After not watching Strong Bad Emails for a few years now, I was surprised that I got as excited as I did for the Strong Bad Cool Game for Attractive People on the Wii. I've always been a fan of the adventure genre and since my computer is damn near ancient, a chance to play one on the Wii is something I couldn't pass up.

Tell Tale is a company that's made some great adventure games, specifically the Sam & Max games for the PC (The first season is due out on the Wii soon). I was able to play a bit of it, but like I said before ancient computer. They're used their skills to create the same kind of game for Strong Bad and it largely succeeds. You go from place to place interacting with all you favorite Strong Bad characters with the end goal of winning the Race to the end of the Race. The title is actually longer than that, but it escapes me now. Of course, the goals change significantly along the way as you try and fix all the problems you caused.

The gameplay is pretty simple with using the Wii remote to point at the screen in place of using a mouse on a keyboard. That's it. The inventory and map are mapped to the + and - buttons so it's really easy to do everything you need to without much work. The game does a pretty good job of pointing you in the right direction, though there were a few spots when I was clicking at everything just looking for a good reaction. Even with the wandering around, it only took about 4 hours to finish. And if you know what you're doing, it could probably take about half that.

Graphically the game really gets across the style of the flash cartoons. Yes, it is 3D and all polygony, but it still looks very much like a 2D cartoon. Even the backgrounds end in a flat wall of shrubs and just blue sky. It's all pretty smooth, but with some of the characters you'll see a bit of jagged edges. Though that could just be seeing it on a big TV.

I did enjoy this game and there isn't much to complain about, except for the length. Like I mentioned above, it can be a very short game. Episodic or not, it still cost 1000 Wii points ($10) and only took a few hours. In terms of replay, there's essentially none. After you finish the main objectives, you unlock Free Play to get all those bonuses you missed. That's cool and all, but since there's no real incentive aside from having 100% done, it's hard to find reason to go back.

I liked it enough to play through it again, though it's hard to say if that's just because of my personal lack of adventure games. As a first episode, I enjoyed it enough to be back for Episode 2. But the big problem I'm having now is the storage for the Wii. This was 300 some blocks and that drops me down to about 100. To get the next episode I'm going to need to get an SD card or start deleting stuff. That's not the games fault, but come on Nintendo, figure something out.

3 out of 5 boxing gloves