Life is Strange: Before the Storm - 13/52

     Life is Strange marks one of the most polarizing experiences in a game I've had in my entire life. There's a lot to dislike about Life is Strange, from the sometimes stilted voice acting to the weird animations to it being a wholly narrative driven game based entirely on walking and seemingly arbitrary multiple choice questions. Not to mention it relies seriously on the cliche of small towns always having a messed up underbelly that needs to come to light. As someone who has basically grown up in small towns his whole life, I can tell you that underbelly is mostly just rampant heroin addiction and improper trash disposal. But for all its faults, I fell in love with it. It wove a rather interesting and compelling mystery, with characters I really did like and a primary gameplay mechanic, short-term time travel, that, while never used for anything especially cool until the final chapter, really did serve to get in tune with the world that Life is Strange built. It was one of the first games I cleared on my PS4 and I basically binged the whole thing. So with my clear love for Life is Strange, I was excited for more to be released. Even if it wasn't the same characters, setting or narrative, I just wanted more of this universe where random indie songs start up for no adequately explained reason and all you need to fix a 40-year-old truck is a toolbox, a picture, and a pirate flag. And I got my wish in the form of a prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

    To talk about Before the Storm I must first talk more about the original Life is Strange.  Don't worry, I'll make it brief. The original Life is Strange is the story of high school student Max Caulfield, who has recently moved back to her childhood home of Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend a prestigious prep school.  After a whirlwind of a first day of the semester, wherein she stops a drug deal, gets shot and discovers that she has the ability to travel back in time in brief periods, at most twenty minutes, she reunites with her childhood best friend, Chloe Price, who pretty much is rightfully angry at Max for moving away to Seattle and then proceeding to basically abandon her for years on end.  She then shows Chloe her gift and the two set out to solve the disappearances of several teenage girls in Arcadia Bay over the course of the past couple years, a mystery that Chloe has a personal stake in as her girlfriend, Rachel, is one of the missing girls. This is all juxtaposed by the impending threat of a massive hurricane that Max keeps having recurring visions of that threatens to destroy Arcadia Bay.  The overarching theme of these games is just ‘when it rains it pours’, if you couldn’t tell.

    Now, I know what you're thinking.  'Ethan' you may be saying. 'I thought you said it would be brief.'  To which I reply, that was brief. I could go on for a full entry about Life is Strange easily, I love Life is Strange.  Anyways, you may also be asking about the relevance of the plot of the future entry in the series chronologically. Wouldn't that be giving spoilers to the game you are currently playing?  And indeed, it is true. Playing through Life is Strange does give you the ending to the story in Before the Storm and, without giving too much away, it's not a happy ending for anyone involved.  But I feel it was relevant to mention this as you needed some smattering of information on the previous game to adequately understand my thoughts and feelings on this one. So, without further ado, let's dive into our main event.  Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

Okay, so it's 'I Can't Believe it's Not D&D'

    Life is Strange: Before the Storm is set 3 years before the events of the original game.  In it, rather than playing as original protagonist Max Caulfield, you play as original deuteragonist, Chloe Price.  The game's focus is on a young Chloe meeting Rachel and discovering her own sexuality, as well as dealing with the much smaller but still kind of big mystery of Rachel's dad's mysterious makeout buddy who, she'll note, is definitely not her mom.  As well, Chloe is dealing with her mom finally moving on from Chloe her dad's death and finding love again, and Chloe feeling unwanted in her own house. And a wildfire. There's a raging wildfire too. Oh and the drug subplot. And D&D. This game is ten hours long and you play D&D twice for roughly eight of those ten hours. I love this series, man, but it really just needs to chill out for a second.  It's up to Chloe to solve the mystery and get the girl. Probably not, she's just a teenager, and she doesn't even have time travel superpowers.

    Life is Strange: Before the Storm is a smaller, more character-driven fare than the future past entry in the series.  Rather than really focusing on the disaster or the mystery, Before the Storm prefers to focus on the developing relationship between Chloe and Rachel.  Which makes sense, the driving force of the original was this relationship that Chloe and Rachel had, but we never properly meet Rachel nor do we get to really see the relationship.  And this both works and kind of doesn't work. Chloe and Rachel are both fine characters that have a lot of really good moments throughout the three main episodes of this game. They play off each other exceedingly well, making for, in some ways, a better buddy duo than even Chloe and Max were.  Chloe and Rachel are both rebels, lashing out in the same way for vastly different reasons. But there is another side to this that I'll save for a little later since I like to start these things off positive.

