Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4: Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective
First posted on 17 November 2008. Last updated on 10 August 2009.
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| Marzipan attempts to steer Strong Bad's movie off course by inserting pro-environmental messages. |
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| "He works alone/Except for when he works with Renaldo, which is all the time." |
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| PomPom brings his characteristic emotional depth and nuance to the role of Dr. Experimento. |
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| Dangeresque strikes a pose in the heart of the cold unforgiving city. |
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| No expense is spared by Strong Bad to simulate the beautiful city of Cairo for his film. |
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
The season is comprised of 5 episodes:
- Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner
- Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free
- Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands
- Episode 4: Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective
- Episode 5: 8-Bit is Enough
The fourth episode in the Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People series represents a significant stylistic departure from the previous episodes. All 3 prior episodes are the literal adventures of Strong Bad, following him step-by-step as he pranks, sabotages, and tries to come out on top of his fellow Free Country USA residents. The latest episode, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4: Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective, is a fictional story set within a fictional story—Strong Bad is filming the long anticipated, low budget Dangeresque sequel, and you follow Strong Bad in the role of Dangeresque as he makes epic adventure out of the flimsiest of premises.
Fans of the series up to now may feel like they are familiar with the characters and locations that have been brought to life in this adaptation of the Homestarrunner brand. This episode puts a fresh twist on this expectation by redressing the sets that players of past episodes have seen before as exotic locations in Dangeresque's world and casting the familiar characters as actors doing a poor job at playing their assorted roles. Rather than making Strong Bad's literal conversations and actions the only storytelling device, this episode puts a certain ironic distance between the player and the scenes being staged, introducing the possibilities of clearly fake effects, actors behaving out of character, and indulging more fully Strong Bad's own fanciful takes on reality.
The "Dangeresque" movie series is a reference to a feature from the web cartoon, which portrays Strong Bad as the action movie star, Dangeresque, and as with the previous games this episode is filled with references to the source material. The plot of the film in production during the game centers around Dangeresque trying to track down an important formula to help Marzipan's alter ego, Cutesy Buttons, only to find himself caught in a web of betrayal that will take him around the world (in a manner of speaking) and even off into space. Various "regular" characters play the supporting roles to Strong Bad's Dangeresque: Coach Z plays Dangeresque's partner Renaldo, who is weeks away from retirement and trying to avoid being predictably killed off, Senor Cardgage makes a surprise appearance as a character with a dark connection to Dangeresque's latest case, and Marzipan plays a second role as Sultry Buttons, a jilted femme fatale with a score to settle with Dangeresque.
In terms of the challenge of its puzzles and depth of its gameplay, the fourth episode is closer to the first and second episodes than the exceptionally complex third episode. The puzzles are smaller in scope than before, since the story tends to move very quickly from scene to scene without substantial backtracking, and they mostly rely on using the right item in the right place. A particular puzzle stands out as requiring a bit of cleverness, but on the whole the puzzles are more of an excuse to pace out the game and get the player to try things out for the fun of it than a significant challenge on their own.
Where this game really shines is in its story and humor. The movie at the center of the game is corny, overacted, and laughably low budget, which makes it entirely believable as a part of Strong Bad's world. The poorly constructed sets, editing bloopers, and cheap effects all make for some amusing moments while Strong Bad tries desperately to ham things up as much as possible. It is without a doubt the funniest of the episodes in the series so far, and it is the episode that best captures the feel of the website's most popular features, which are often satirizing a particular subject and poking fun at their own characters as much as anything else.
Many of the familiar gameplay features from the previous episodes make a return: the metal detector is once again used to scour for hidden items, new emails periodically arrive for Strong Bad to answer and mock, a Videlectrix arcade game is there to be fiddled with (although a word of advice is that it is easy to miss the explanation of the controls), and collectible costume pieces provide a reason to explore the game's locales further. A feature that seems to have fallen by the wayside is the inclusion of a teen girl squad cartoon (these have proven to be funnier to watch than participate in). The most significant break from the past features is reinterpreting the "extended play" after beating the game as a DVD extras menu, allowing the usual post game scenes to be played out as bloopers, interviews, and deleted scenes.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4: Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective is probably the strongest entrant in the series so far. It is also the episode that requires the most context to be appreciated, both in relation to the conventions and sets developed in the episodic series so far and in relation to the cartoons on the website from which it derives its premise. It is the most plot driven out of the games so far, and it feels the closest to watching a Strong Bad cartoon, with the addition of more significant interactivity and puzzle solving. It is also the first title to serve as a direct continuation of a cartoon from the Homestarrunner website, rather than a standalone adventure with its characters. Now that TellTale Games has taken the time to develop the characters and their world, it is no surprise that the developer is able to pull off a strongly themed episode and does its best work yet in adapting the Homestarrunner brand.