Homestar Runner has been around for about eight years now and has become one of the most popular internet cartoons of all time, and considering many popular internet cartoons usually have to rely on swearing, violence, and sex in order to be funny, it's amazing that a cartoon like Homestar Runner that falls somewhere around the PG rating can reach such heights of popularity. Eventually the site would become so popular that a video game version of the series was planned for the Atari 2600, but the guy creating the game realized that it's really hard to make a game all by yourself so it got canceled. Fast forward several years later and The Brothers Chaps make a deal with Telltale Games to make an adventure game based on the series much like Telltale's highly praised Sam and Max series. Thus starting now until December we get a new episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. But is it actually a cool game, and will it appeal to those who aren't fans and/or not attractive?
The story is split into two parts. The first part involves Homestar training to compete in the tri-annual “Race to the end of the Race.” Catching wind of this, Strong Bad attempts to enter but can't, so he instead decides to ruin Homestar's chances of competing. Strong Bad ends up succeeding, but with dire consequences. The second half involves Homestar being a total mess for what Strong Bad had done, so now he takes up residence in Strong Bad's house. Strong Bad is then forced to undo all he's done if he wants Homestar to get out of his house.
The graphics are nice, but feels weird at times. The game is cel-shaded to give it the same cartoon look, but when looking at some of the characters now in 3D, it looks weird and somewhat low-res at a few places. Considering that a lot of the games on homestarrunner.com are pixelated 2D games, I'm not sure whether this was done on purpose or not. Personally, I don't know why they couldn't have just stuck to Strong Bad's original vision:
The game's difficulty is pretty standard. The puzzles aren't so blatantly easy that you'll get through this game in an instant, but not so hard that you'll be lost seemingly forever on figuring out what to do. At times Strong Bad will say something while exploring to give you a hint on what you should be doing, and you adjust how often he says this in order to somewhat change the difficulty of the game. Overall, if you stick to the main game and not check out all the extra stuff, you'll probably be done with this game in about four hours.
The gameplay itself is pretty standard. Click on that, talk to people, get new items, use this item on that to progress further, etc. What really makes this game stand out from being boring is all the little things from the Homestar universe. The menu to start the game is exactly like the homepage. Even though point and click adventure don't require much detail on how to play, you should check out the tutorial mode just for laughs. Also when Strong Bad attempts to talk while someone in the background is talking, he'll say something to shut them up. Most of the music and sound effects all derive from the cartoon, so you'll definitely recognize the music if you're a regular. The mini-games Teen Girl Squad and Snake Boxer 5 are also worth checking out.
One gameplay feature that really annoyed me though was the Auto Save feature. The game automatically saves at certain points in the game, but in order to save your progress for a later time, you have to save to a separate file. If you forget to do this and someone else tries to start a new game, your work is gone. It's not such a big deal but it was pretty annoying to accidentally have DELETED~! somebody else's save file.
As I was clicking around on all the familiar faces and locations in the Homestar Runner universe, I thought about how this really captured the cartoon and as a fan of the website I was pleased. But then it dawned on me...what if you're NOT a fan of the website? Are they going to take the same liking to this game as fans? Take away all the Homestar Runner related stuff in this game and it's your basic point and click adventure. All the other stuff will seem like fan service. For example, when Strong Bad talks to people, he has the option of saying something nice or something he would normally say. This didn't seem to do anything in the main game other then probably make you laugh at what he says. Then there's all the costume items you can find to pose for pictures that you can send to your friends, like this one I took:
So will this game make you a fan of the show? I'm not sure if it'll turn you into a fan, but I think it'll give you a pretty good idea of what the Homestar Runner universe is like to give the actual website a couple of glances. As for those who are already fans, they'll definitely enjoy this one.