    As stated before, Chloe cannot travel back in time as Max could.  As a result, the devs had to come up with a new gameplay mechanic to mesh well with Chloe's personality as well as be meaningful to the story.  That mechanic is hardcore disses. Chloe can enter backtalking contests with a variety of characters over the course of the game, and I like how this mechanic works out.  It tests how closely you've been paying attention to character dialogue as well as how well you know Chloe as a character. It even gives the endless chain of seemingly arbitrary multiple choice questions something to do, as now you can just sass everyone when they're being terrible to you like the rebellious punk rocker teenager you are.  It's like living through American Idiot on Broadway, except Green Day is replaced with an English indie/neo-folk band.

    Speaking of which, let's talk about the soundtrack.  Life is Strange had a really solid soundtrack, full of super good chilled out indie tunes that do an excellent job of setting the mood for the game.  As well, they never seem overly intrusive, as they're more or less played exclusively in scenes where it would make sense for music to be playing. The best part, however, is that it was super varied.  Several bands were licensed for the original Life is Strange and it gave it the feel of 'these are just tracks I like from bands I like and want to give more acclaim' over 'this is what we licensed so hope you enjoy it.'  Before the Storm tries the same thing and, while the soundtrack to this one is definitely enjoyable, it is very clearly just all songs from the same band. This arguably meshes better with the character of Chloe Price, being more punk rock and less hipster like Max is, she'd be more likely to just listen to her punk rock bands forever and not have a large variety of music.  Where it loses me, however, is when contextually all these songs by the same band, English indie rock and neo-folk band Daughter, who still do an excellent job I reiterate, are supposed to be from vastly different artists in-universe. Not to mention that, while they do manage to rock it in this game, they are incredibly stylistically different from the personality of Chloe Price.  But overall it is still a good soundtrack, just not as interesting or as relative as the original.

    Let's talk about characterization.  Before the Storm is characteristically a mess.  Chloe Price was one of the stronger points of Life is Strange, being the perfect blend of youthful arrogance and the feeling of indestructibility, and vulnerability and the growing feeling of unstoppable self-destruction.  As such, I came into Before the Storm expecting it to inform the character I loved so much in the original. Instead, I feel like the opposite happened. Instead of Before the Storm giving us insight as to why Chloe became how she is in Life is Strange, it feels like Life is Strange informs Before the Storm.  We see a Chloe who, more or less, is already at the point we meet her in Life is Strange. Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that from an overall universe perspective. Chloe being the same person at 15 as she is at 18 is what one might expect from a teenager, especially a rebellious punk rock girl living in an isolated small town in the middle of a vast forest.  The issue I take is that it feels like the game expects you to know who Chloe is before playing the game. It ends up playing like ‘we don’t need to work on this character because you should’ve already played Life is Strange so, here, have some references.’

I may have also forgotten to mention Rachel is a latent Airbender.

    And then there's Rachel.  I'm going to start off by saying I feel like the writers had essentially written themselves into a corner with Rachel.  Life is Strange made Rachel seem almost like a force of nature, someone Chloe felt so strong for that she'd risk everything to be with her.  I can fully see why Chloe would fall in love with Rachel, being as brash and impulsive as her but Rachel not having near the experience growing up as a privileged white girl whose daddy will bail her out of anything and everything. The game makes it so that Rachel is a fun person to be around and I overall did really like her as a character.  I feel moreover I relate to Chloe a lot more, but Rachel is definitely a person I can relate to just from knowing people like her. And I really like how you can already see how this woman turned to self-destruction and slight drug addiction because she does not handle real tragedy well at all. For what is presented as a really good actress who absolutely loves tragedies in particular (Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' plays a particularly huge role in this game's narrative), she's absolutely awful at dealing with them.  I feel the game even kind of expects you to believe Rachel to be a perfect goddess of a woman, considering how much Chloe builds her up in the original, only to be presented with someone who is arguably more flawed than Chloe could ever be. A little ironic considering that’s how Chloe saw her in the original and that’s not at all what we’re given from her as a POV character My main complaint, however, is that the shortness of what was present doesn't give her enough room to grow as a character, and her arc pacing falls flat.  Which brings me to the main problem of Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

    The pacing in this game is atrocious.  They attempt to jam more content than was in the original Life is Strange into a far shorter package.  For the most part, they write a lot of the stories with this in mind, except arguably why this game exists.  I'm going to go ahead and give you a brief summary of the romantic arc of this game and maybe you'll see the problem.

Ah that school budget Shakespeare.  It's beautiful.

Thursday - Chloe and Rachel meet for what is basically the very first time at a concert.

Friday - Chloe arrives at school to discover that Rachel is awaiting her at the entrance.  After sitting through Rachel's rehearsal and helping her get dressed, Rachel talks Chloe into skipping school with her and the two board a train up into the mountains.  They play some improv games, steal some booze and Chloe admits to Rachel that she has feelings for her. Rachel is initially hesitant but admits that she has feelings for Chloe as well.  The two set fire to a forest.

