Strong Bads Cool Game For Attractive People

It's Easy To assume that everyone knows about Homestar Runner - the Flash cartoon site that refused advertising, instead funding itself entirely through merchandise sales. But that's almost certainly not the case.

For most people, discovering the depths of its edgy-cute pop-mangling universe is a personal thing. A friend directing you to a cartoon of a wrestlerlooking guy answering an email. An inexplicable video of They Might Be Giants singing with a puppet. Any trace of curiosity, and you're lost. Trawling through the site's archives, games, skins and unlockables will take weeks, but at least you'll know why people went mad for Trogdor in Guitar Hero II.

Home Start

So, if you haven't been to the Homestar site, go now. Think of it as 72-hour demo, and if you don't even feel a vague tingle, then skip this review. If you like the site, you'll enjoy this game more for being in on the jokes.

Being centred around Strong Bad, the wrestler-looking guy I mentioned in the first paragraph, the game starts off with an email. Read from his beloved Lappy - a personalised pre-Pentium laptop - this message is a challenge to "kick the snot" out of Homestar Runner, the lovey-dovey nasal star of the website. Not keen on the snot imagery, Strong Bad decides instead to humiliate Homestar, and that's where you take over. Can you break up his relationship and humiliate him in his favourite sport? Maybe get the guy a criminal record?

With a near-identical user interface, and the same helpful (but not obvious) hint system used in Sam & Max's episodic adventures, this should take an evening to complete - maybe getting up early the next day if you want to get all the optional stuff. It's these non-essential bonuses that make Strong Bad feel like more of a complete game. Whereas Sam & Max had the optional bumper stickers (which made no difference and were won through an easy, pointless game) here, you win Coach Z's Mysterious Trophies and learn about the backstory to your favourite game, Snake Boxer 5. How you win the trophies isn't explained, but you can check your progress at any time and try to work out what those percentages mean.

Laugh A Minute

Like Sam & Max, this is essentially an interactive comedy show. The puzzles aren't hard enough to stump you for long and the dialogue options are limited. But to complain about that is as fair as criticising a ballet dancer for losing a boxing match. This is straight-up entertainment for fans of the Homestar Runner world. But if the universe is too sweet for you, or just don't like the humour, then you won't like this game. But then, this was never going to be for you, was it? Why are you even reading this review? You can't be hoping we'd hate it you've already seen the score. Why bother reading a load of irrelevant stuff that doesn't concern you, stupid face? Why don't you go and read a book that tells you how to not be a big stupid face?

The Ugly One

When childlike misogyny is ace

Strong Bad is a ladies' man. In his mind, ladies like nothing more than a man in a house, flexing at them through the living room window. It's this understanding of the female brain that leads him to draw Teen Girl Squad, a cartoon in which a bunch of girls talk about shoes and looking good, before getting dismembered.

The girls have their own section on the Homestar website, but the best optional quest in the Strong Bad game is assembling all the lost ideas in order to create the best possible Teen Girl Squad strip. It's so intuitive that it doesn't need any explanation, so I won't bother to explain it here. Just make sure the girls all die, OK?