Episode 1: Feedback
I did the best that I could from reading the reviews on the game before playing it.
+ Humor: Still a pretty funny set of characters. Not quite as good as some of the first sbemail I've read but still holds up.
+ Locations: It is nice to have a bunch of areas to explore. I think the house had more places to go and explore than episode 1 of Sam & Max
+ Style: The visual style is in line with what is expected.
+ Extras: Having mini games and other little things to discover is nice
OK now for the bad part
- Difficulty: The game was a bit easy. I'm starting to wonder if telltale is capable of making a game with a difficulty level aimed at people who actually play adventure games.
- Gameplay: Not being able to do anything other than use an item or click on it really kills gameplay. For some reason it was really glaring in this game. I long for a return to a full throttle style interface where I can select different actions I want to perform on an object. Dialogue options weren't really to my liking. I would have liked something ala monkey island or mass effect.
- Graphical Glitch: It seems that there were some sporadic graphical glitches still in the game. I'm surprised these were still there considering that the game was already delayed.
- Empty: Some parts of the world felt empty. I wanted more stuff to click on. Think Bosco's
- Short: As always. I almost forgot to put this one down. I always want more
I have to agree on most of the scores I have seen: 7/10
+ Humor: Still a pretty funny set of characters. Not quite as good as some of the first sbemail I've read but still holds up.
+ Locations: It is nice to have a bunch of areas to explore. I think the house had more places to go and explore than episode 1 of Sam & Max
+ Style: The visual style is in line with what is expected.
+ Extras: Having mini games and other little things to discover is nice
OK now for the bad part
- Difficulty: The game was a bit easy. I'm starting to wonder if telltale is capable of making a game with a difficulty level aimed at people who actually play adventure games.
- Gameplay: Not being able to do anything other than use an item or click on it really kills gameplay. For some reason it was really glaring in this game. I long for a return to a full throttle style interface where I can select different actions I want to perform on an object. Dialogue options weren't really to my liking. I would have liked something ala monkey island or mass effect.
- Graphical Glitch: It seems that there were some sporadic graphical glitches still in the game. I'm surprised these were still there considering that the game was already delayed.
- Empty: Some parts of the world felt empty. I wanted more stuff to click on. Think Bosco's
- Short: As always. I almost forgot to put this one down. I always want more
I have to agree on most of the scores I have seen: 7/10
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
The atmosphere of the game was very involving; from the cutesy tune at Marzipan's house to the familiar rap-aid provided by Coach Z on the See Dee player. The graphics, though occasionally glitchy, were friendly and easy on the eye - much like I'd expect from the main website. The script and vocal work were amazing, something that, funnily enough, reminded me of Full Throttle in terms of never tiring of hearing the same lines repreated over and over again whilst exploring (I am disheartened though that the 'kissy lips' option of Teen Girl Squad didn't have an "I'm not putting my lips on that" line)
The game was easy, but so was Sam and Max upon it's return to the world. It's probably to introduce people who haven't played Monkey Island or Space Quest to the genre in a way that makes them feel 'in control' enough to continue consuming the franchise as it progresses into a more formidable foe.
All in all I'd give the game a very strong 8/10, with hopes that it will follow the Sam and Max route of getting harder in terms of game content in future episodes.
There is plenty of content available to keep fans of Strong Bad and Co. coming back for more games and with Telltale's unique understanding of the genre and it's fans I can't see the series diminishing as it evolves. Much of the Homestar Runner concept is based on early gaming, reading how much fun people have had playing "Snake Boxer 5" has put a big smile on my face. Fun is the key.
So far it's the best 20 quid I've spent in ages (bar The Dark Knight) and I'll definitely be recommending it to both PC users and Wii users alike (as well as getting it on the Wii the second it becomes available in the UK)
Hope this was/is of some help to someone.
-m0r
I agree that it was easy, but the thing with adventure games is that even if a puzzle was hard to figure out the first time, it'll be easy the next time because you already know what to do. So as far as replayability goes, I'm not sure difficulty is on the very top of their list of priorities in these games.
Instead, I approached this game as well as the Sam and Max games by focusing on the humor rather than the difficulty and left very much entertained each time
Puzzles and writing should be the backbone of every adventure game. In this way, Episode 1 is not quite the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it does have a noticeable slump in its posture.
Replay value is something that is made all too important. People are rating games by whether or not the game cuts off at some point.
There is a reason I love adventure games. Replay value isn't one of them. I could care less. If the core experience is easy and I don't have to think at all to get to the next stage...I don't see why they bother making it interactive.
Yes! A Full Throttle fan! I totally agree that the skull tattoo interface should make a return in some game. Overall I thought the presentation of SBCG4AP was quite slick, and for the style humor it presented, the point-and-click UI was nice.