Saturday - Rachel and Chloe get called into the Headmaster's office wherein Chloe takes the fall for yesterday and gets expelled, primarily to keep Rachel in good graces with the school.  After being separated for most of the day, they reunite at the performance, Rachel talks Chloe into filling in for another actress who can't make it because of the fire, and while on stage the two improv a scene confessing their eternal love to each other, gaining standing ovations from the audience.  That night they decide to run away together and go to Rachel's home to play meet the parents before they do.

Sunday - After spending the night at Rachel's house (gain from that what you will), Chloe and Rachel set off to confront Chloe's drug dealer about his relation to the mystery.  Chloe's inaction in said confrontation leads to Rachel getting stabbed and being taken to the hospital. Chloe then decides to take it upon herself to solve the mystery, risking prison and even death for her love, Rachel.

So, I'll admit I know basically nothing about teenage romance.  And I get that your initial feelings for someone can be stronger than everything else you may grow to feel about them.  But, it feels a little off how hard Chloe has it after only knowing this woman for roughly three days. Now, Chloe is not exactly good at relationships so that might be why the pacing is like it is.  But here is the other thing. The relationship goes on for another two and a half years that we only ever see via montage before the season closes. And with that knowledge, the pacing seems weak. Our leads get to the point where you'd expect them to be over the course of their entire relationship in only three days.  I fully expected with how quick this was going that day three was going to be the day Rachel disappeared. I feel like it would've helped for each episode to be after some time has passed. Drop the Rachel's father is cheating plot, which isn't especially compelling nor satisfying to begin with, and just go all in on this relationship.  It would give it a more natural flow, something that I feel was severely lacking in Before the Storm.

Let's talk briefly about the video game voice actors strike.  Talk about your mood whiplash, right? Now, there are definitely smarter and more talented people and I'm not going to pretend like I have the tact to comment on what is a very complex subject.  So, for the sake of not looking like an idiot, here are a few articles discussing the subject better than I ever could.  The relevant info is how it impacted the production of Life is Strange: Before the Storm.  Life is Strange was arguably hit the hardest by the strike, as the series unfortunately lost Chloe's original voice, actress, singer, and writer Ashly Burch.  Burch was really, in my opinion, the reason why Chloe worked so well overall in the original and I was worried about her not being able to return to the part. My worries were pretty quickly quashed.  The replacement actress, Chloe's motion capture actress Rhianna DeVries, is very noticeably not Ashly Burch, but she's almost flawless in her capture of Chloe's voice. In fact, I bought this version of young Chloe so well that when Burch actually does do a Chloe from around this age in another part of Life is Strange, it almost sounds wrong.  So, you know. Good job Rhianna DeVries.

    Life is Strange: Before the Storm was super mixed for me.  On the one hand, the character work, when not involving the main relationship, was perfect, the backtalk mechanic was fun, the D&D side story/mini-game was great and I did really dig the soundtrack.  On the other hand, the main story was clunky, the relationship seemed forced and without proper flow and the whole thing felt too small for its own good. I enjoyed my time with Before the Storm, but I don't see me returning to it like I would the original.  Though, if you're new to this franchise, definitely play Before the Storm first. Your views on it might be tempered by the original, as mine definitely ended up being tempered. Overall, though, my feelings are 'it's fun but flawed'. I hope you enjoyed this look into Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and I'll see you all back here for the next entry, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions.

Daughter's solid 3.5/5 soundtrack that I feel I should plug after ragging on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBZagC6IiAA

Ethan's Backlog: https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist

Bayonetta - 12/52

     I've been wanting to get around to this game for a while.  A couple years back my roommate at the time had a copy of Bayonetta for the WiiU and I was always want to play through it, but I never had the time because I had higher priority games on my radar, like the twentieth rerelease of Kingdom Hearts II.  So when Bayonetta was announced for Switch, I was super stoked, made it a high priority buy and determined once I finished whatever 52 game I was working on, I would put this up next as my pick for the 52.  And it came at a pretty good time all things considered.  Having very recently beaten the Wonderful 101, I sort of got a perspective of a good Platinum Studios game vs. a bad one, as well as knowing ahead of time what complaints I was probably going to have about Bayonetta.  As well, I had just finished a game, Strong Bad, that I was very much not having a good time with and I needed this to lighten my mood.  With that said, let's dive right into Bayonetta.

