Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows XP/Vista
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

The stars of the “Homestar Runner” web comic return for the second installment in Telltale Games’ five-episode series, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. In this new segment of the point-and-click comedy-adventure series, the sharp-tongued, boxing-glove-wearing luchador has a new mission: world domination.

One fine sunny day, Strong Bad fires up his trusty laptop computer to read his email and discovers that the local ruler, the King of Town, has imposed an email tax on all of his subjects. For every message sent or received, the King is to be paid one cream-filled snack cake. Being a heavy email user, Strong Bad has been especially hard-hit by this new tax, and since this is the first that he’s heard of it, he’s seriously in arrears—he’s been fitted with an electronic monitoring collar and placed under house arrest.

Strong Bad’s friends and neighbors hear of his plight and come to his house to express their support, setting up an image of the King to be burned in effigy. After some quick thinking (and a bit of manipulation of his supporters), Strong Bad escapes from captivity and declares war on the King of Town. The other residents follow suit and secede from the King’s government, each setting up their own independent territories. Strong Bad and his aide, The Cheat (a yellow Pokemon-like creature who only speaks in gibberish), begin a campaign to form alliances with all of the other new sovereign nations to depose the cake-eating King of Town once and for all.

Like the first episode of the series, SBtF is only available by online download from Telltale. Each installment can be purchased separately, or you can buy a subscription that gets you all five of the stories as soon as they are released, similar to the system used for the publisher’s other big episodic series, Sam and Max. Installation is quick and painless (provided you have a broadband connection), and there are only a few audio and video options to be tweaked. The hint-detail setting also returns from Episode 1, allowing you to decide how much help you want to get from the game as it progresses.

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