But I'm still dreaming of a Telltale-made Full Throttle....
Speaking of which, can I make a request for your next franchise, Telltale?
Edit: ooh, also I am hoping A LOT that the third and fourth episodes (like sam and max) are harder. (Also, i'm hoping that Strong Badia the Free will be as good as the trailer)
np: Ulf Lohmann - My Pazifik (Pop Ambient 2008)
I also didn't have any issues with the graphics during play and I was playing at a high resolution. Everything looked crisp, clean, no noticeable clipping or shading glitches. So I'd really like to see some screencaps of what everyone is talking about.
I must also say, the engine was smooth as butter. All that trial & error through Bone and S&M has paid off. Things were very clickable. And the actions in the race portion were integrated flawlessly. I like the speed, and the ease at which you interact. It's one area S&M has always faltered in (action elements)
It was a lot of fun. Almost as much as Snake Boxer 3, hands down the best in the series no matter what Strong Bad says.
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I didn't mean to imply difficulty wasn't important at all. I'm just saying that for me personally, the humorous reactions of doing stuff is more appealing than actually doing the stuff.
But I'm guessing the difficulty will gradually increase as the episodes go along, but i dunno...
I found that the amount of silly and unnecessary interactions to be a lot smaller than in the Sam and Max episodes. I mean, the areas seemed a bit empty, and I usually got a "No" or "NOPE!" from Strong Bad when I did something wrong. Part of the fun of Sam and Max was combining ridiculous things and getting a silly response. Trying to use the gun on Max, or shooting out the window gave me more than "NO YOU'RE WRONG." And I found that lack of interaction to be a negative.
That's an excellent point.
From what I played (haven't beaten it yet), I enjoyed the humor (being a H*R fan and all), the varieties of different types of gameplay for an adventure game such as stealth (
Edit: Score now 9.0 out of 10
Looking at EPisode 1 on it's own without comparing it to anything else, I suppose I didn't mind the length also, due to the fact that 4 additional installments are coming as well, meaning that this game should be 4 times longer than Episode 1, spread out over a month. Not too shabby, I guess.
Besides, now I get to go beat the game from start to finish all over again in front of my other H*R loving friends that don't have the game, almost as if i'm preforming a movie for them to watch. Heh heh. That's sorta fun all on it's own, really. :P (But only if you have friends or family that like H*R that don't have this game, of course)
All's I'm saying.
BUT I'm sure he'll have a more practical henchmen-role in the next episode. (or is it "hench-the cheat-role"?)
I have no issues with a person, such as yourself, wanting harder puzzles but I don't think we are owed them, nor is it our divine right to have them.
My opinion is that Hoimestar Ruiner works without them. Not to say that more, harder puzzles in future episodes would be an unwanted thing.
-I think Strong Bad laughing at the deaths (or groaning at the lack thereof) in Teen Girl Squad felt a little off. It messes with the flow. I'd rather just wait until the end of the comic before getting SB's feedback.
-On the Wii version, the resolution of Strong Bad's face seems a bit low, considering that the camera zooms in on it fairly often and it's the most important face in the game
Still.
I am with you, and would prefer that the Teen Girl Squad rating system be a bit less obtrusive to watching the strip.
To be honest, we felt it was a little off as well, but when we first play tested the game without it, people had no idea that they were making any progress, quickly became frustrated and just gave up. After we made that adjustment, people started to understand the game and enjoyed themselves quite a bit!
Ok admitidly I wasn't the biggest fan of the idea behind this Telltale game from the start.
Having never gotten into the original website it is based upon and not finding the few email jokes I looked at all that funny I was extremely sceptical about buying this game.
What I am a big fan of though is Telltale itself. Bone was great and i'm a big fan of their work on Sam and Max. So I gave the demo a go from that decided to give it a shot and purchased the season pass on PC.
The graphics have the typical Telltale look about them, the menu interfaces are cool and the tutorial was quite funny with everyone messing up their "lines".
Onto the game itself, and although I doubt I will ever be a huge fan of the source material, there was some genuinly funny parts in the game from the opening theme song to some of the odd responses to clicking on items had me laughing.
Unfortunatly I do think you need to have more of a appreciation and knowledge of the source material to really get the most out of the humour.
The voice work was great with each character having a distinctive voice although some of them start to grate after a while. Strong Bad is a pretty decent character and keeps the game moving along.
The gameword is pretty empty and lifeless, possibly a restriction for the Wii edition or maybe it's in keeping with the comic I don't know, but there isn't really that much to do.
The puzzles were very easy and not all that interesting and the story was weak. The padding out of the gameplay with the snakeboxer, teen girl sqaud comic and the costumes and cups etc (while amusing) didn't really fit with a short episodic game which without it would last a couple of hours.
