Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Baddest of the Bands review

With a new month comes more great Strong Bad comedy from Telltale. In a break with (two months’ worth of) tradition, it’s not an antagonistic email that sets up Strong Bad’s story this time, but the need to fix his precious console. Instead of getting a job, he discovers a far more convoluted approach – hold a Battle of the Bands! The story’s fairly obvious (persuade bands, sabotage bands) and there aren’t really any new characters or locations, but we’re not going to call it stale because it’s just too damn funny.

The puzzle quality is a little inconsistent however. Sometimes we got stuck because they were too simple. We’re thinking of one particularly early puzzle where we were scratching our head for ages, cursing the hints for being no help at all, and then we just tried something random and solved it. The semi-titular Battle, on the other hand, is superb, and most previous locations are removed so there’s no pointless retreading of steps.

The Battle really is a perfect adventure section. What a shame then that the final challenge, Strong Bad’s own performance, just consists of clicking things. It is all really straightforward, but then it so perfectly builds to a really amusing conclusion that you won’t mind. Any problems melt away fast with writing as sharp and hysterical as this. Although admittedly that means nothing when the best line is “Jibbly jibbly jibbly jibbly jibbly”.

Nov 20, 2008