The Homestar Runner series finally makes it’s grand appearance in the (commercial) gaming market with it’s first game, “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People- Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner”, for the Wii. Probably one of the most long awaited games for WiiWare, the game has more than enough moments, but it isn’t a perfect game by any means.

The story is basically this: You’re Strong Bad, the awesome and cool pro wrestler, and a random email brings about the urge to beat up the uncool Homestar Runner. However, Strong Bad soon finds out that a big race is happening, and Homestar is in it (With a title I can’t bother to repeat, but every time it’s mentioned, it somehow gets more and more humorous). He decides he wants to compete and beat Homestar in this, but Coach Z, the guy in charge of the race, denies him his chance by stating that the only entries allowed in are Homestar and Pom-Pom. It is now up to you to help Strong Bad find a way into this amazing race.

The graphics on this game are pretty good. I was honestly not TOO impressed with the trailers we got, but the cel shading executed in this game are a lot more clean and crisp compared to the trailers. That is the say the game engine isn’t perfect, however. A slight amount of slowdown can occur when you’re going into an area with lots of stuff in it (Marzipan’s house as an example), and a very minor glitch is in the retro game you first play, where a block sprite pops up once in a while on the bottom right side (but then again, perhaps this was intentional? Who knows).

Gameplay is a bit stiff too. This is basically your classic point and click adventure game, ala Sam and Max and the Monkey Island series. You can move around Strong Bad by clicking on certain areas in the area or holding down the A button on a certain area (Think Animal Crossing Wild World). However, the controls with this can feel a bit stiff sometimes, and lag can occur with certain selections from time to time, hindering the gameplay. This is especially noticable in the crowded areas.

The mini-games range from entertaining to flat out confusing. The retro game you first play in this, Snake Boxer 5, is pretty entertaining, despite the one tiny glitch, and you get a side quest to find the missing manuel with it as well. There’s also a Teen Girl Squad mini-game, but this seems to be a matching game… I stress “seems to be” since the whole thing itself makes no sense. Actually, Teen Girl Squad never made any sense to me to begin with.

Sound is probably this game’s highest point. Obviously, you have all the voices represented in this game, along with the recognizable MIDI music used in the series. This game wouldn’t be a Homestar Runner game if it didn’t have these two things in it, but it manages to have both in a perfect way.

Despite the controls being a bit stiff, the actual presentation is near perfect. The entire game itself feels like an episode for the Homestar Runner website. Though the difficulty can be a bit higher when you don’t know what to do next, a common occurrence with all point and click games. It’s a matter of just trying to figure it out and, worse case scenario, try every last clickable item with everything you can throw at it.

Playing through, there is a bit of replayability to this game, with collecting all the items and getting your overall progress to 100 percent. However, once you do that, there won’t be much else to do with this game. Point and click games usually don’t have a huge amount of replayability to begin with, but this game does lack a bit more replayability than most point and click games have.
Overall, despite it’s flaws, I’m fairly impressed with this game so far. But then again, I’m a fan of the Homestar Runner series to begin with. If you’re not a fan, this may or may not throw you into the series. Point and click fans may also be turned off by the flaws in this game. But if you’re just a normal gamer who’s looking for an entertaining game, this may be up your alley.

Graphics: A
Gameplay: C-
Sound: A+
Presentation: A
Replayability: C+

Overall: B-