     Bayonetta puts you into the gun-heeled shoes of the titular character, an amnesiac witch with love for firearms and a hatred of the divine.  Amnesia is one of the oldest tropes in video games, every franchise amounts to the amnesiac protagonist deal at some point or another.  But what I like about Bayonetta is how the amnesia isn't the focus.  Bayonetta, of course, wants her memories back, but she doesn't obsess over it, like, at all.  Rather she's been functioning just fine in the world for the past 20 years and doesn't seem to especially miss her memories.  However, her definition of 'functioning just fine' involves endlessly paying off a deal she made with the residents of Inferno(or Hell, if you prefer) to slaughter their enemies on a daily basis or else her soul is forfeit.  Not to mention the fact that the residents of Paradisio have a special interest in her, believing her to be the key to resurrecting their missing leader, Jubileus.  And then, of course, there's the matter of the mysterious witch that frequently appears, antagonizing Bayonetta with knowledge of her past, as well as the mysterious little girl that the divine seem to be taking a vested interest in.  It's up to Bayonetta to rescue the girl, beat the bad guys and save the world from Armageddon.  Makes you ache for the days where you basically just crashed funerals.

     The story of Bayonetta is basically a late 90s Apocalypse action movie if the main character was Xenia Onatopp.  On the surface, it seems kind of cheesy and, yeah, it pretty much is.  I think with as much cool mythology is going on in this game, the writers kind of knew they were writing a B-Movie.  There's a lot of long exposition sequences, a lot of over the top acting and a lot of humor sprinkled throughout, particularly from Bayonetta herself who is incredibly sarcastic and patronizing and frequently doesn't get to learn about her past because she gets bored with the long speeches and kills the speaker.  It's like the game wants to be taken seriously, but it doesn't take itself seriously.  And while that kind of storytelling can create a messy storyline, it really works here.  Though, it's not perfect storytelling.  The game attempts to throw twists at you and they have basically a 0% success rate.  I'm not sure, given the game's tone, if they actually intended on these twists being super obvious or not, but since they keep on not revealing them until the very end, I'm going to have to go with them intending on these twists and turns fooling you, and they just don't.

Okay, her looks REALLY don't hurt.

     I'm going to say this up front, Bayonetta is one of my favorite protagonists in anything ever.  I absolutely adore how she carries herself.  She lost her memory?  So what, she's got stuff to do.  Someone shows up from her past antagonizing her?  Kick her in the face.  The divine's speech going on too long?  Stab him in the forehead to shut him up.  Bayonetta is by far one of the most unabashedly awesome characters that have ever been put in a video game.  Not to mention that she's insanely funny, having some of the best taunts and one-liners I've ever heard.  And, of course, Bayonetta's looks don't hurt either.  She's all the best parts about the femme fatale and, while she's not the most complex character, the writing for her just makes it work so well.  She's the real highlight of this journey overall and I look forward to experiencing her future endeavors.

     Bayonetta's combat system is incredible.  You have a lot of freedom in terms of mobility, weapon types, attack combos and the game's finishers, the Wicked Weaves.  Bayonetta almost plays like a Street Fighter game with how fast and fluid the combat is.  There is a learning curve, but the game doesn't leave you stranded if you don't want to learn the super fancy stuff.  There's a lot of very simple combos you can use to deal a lot of damage, which I admittedly relied on throughout most of my experience.  It's both a fault with me, wanting to get through the game without needing a ton of practice, but also a fault with the game, its attempts to be user-friendly don't incentivize the learning curve.  By the end of the game, I had at least a dozen combos I'd never even used on just about every weapon.  But, other than that, Bayonetta's combat seems actually built for the time-based and rank-based gameplay that Platinum tends to favor in their games.  Not to mention the wonders of Witch Time, where dodging at the proper times allows you to enter a hyperspeed state where time appears to slow down, giving you free easy hits without the stress.  It's just so much fun overall and I love it so much.

     This is the part where I ramble about difficulty and, yeah, Bayonetta is pretty punishing.  Admittedly, a large part of this is just me being bad at video games in general, but Bayonetta is still very punishing and very cheap.  All my favorites of the Platinum formula return, like enemies that take too long to defeat, need specific weapons and timing to even damage and deal massive amounts of damage to you, or instant death traps you can't possibly know are coming in a game that has no live system and punishes you for using continues.  But how about we add quick time events that require split-second timing that you're bound to fail your first time because you have no idea they're coming up to the mix?  Also, Bayonetta does the same thing Wonderful 101 does where the hardest boss in the game is technically just a recurring miniboss that is way harder than any of the actual bosses in the game.  In fact, while Bayonetta has a more forgiving difficulty curve than other Platinum games I've played, all of the actual bosses are pretty much jokes, whereas the other witch character can cause me to lose so many continues that the game just actually stops counting.  I eventually just stopped caring about the rankings because I'm bad at video games and using just one continue makes your run near unsalvageable, and I had more fun with the game as of that point.  Really, I just don't think I'm ever going to agree with how Platinum makes games, but they're at least still usually fun.

