Topic: One Year (and two weeks) Later: Strong Bad Episode 1

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Oh man, I need to get my butt in gear. With the semester starting on the 1st, I have some stuff to take care of, but in order to catch up, I am going to do a OYL segment today, for Monday-Tuesday, and then this upcoming week's one near the end of the week. I'm also doing some edits for a Let's Play I filmed a while ago. Really need to get that stuff uploaded somewhere...but I digress.

Here's a late article, but it's a significant game for WiiWare, I'd say.

One Year Later 014: (08/11/08) Strong Bad Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner

23) Strong Bad’s CG4AP Ep 1: Homestar Ruiner (Telltale Games, 1000 pts)
I will not lie when I say that July 2008 was, perhaps, the worst month in WiiWare’s existence, even now. Wild West Guns kept us moving, but we all knew there was one game that we really wanted to see. Before WiiWare launched in May, the runners at HomestarRunner.com, the Chapman brothers, posted a video entitled Gameways, a video on gaming safety. In this, Strong Bad discusses the safety precautions one must take to be able to enjoy a game in perfect “unplayable” safety. People immediately hypothesized the existence of a Strong Bad game, and lo and behold, a trailer and announcement quickly arose for perhaps the longest-named WiiWare title yet: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People (“but YOU can play, TOO!”). The game would be developed by TellTale Games and Videlectrix as a 5-episode “season” that was supposedly to begin in June, but it was pushed to August due to polish issues. The series is, in short, a set of point-and-click adventures that run to about 4 hours at most, but the humor is crammed in there, so it is more than worth it. In the first episode, Strong Bad is asked to beat the snot out of Homestar, and from there, his task becomes quite complicated, especially with the Free Country Triannual Race to the End of the Race involved. Amid the game’s main storyline, players may also take pictures of Strong Bad (e-mailing said pictures is exclusive to Wii owners), play Snake Boxer 5, and enjoy some time with Teen Girl Squad. Regardless, there is enough here for a good gaming experience.

Reception: Strong Bad’s reception was mostly positive; apparently reviewers got a nice helping of his style. IGN’s Daemon felt that the game was much more polished than other efforts on the Wii, and with his 8.1, he was compelled to see the future of the series. NintendoLife gave this game a bit more concern, providing a 7 and saying that the title didn’t fully “establish itself as a proper videogame as much as it is a charming adaptation of the Flash cartoon.” A number of gamers also saw that, if they purchased a subscription for the PC version, they would save 15 dollars for the whole season, and that may have caused a decrease in sales for the future. Otherwise, the game appeared high for a number of weeks before it dwindled, following the second episode’s release. In fact, Wild West Guns outlasted this title, despite the high peak sales of this game! After the release of the SD update, the game saw massive leaps in sales, but no numbers have been given.

Outlook: Since this title, there were four other episodes to the season, each having a trailer for the next episode (sans the last, of course). As for now, developers have said that the Chapman brothers were “tuckered out” so to speak after the season, so we might have to wait a while if at all for a second season. As for Telltale Games, they just recently released the first of a five-part adventure title: Tales of Monkey Island. The company has also worked on other adventure games for XBLA and PC, so they are doing fine all across the board!

Comparison to WiiWare Year 2: This must be a week to look out for in the future, because this year’s week for WiiWare was just as good as the one from last year. We got NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits which was a highly anticipated game by indie developer Over the Top Games, and we also got Rock ‘n Roll Climber which was an odd title by Giles Goddard’s new-ish dev team. While RnRC isn’t going to win any awards (except in uniqueness), NyxQuest is a supposedly stupendous title. Based on averages of scores and such, it seems to be that this year beats last, yet again. Any takers?

And a new mini-segment to appear from time to time: 0-Watt Replay: SBCG4AP Episode 1 is the only one I currently own, and from playing it again a couple weeks ago, my thoughts are still solid. The game is a pretty basic adventure game, and the music could be somewhat more compelling. However, the humor is very much in tact, and the gameplay is good enough in length and quality for the asking price. I admit I didn't buy the other episodes, but I'm not much of an adventure game fan, myself. I'm thinking toward Episode 4 or 5 if at all, right now.

Still have to do one more week to catch up, but comments are acceptable!