first kind of episodic gaming on the service, it’s interesting to see what other developer’s do with their resources when they see what kind of title Homestar Ruiner is and how successfully it executes its design purpose. Hopefully we’ll see more of Strong Bad and his eclectic cast of…well….weirdo’s in the future, because they sure as hell kept me entertained this time round.