     When I talked about the Wonderful 101, I mentioned that I had a major issue with how it couldn't keep itself focused on just the core gameplay.  Well, Bayonetta does that too and, yeah, it's pretty much just as bad.  Like, none of the segments where it does this are especially long or slow-paced like the Wonderful 101's were.  But the tradeoff is that they're super infrequent and, as a result, way more jarring.  Like, in the Wonderful 101, I kind of expected at least once a chapter that I was going to have to quickly adapt to some half-baked idea for a stage and that was just how it was.  Here in Bayonetta, they keep the gameplay focused throughout most of the game and then near the end just randomly throw all of this at you.  It kind of crushed my enjoyment of the game, but the overall product was so strong that I just kept going with it, which was a really solid decision overall.

     My experience with Bayonetta was pretty mixed but overall positive.  For all the punishing segments, overpowered enemies and out of nowhere motorcycle segments, there was a lot of thought, a lot of heart, and one thoroughly awesome character to tie it all together.  I highly recommend it if you haven't played it.  As frustrating as it tends to be, it's just so fun and so rewarding to play through.  I can't wait to play through the sequel and I'm so stoked for the third game.  I hope you enjoyed this look at Bayonetta and next time we'll be talking about Life is Strange: Before the Storm, a prequel to one of my favorite games.  See ya then.

Ethan's backlog: https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - 11/52

     I have a bit of history with this game.  2008, roughly the time this game started coming out, was when I was starting to get involved heavily in Let's Player culture.  This was back in the days where YouTube Let's Play was still a pretty new format and long before it just evolved into a guy with bad facial hair eating up 1/4 of the screen space with a reaction camera regardless of whether or not the game required it or not.  It was at this point I discovered one of my early favorites, one Sonikdude101, now AntDude92.  He was, at the point I discovered him, playing through a hot new point and click adventure series that was destined to revive the genre, a five-part series known as Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.  This Let's Play inspired me to pick up the game for myself, though at the time only the first episode, Homestar Ruiner, was out.  And after playing it and having a decent time with it, I proceeded to forget all about ever having played it, forget that other entries in the series were soon to come out and didn't remember buying it a second time until it popped up on Cookie.  But it didn't matter to me, as I had only previously played 20% of the entire game and at least 75 to 80% of the game unfinished is my eligibility point.  And it was definitely an experience, to say the least.  But first, some history.

     On January 1st, 2000, Homestarrunner.com launched, spending the next five years dominating the world of online entertainment until YouTube came and killed any and all standing competition.  Originating in 1996 as the main character in a proposed children's book, Homestar Runner took advantage of the rise of Flash animation to create one of the first truly popular websites on the internet.  If you were a middle school to college student between its inception and its hiatus in 2009, you are likely at least somewhat familiar with Homestar Runner.  The site hosted a wide array of different cartoon series, from the titular Homestar Runner cartoons to Teen Girl Squad, a series of crudely drawn webcomics full to the brim with teen comedy stereotypes and wanton violence,  to Marzipan's answering machine, which features the only female character in the original cast answering voicemails and getting prank called by what is very likely the site's breakout character, the host of the most popular series on the site 'Strong Bad E-Mail', the titular Strong Bad.  This is a massive part of internet history we're dealing with today.  So, as one would expect, being such an omnipresent internet cultural phenomenon, I completely missed out on all of it.

     Look, I had heard about Homestar Runner before I picked up Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner.  I had plenty of friends that picked up on it right at its peak and swore by it.  I just never got into it myself, largely because my friends and I had a long-proven dissonance in comedic tastes.  Though none of them would be willing to admit it today, they all found FRED to be the funniest thing in the world in 2006 to 2007 and scoffed at my attempts to show them the comedic brilliance of Nigahiga.  Okay, Nigahiga kind of sucked too and always had, but How to Be Ninja/Gangster/Emo/Nerd are still indisputable classics in my mind.  So, I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing about the characters or their relationships or really anything besides what I saw in the Let's Play and what I saw when my friends had attempted to show me Homestar a couple years prior.  But my belief is that any game, regardless of its relationship to a preexisting IP, should be mostly self-sustaining, with the references to its IP being neat easter eggs rather than in-your-face fanservice.  So rather than educate myself by absorbing a ton of Homestar Runner, I went in blind.  This is more disclaimer than anything because I feel like this decision is why I and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People didn't get along with each other overall.

