Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows XP/Vista; 1.5 GHz CPU; 256 MB RAM; 32 MB graphics card; Direct X 9 or better
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

Five months ago, Mike and Matt Chapman brought their Homestar Runner web comic characters to the gaming world with the first episode in the Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People series. So it’s only appropriate for them to take a few good-natured satirical stabs at the history of the gaming industry with the series’ final act, 8-Bit Is Enough. And after falling off of the horse a bit with their previous release, Dangeresque: The Criminal Projective, the Chapmans jump right back into the saddle and bring the series to a thrilling, entertaining conclusion.

Strong Bad’s beloved Trogdor arcade-game cabinet has been damaged in an accident in his basement, causing the machine to sprout human arms and a dragon’s tail and terrorize the neighborhood. After consulting the tech-support line at Trogdor manufacturer Videlectrix, Strong Bad discovers that replacing the game’s logic board will solve the problem. Unfortunately, the tech geeks fail to tell him that replacing the board while in close proximity to a radiation source will cause a rip in the space-time continuum and bring about the end of the world as we know it. So, when Strong Bad enlists the help of a radioactive Homestar (Strong Bad has used his metal detector on Homestar to find his friend’s lucky quarter) to make the repair, the radioactivity releases the monster from the machine and creates portals to Videlectrix’s other game worlds. To set things right again, Strong Bad must visit each of these parallel worlds and solve the puzzles he finds there.

Control-wise, nothing has changed. The same point-and-click interface used to navigate the previous episodes returns, although I did discover that you can click and hold down the left mouse button to guide Strong Bad through the bright, primary-colored scenery. I don’t know if this is a new navigation wrinkle, since I never tried it before, but it does make character movement a bit easier. The use of the metal detector-shovel combination is scaled back considerably in this story, as you find most of the series’ ubiquitous collectibles in boxes this time. Finding them helps you to level up, but these games have never really put very much importance into character leveling, so you can safely skip finding these items if you choose. Also, conversation bubbles contain considerably fewer threads, so you spend less time cycling through dialogue than in previous episodes.

Eight-Bit Is Enough feels much less rushed than its immediate predecessor. Small but annoying errors such as subtitle typos and sloppy graphics are eliminated in Episode 5. The story, while still expansive, is a bit more focused, making it easier to keep track of what you should be doing. Most importantly, 8-Bit is twice as much fun to play as Dangeresque, but it’s the story that takes center stage in this new episode. Almost every gaming genre of the 1990s, from text adventures to first-person shooters, is lampooned, including a sequence in the final act that will spawn knowing chuckles from anyone who grew up in PC gaming’s early years.

Despite Telltale’s efforts to set the series back on track, significant problems remain, some of which have dogged these games since Episode 1. Let’s ignore the fact that, in a home populated by three miscreant brothers and no parents, the entire house is spotless (even the bathroom). Labels of items located off-screen are sometimes displayed where they don’t belong. Pathfinding is still a bit wonky, with Strong Bad moving in a direction contrary to the one you want him to use. As in Episode 4, the game’s built-in hint system stops providing hints for a major portion of the story. The program allows you to complete a quest long before it should be possible to do so. You can continue to use one of the weapons in the game by selecting it from the inventory, even when the weapon has run out of ammunition, and, in a crucial scene near the end of the game, spoken dialogue goes silent (thank the heavens for subtitles).

I wasn’t supposed to be the Avault reviewer for this series; one of my colleagues asked me to fill in for him, and I’m glad that I did. This series is filled with quirky characters, puzzles that are challenging without being overtly frustrating, and a biting sense of humor that made me look forward to each new story. Episode 5 recovers some of the magic that started to slip away in Dangeresque, padding the series’ excellent qualities with a knowing wink and a nudge to those of us who remember the good old days of low-res graphics and FPS dungeon crawls. There are some significant flaws in this final installment, but there’s far more that’s right than wrong here. No mention is made at the end of the game of the future of the Strong Bad series, but I hope to see these characters again one day.

Our Score: