Review: Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner

Homestarrunner.com has enjoyed a long Internet life. Brothers Matt and Mike Chapman have been producing content for their surreal cartoon world for over a decade, gaining them both web fame and some nods from popular culture. They've collaborated several times with geek mainstay They Might Be Giants, and two games in the hugely successful Guitar Hero series contain Homestar Runner songs as bonus content. Now Telltale Games, fresh off their success with the Sam and Max franchise, has produced a season of five games based on Homestar Runner, Strong Bad, and all the other weird inhabitants of Free Country, U.S.A.

"You know, beating you in a race would be almost as much fun as beating you senseless!"

In the first episode of the series, Homestar Ruiner, you play as Strong Bad, a winningly sarcastic and self-confident guy who wears a wrestling mask and boxing gloves. He sits down to check his e-mail -- as he's done over two hundred times in the website's most popular feature, Strong Bad Emails -- and decides to follow the sender's advice. After years of putting it off, Strong Bad is finally going to beat the tar out of his perennial nemesis: the armless, sinus-clogged Homestar Runner.

In true sitcom fashion, the storyline twists, turns, and eventually trips over itself: you succeed in secretly humiliating poor dopey Homestar, to the point where he plunks himself on Strong Bad's couch and tearfully declares Strong Bad "the only friend he has left." Strong Bad, annoyed and unrepentant, spends the rest of the game trying to rehabilitate Homestar's image just enough to get him out of his house.

"Cheer up, Bubs! At least you're not on fire!"

The story is fun, the jokes are clever, and the writing has lost none of its outlandish sarcasm in the transition from flash cartoon to game. But overall the gameplay feels simplistic: you can't die or get permanently stuck in a Telltale game, but you also don't get a lot of variation or choice in how the plot progresses. To make up for it, the game has included an elaborate "achievement" system, independent of the main plot. It rewards exploration and bristles with in-jokes, including a mini-quest devoted to assembling a new Teen Girl Squad comic, and a playable new arcade game by Videlectrix called "Snake Boxer 5." The more snakes you defeat, the more the achievement system rewards you; see if you can make it to level 30 before your eyes start to bleed.

While the game makes frequent callbacks and references that fans will appreciate, players who are unfamiliar with the Homestar Runner universe shouldn't worry about feeling lost or excluded. The game is funny on its own merits, and characters and locations are introduced in an organic, easy-to-follow way. If anything, the game serves as an enjoyable jumping-off point for the rest of the franchise. Once you've finished playing it, there's a decade's worth of free content waiting for you on the web!

"Now, get out there and have some fun at the expense of others!"

SBCG4AP Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner is available for PC and the Nintendo Wii. A free demo is available for the PC version: this is a good way to see if the game will operate correctly on your system. The full episode can be purchased for $8.99 through Telltale Games or for 1000 Wii points through the Wii Shop Channel.