     But, as always, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People puts you in the shoes of the titular Strong Bad, a man who is dressed as a luchador for no adequately explained reason.  He, as far as I can tell, professionally answers e-mails for a living and, if he wasn't self-employed, would've been fired a long time ago because he is just the most unlikable person ever.  This entire game plays out like this: Strong Bad ruins someone's life in some way, shape or form and then decides to fix it so that his life will stop being mildly inconvenienced, normally by ruining WAY more lives in the process.  These range from the simple stuff, like ruining Homestar's athletic dreams, his relationships, and his flawless arrest record, to bigger things like forcing everyone you know into joining a selfish crusade to overthrow their established monarchy and enstate a dictatorship or sacrificing legions upon legions of video game characters to a Dragon shortly after discovering their sentience.  So, all in all, exactly what you'd expect the most popular character on a goofy internet site to behave like.  We're all sociopaths.

     The gameplay of this is classic.  It's basic point and click stuff.  You'll interact with NPCs, solve inventory puzzles, run just a ridiculous amount of errands and have your soul die when you hit seemingly insurmountable obstacles until you finally give up, look it up online and it's some obtuse thing like 'use chicken on watermelon to get chalice'.  All while moving your character across the screen by incessantly clicking with your mouse.  And though it may not seem like it, I absolutely love this kind of game.  Point and clicks are kind of like that, like visual novels or any of the other traditional PC genres.  It's something you either get into or you don't, and I'm fully into it.  It requires a lot of attention to your environment and how it constantly changes and who is currently occupying it.  Don't get me wrong, moon logic puzzles still suck and Strong Bad has an entire episode that's basically full of puzzles that are in no way self-explanatory.  But gameplay wise, it's super fun.

     The humor in this game is, well.  If I were still 14 when I played the rest of this game like I was when I played the first episode, I very likely would've enjoyed the full experience a lot more.  There's a lot of reference jokes and random humor and just puns everywhere.  It's the kind of thing I would've loved as a teenager because I was incredibly unfunny as a teenager.  My favorite comedy series online was a Mario 64 Machinima series that I found hilarious because they made Mario swear and reference Stairway to Heaven.  As an adult, though, I found it difficult to click with the humor of this game.  Like, I'm not going to say every joke was bad, a few of them did get a chuckle out of me from time to time.  But it's a kind of humor I don't especially get along with nowadays and I feel like that, more than anything, killed my enjoyment of SBCGfAP.

     So, I mentioned before that I didn't follow Homestar Runner while it was in its prime.  And, if the characters in this game are any indication, I probably didn't miss a lot.  The cast of characters in this game are so stupid, mean-spirited and obnoxious that it almost feels like I'm watching a Seth MacFarlane comedy.  I've already mentioned that Strong Bad is pretty much the worst person, but you also have Homestar, who at first comes across as a fairly wide-eyed innocent idiot, but inevitably turns into Patrick Star levels of hostile idiocy to the point where you question whether he's actually that stupid.  Strong Sad is Strong Bad's brother who we're all supposed to hate because he's a depressed nerd, rather than the real reason to hate him, in that he's extremely arrogant and acts like he's better than everyone and everything.  Honestly, as the game went on I discovered that the farther removed from the English language a character is, the less I hated them, with my favorite character being Pom Pom, who exclusively speaks in bubbling noises.

     SBCGfAP is an oddity among the TellTale point and click adventure games.  Normally these games are on giant story broken up into five or six parts and released episodically.  Strong Bad, however, is five separate, largely unrelated stories that never really end up tying into each other.  Which, honestly, I'm perfectly okay with.  I already didn't get what was going on since it was primarily Homestar Runner fanservice, I can't imagine how lost I would've been if I had also had to deal with a single interconnecting storyline throughout that was ALSO Homestar Runner fanservice.  However, even back then you could tell this wasn't to be TellTale's style.  The individual episodes don't have especially strong three act structures, creating the same feeling you have in certain old Twilight Zone episodes where it feels like you're missing a chunk of the story.  Episodes two and three in particular have this same formula of spending an hour each on the first two acts and then ten minutes tops on the third act.  And episode five is just three hours of a second Act with the first and third being blips.  Which doesn't especially help when you're already not into the game and certain parts feel like they're just dragging.

     I didn't enjoy my time with Strong Bad, I believe I made this clear.  From a solely gameplay standpoint, I had a blast with this game.  It's really the start of the point and click revival and I highly recommend it as a beginner Point and Click adventure if you're attempting to get into the genre.  I mean, I'd recommend something more along the lines of Putt-Putt or Pajama Sam before this, but if you're not sold on playing games for 6 year olds regardless of how awesome they are, Strong Bad's the game for you.  But the story, the characters, the humor.  It's just not my thing at all.  Like I said, if I were still 14, I might've dug this whole thing a lot more.  As it stands, though, I barely got through this one.  I don't know, maybe it's me.  Maybe I'm neither cool enough or attractive enough for this game.  Either way, not something I'm likely ever going to replay in the future.  I hope you enjoyed this look at Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and see ya next time where we take a look at Bayonetta.

