Strong Badia the Free! is the second in an episodic set of five Strong Bad games called Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People from Telltale Games. If you haven’t read my review of the first game in this set, Homestar Ruiner, I highly recommend that you do so. I go over Strong Bad’s background and character in that article, so I won’t bother repeating it here, even at the risk of making this review somewhat brief. Suffice to say, he’s crude, arrogant and stupid, which puts his costumed-head and shirtless-shoulders above everyone else in town! Although this is a standalone game, I advise players unfamiliar with the story and characters to start with the first episode.
What I liked about this game are the still simple and intuitive interface, the “wargame board” map, the minigame (one a mockery of Taito’s Double Dragon game and the other a seeming parody of Stratego, a favorite boardgame of mine), and the trophies and other useless items I collected just because I could. The humor is still rude but slightly less vulgar that the first game. I had no technical issues with gameplay, audio or graphics. The menus were still clear and simple, but there was no gameplay tutorial as there had been in the first game.
The simple but nefarious plot of the game is that The King of Town creates and enforces an absurd e-mail tax, mimicking the oft-foretold (via Internet hoax) warning that Congress is passing such a tax, usually at the rate of 10 cents per e-mail — as if they could actually monitor or enforce such a travesty! For not paying this tax in tasty snacks, Strong Bad is placed under house arrest with an explosive collar around his neck linked to an invisible fence just outside his door.
After Strong Bad escapes, he announces that Strong Badia will secede from Free Country USA, and he attempts to rally the other characters into joining him. Instead, everyone goes off to form their own countries (even The Cheat and the Stick form their own sovereign nations!), and Strong Bad has to work to unite them under his own somewhat apathetic banner in order to overthrow The King of Town's pastry-focused and oppressive rule. Another character from the show was introduced in this adventure, Homsar, a strange and sometimes floating cross between Homestar and Strong Sad who speaks gibberish and inhabits a strangely psychedelic land known as the Homsar Reservation.
Among the items I found littering the landscape (and occasionally buried beneath it) were a dancing Strong Bad doll, a katana, a lighter and a pile of Strong Badian currency, known as Quesos (Spanish for “cheeses”). There also were a few things scattered around the Bad house during the initial period of incarceration that I gathered up, but they were used escaping from custody. Even though I didn’t pay much attention to the in-game ranks in the first game, I did notice that this game included ranks that were humorously quasi-political, such as “Hall Monitor” and “Chancellor of the 7 Realms.” I still haven’t gotten around to focusing on the Teen Girl Squad, but perhaps I will in the next review (yes, I am writing all five of these game reviews — look for them!).
Even though this episode is not a marked improvement on the first one, I’d recommend this game for anyone old enough to get the jokes, especially Homestar Runner fans. Gameplay is simple, the plot is silly and the jokes are never rude enough to justify turning it off. This episode takes a little longer to play than the first one, but you can still beat it in about six hours (or maybe I am just slowing down). Again, it’s a great deal because you pay for one game but you get the full set of five short games, at least on the PC.
The games also are available for the Wii through WiiWare.