Overall I found the first episode an amusing "adventure" aimed at beginners and fans of Homestar.
6/10
My only concern...
I had a problem with the font used fot the onscreen text: it's really, really too small (at least on my SD TV). Can you give us an option to change the font size, for the next episodes? Thanks!
Needs More Homsar!! At least we could've at least gotten a diffrent response everytime we phone pranked him.
Other than that great game!
"DaAaAaA, Heavens to Betsy, I'm the largest of the three!" (500 points!)
________________________________________
-"I am Lord Barglebroth, come for your souls!!"
-"...Lord High Awesomeparty, aka Strong Bad..."
Graphically, I have a feeling it probably looks better on Wii than on a full HD 24" computer monitor. For me, things seemed a little pixellated and round objects, such as SB's head, looked a bit angular (polygonal) in close-ups. I guess that might be unavoidable if they have to support Wii as well, but the extremely high-contrast style does make it a bit more evident than it is in Sam & Max. (Again, probably more so because of my high-res PC setup.) The shading also seemed a little weird sometimes, and the cartoony outlines of the polygonal meshes intersected with each other in odd-looking ways. For example, look at where Strong Bad's head meets his neck.
But there's no denying that overall, the visual style is one of the best translations of a 2D cartoon to a 3D game ever. And at a distance, it really looks fantastic (like when Strong Bad is chucked out of the castle window by Strong Mad). Close-ups don't fare quite as well, but I don't know how much can be done about that.
On to the more important stuff: the opening musical number was fantastic, and just one example of how good and how true to the webtoons the writing and voice acting were. It's hard to imagine a fan of Homestar Runner being disappointed with this game. And I, who definitely liked the first 100 or so Strong Bad e-mails but have lost interest for a while, am definitely on the bandwagon again thanks to the game. It's one of the best productions in the whole franchise.
The gameplay is simpler than that of Sam & Max, but it seems kind of appropriate with the whole feel of the webtoon. I still found several puzzles challenging, mostly the puzzle in the castle. (That particular environment also felt really old-school adventure gamey to me, which was a plus.) The minigames also complement the feel of the toon perfectly, and overall I prefer them to the minigames in Sam & Max. They fit in the universe very well, and the Teen Girl Squad one is a nice little mini-adventure-game that's a lot of fun on its own merits. Snake Boxer 5 isn't even necessarily supposed to be good, but it's funny. And I look forward to finding the rest of the manual -- yes, this is actually an adventure game with replay value! I'm not a stickler for replay value, since I'm really more concerned with actually getting around to playing the other games I have, and I don't see why a game shouldn't give you everything it has to offer on the first play-through. But financially this is a good move, because people are bound to whine about it being $10.
Overall, I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the series as Telltale evolves and refines it.
The humor was spot on ("I sometimes get tired of that!"). I made a point to kick the Cheat into the dryer at least 500 times (did anybody else catch that the Cheat goes "Wii?" one of the times before Strong Bad knocks him in?).
I didn't find it overly difficult, but there were several points where I had the right idea, I was just missing a few things to make it work properly and I got stuck on that. I also like how there's lots of random bonus stuff like Teen Girl Squad and the SB5 manual that aren't essential to completing the game. For me that made it feel like the cartoon (easter eggs!) and also distinguished it a little from Sam & Max.
It felt a lot longer than I anticipated, too. Every big event after the first race had me thinking, "Okay, this must be the end", and then something would happen and there'd be something else to do.
The only glitch I encountered was that the subtitles liked to randomly turn themselves on and off. I have the Wii version and I don't have a widescreen TV, though.
In conclusion, I loved it but it needs more Homsar.
One thing I would suggest for the Wii version would be the ability to call up the map from the "+" or "-" buttons, and let you flick to the score sheet using those buttons too.
It's weird not to have that functionality in the game when it's in the wii menus.
I had never heard of homestarrunner.com before Telltale announced this game. Having watched through the Strong Bad e-mails and most of the toons, I find the humor to be very hit and miss for me. When it hits, it's awesome, though. This game just kind of left me going, "meh" indifferently, here's hoping the next one strikes my sense of humor.
Like I've said before, beating up Homestar is just too down to earth.
Watch the old emails. The first ones were the best. I stopped watching the sbemail a couple years back after it got a bit boring. I still enjoy the game though..... good old Strong Bad Email #10
Solid mini-games and great classic Homestar Writing. The flashback of Marzipan's last party was worth the price (still laughing about that). It leaves lots of room for improvement, but it's a solid game! Great jorb Telltale!
7/10
Oh, and it needs more Homsar.
Oh, sure, there are plenty of great older emails (sisters, homsar), but they lack a certain... polish that the new ones have. If you look at them, they're almost always just Strong Bad sitting at this computer for two minutes and rarely have easter eggs.