Ethan's backlog: https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist

The Wonderful 101 - 10/52

      You know what I love?  Superheroes.  I've always been attracted to the fantastical adventure of costumed heroes and villains duking it out for the fate of the world.  The X-Men in particular were a huge facet of my childhood, being the first movie I can really solidly remember the experience of seeing in theaters (though the first movie I actually remember catching in theaters was the 98 Godzilla, not like forgetting that is really any huge loss) and ever since then I've been hooked on superhero media.  You know what else I love?  Pikmin.  Pikmin is one of my favorite game series of all time easily, creating fast-paced and fun real-time strategy gameplay disguised in a very calm and colorful demeanor.  It's extremely stressful in just all the right ways.  Now, these two things seem very unrelated and probably should be kept very far away from another.  But, what I have for you today, is a game that combines my love of superheroes with my love of Pikmin to make a game that I guarantee nobody asked for and nobody especially remembers that it was made.  But, hey, I talked about Zombie Chopin vs. the World last time, so at this point, why not?  So, strap in, true believers, as we delve into the world of the Wonderful 101.

     The Wonderful 101 puts you into the shoes of Wonder-Red, the newest recruit to the Earth-defending superhero organization, the Wonderful 100.  Despite Wonder Red being the new guy, because he's decked out in red, Power Rangers logic prevails and he is actually the leader of this bunch.  Personally, I would've elected Wonder-Sailor as the leader, as he has a boat on his head, and if you can't trust a man with a boat on his head, then you're probably asked to be the designated driver a lot.  But I digress.  The Wonderful 100's primary focus is protecting the world from being destroyed by the evil forces of the Geathjerk empire, a massive army of insectoid aliens bent on destroying every planet that crosses their path.  And bad news, they're going full-on invasion mode.  It's up to Wonder Red to unite the team, rescue the people, defend the monuments and save the world.  And he will do it all while spouting catchphrases and systematically saying the overly long titles of everyone you encounter in the game which actually never stops being funny.

     From the moment the Wonderful 101 begins, it's clear where it influences lie.  This slides very well into the world of the Silver Age of Comics, the days when Batman was fighting vegetable people and turning into a baby, albeit with a greater sense of irony.  There's a lot of jokes about superhero tropes and when they land, they land hard.  I've mentioned previous Wonder-Red's tendency to spout ridiculously long titles for each of the game's major characters that sound like they come out of a comic book narration box.  And, normally, a recurring joke like that could end up falling flat, especially since he'll sometimes do it multiple times a chapter.  But I found it mostly endearing.  And the other characters have very funny personalities as well that really come to head when the main team is all united.  Wonder-Blue is a very typical straight man who is continuously having none of the team's nonsense.  Wonder-Green is a bad joke-spewing machine that manages to get way more laughs than he probably should.  Wonder-Yellow is an awkward giant whose attempts to be included are just hilarious.  Wonder-White spouts the basic principles of ninjutsu constantly getting them wrong every time.  And I swear Wonder-Pink is one of the funniest characters in any game ever.  It's a sight to behold.  All this and more makes Wonderful 101 insanely charming and very funny, and you'll be smiling your way through most of the game as a result.

     So I've already established where the superhero basis of the game comes from.  But what about the Pikmin basis?  Well, that comes in the gameplay.  Obviously, the Wonderful 100 is a team of one hundred superheroes stationed around the world that band together in a giant mob, like Pikmin, so the comparison is pretty clear there.  But this isn't just dressing.  A lot of how you attack is very akin to strategies present in Pikmin.  Do you mob an opponent to get the kill quickly with the risk of harming your individual members?  Or do you just send them in one at a time to pick off the HP like tiny little superhero mosquitoes?  Now, unlike Pikmin, your individual team members can't die.  The only vulnerable part of the team is your current leader.  But still, there's a surprising amount of real-time strategy elements present in this superhero game.  The combat becomes even more strategic when you factor in the game's primary gameplay mechanic, the Unite Builds.

     Unite Builds are the primary powers of the Wonderful 100.  On their own, the Wonderful Ones' powers don't stretch much farther than increased strength, increased speed, increased durability, etc.  It's the basic 'take everything a normal human can do and then crank it up to 11' approach to superheroes.  Useful for, say, protecting the 100 cities worldwide that the organization is stationed at, not so much for stopping full-blown alien invasions.  This is where the Unite power comes in.  The Wonderful Ones can convert themselves into energy, to be used by the current team leader to build massive energy constructs that serve a variety of purposes, though primarily combat-related.  There are a variety of constructs in the game, though you'll be mostly focusing on the main seven, Hand, Sword, Gun, Whip, Hammer, Claws and Bomb.  The wide variety of builds add a ton to the combat of the game, with a lot of enemies being more susceptible to specific weapons.  The game rewards you with bonuses for switching up your weapons and defeating enemies faster, so it's good to get used to all of the weapons rather than relying on your favorite *cough Unite Whip cough*.

