Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 5: 8-Bit is Enough
First posted on 15 December 2008. Last updated on 10 August 2009.
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| When Trogdor comes to life, not even the bears and sharks of Strongbadia are safe. |
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| Strong Bad's house is overtaken by ghostly sprites, as Homestar looks on as a support character. |
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| Strong Bad finds the secret hub where the video game universe meets his own. |
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| Strong Bad finds himself in the text parser and 8-bit world of Peasant's Quest. |
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| Strong Bad gets sucked into a video game inhabited by his anime alter ego, Stinkoman. |
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 final episode in Telltale Games' SBCG4AP series, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 5: 8-Bit is Enough, is a video game about video games. Episodes 1-3 have been straight up stories about Strong Bad's world, and Episode 4 has been about re-imagining Strong Bad's world as part of the Dangeresque movie franchise. Episode 5 now merges Strong Bad's world with the bizarre logic and settings of the Videlectrix video game universe. The episode pokes fun at the conventions of the episodic series itself, serving up adventure games for mockery while having a laugh at the expense of platform games, arcade games, and worst of all, licensed games themselves.
All the episodes in this season seem to be structured as 3 act plays: in the first (opening) act, Strong Bad warms up by solving a few introductory puzzles to accomplish some minor goal; in the second act, Strong Bad's objective is snatched away from him and he has to slog through the bulk of the puzzles and content in the game to achieve it again; in the third (final) act, Strong Bad's victory once again proves premature and it takes a final bit of ingenuity and puzzle solving to set matters right.
The opening act of this episode begins fairly benignly, with Strong Bad having to solve a simple puzzle to repair his Trogdor arcade machine, very much in the style of previous episodes. The second act of the episode, however, takes a surprising surreal twist as Strong Bad's tampering causes his world to merge with the Videlectrix game universe: his house is overrun by colonial ghosts from a lightgun game, Marzipan decides to take up the life of King Kong, and Strong Bad will have to venture into the 8-bit world of Peasant's Quest and the anime inspired Stinkoman's 20X6 to slay the mighty Trogdor. The final act of the episode takes the genre bending even further, when Strong Bad finds his interface shifting genres on him as he does battle with Trogdor.
In previous episodes, Strong Bad's running commentary provides mockery of all events that take place around him. In this episode, Homestar is trapped in the role of a pop-in video game advisor, allowing him to chime in at odd moments and bicker with Strong Bad, which gives some amusing variation to the series' usual style. Like the last episode, this episode allows the characters to mix it up slightly by casting themselves in roles other than their usual selves: Strong Sad has an identity crisis as to whether he is an evil wizard or a princess, the King of Town plays a pair of video game villains, and Strong Mad is an inarticulate soviet gymnast. Strong Bad will also be able to recruit some of the video game characters seen in previous episodes: the game allows characters to "join your party" for later use.
The length of the episode and the amount of new media content in it is impressive. The overall length is comparable to that of the standout third episode than the other episodes in the series. My only real gripe is that the solution of a particular puzzle in this game has struck me as being surprisingly arbitrary (Even though I eventually stumbled upon the solution, I still did not have a satisfying explanation for why it was the best way to solve that puzzle.). There are a fair amount of fetch quests over the episode's length. There are also 2 puzzles that are particularly clever in their expected solutions.
The gameplay in this episode takes on a few twists. The black metal detector and its expected use of scouring for items disappears very early on, as Strong Bad appears to be as exhausted with it as the players. There is also a supplementary Videlectrix arcade game available to play, although it is not particularly complex. While the episode's finale shifts Strong Bad into different game genres, the game is still much more puzzle oriented than action oriented. Strong Bad will have some new ways to interact with his new setting. For example, in a particular section of the game, Strong Bad has to shoot away ghosts with a lightgun. It is an interesting premise, but the gag is not executed well enough to make it really satisfying. Instead, it turns into a mini-game to find ghosts to kill for the rest of the game. Other than these few twists, there are no significant gameplay diversions from the puzzle solving, aside from the usual searching for hidden collectibles and interactions.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 5: 8-Bit is Enough is, by far and away, the best episode in the SBCG4AP series. This is because the episode works on multiple different levels: as a parody of video games (including adventure games), as an adaptation of some of the most memorable elements of the Homestarrunner website, and as a hilarious and varied journey through Strong Bad's twisted world. It is as funny and full of surprises as a game based upon the Homestar universe deserves to be, and it serves as a novel and enjoyable way to end the series.