     So far, this game this game may be sounding pretty cool to you, and I'll admit, conceptually it's a pretty cool game.  Interesting gameplay style, fun premise and a lot of good humor.  What's not to love.  For sure, you'll say, I'll pick this up when it inevitably gets remade for the Switch like every other worthwhile WiiU game.  Well, there's just one problem.  The Wonderful 101 is not good.

     Look, I've been sugar-coating it so far.  My time with the Wonderful 101 wasn't the best and by the end, I was mostly being driven by the fact that beating it would mean I could mark it off my backlog and I'd never have to touch it again.  I'll say this when the game focuses on what it does well, giant party-based combat against massive mobs of enemies, it does it very well.  But the game can't keep itself focused, entirely to its detriment.  Or it'll have crazy difficulty spikes for no reason, causing you to just get pounded on by the Jerks.  What starts as a fun, fairly unique game quickly turns into a tedious slog and basically just gets progressively worse from there.  And it all starts with Prince Vorkken.

     Prince Vorkken starts out as a major antagonist in the game, the leader of a band of space pirates that fight very similarly to the Wonderful 100.  He's the classic trope of the evil superhero doppelganger, looking almost exactly like Wonder-Red, save for the purple skin.  You'll battle Vorkken several times over the course of the game and each time it is just the worst possible thing.  Vorkken fights like the Wonderful 100, yes, but he doesn't need time to draw his builds and can auto-block and auto-counter and his builds start out at max power and never decrease like yours do.  Not to mention that Vorkken has access to unique builds which can serve as both offensive and defensive moves.  And, whereas a normal stage gives you a little bit of leeway in terms of what you're able to do without it counting as a death, boss stages don't have that luxury.  Meaning Vorkken doesn't need to drain your health at all.  If he knocks you off the side of the platform you're on while fighting him, you die and have to restart the fight.  Thankfully, bosses keep their health constant even if you use a continue, but that doesn't especially matter when Vorkken can just instantly do the same thing to you next reload.  It wasn't uncommon for me to use anywhere from 3-7 continues on Vorkken, and I was only playing on the standard difficulty.

     Continues and the like are another major issue I have with this game.  See, the Wonderful 101 is a Platinum Studios game.  Not to knock Platinum, they have a pretty good track record overall.  But, the relevance here is that, as a result, the Wonderful 101 is a very rank-based game.  You're rewarded for clearing the stage quickly, defeating enemies efficiently and not using continues or major healing items.  And, by extension, penalized for doing the opposite.  The issue here is that the game wants you to be flawless your first go around and punishes you for not playing perfectly.  The penalties you gain for using even one Continue basically mean that even if you play the rest of the level perfectly, you'll still be lucky to get a Bronze ranking.  The lack of leniency, even in the early levels, is ridiculous.

     Oh, and let's not forget the fact you have to manually draw all your Unite Builds.  And, admittedly, they give you a lot of leniencies to screw up on these.  In fact, it's so lenient in recognizing things as builds that often times it'll just not recognize the right build and give you something just completely different.  Take, for instance, Unite Hand.  You make Unite Hand by drawing a straight line with a semicircle at the top.  Okay, but then later on in the game, you get Unite Hammer, which is a straight line with a complete circle at the top.  These two things are so similar in the game's eyes that you'll inevitably start overdrawing things to get Unite Hammer, which it will most definitely read as Unite Hand the first seven times you try drawing it.  And if you are trying for Unite Bomb, just forget about it.  It's basically Unite Hammer turned upside down, but the game is so lenient it'll sometimes just read this as Unite Hammer anyways.  The worst, though, are actually my two favorite weapons in the game, Unite Whip and Unite Claws.  To make Unite Whip, you draw an 'S' shape.  Easy, standard stuff.  Except, Unite Claws is a 'Z' shape.  The game literally cannot distinguish these two apart 99% of the time and even when it does register you're making Unite Claws, if you try to draw it any bigger from the recognition point to attempt to summon a full power Unite Claws, it'll instantly go into Unite Whip.  You'll end up relying on Unite Sword for almost all the game's combat because Unite Sword is just a line.

     But all of this is not nearly as bad as when the game decides to mix up the core gameplay.  This is where the game truly goes from 'it's not great, but hey, it's enjoyable' to 'I only want to finish this so I never have to look at it again'.  The game frequently has stages where you'll be playing in different styles than the normal somewhat strategic beat 'em up gameplay and save for the two Punch-Out!!-style boss fights, all of these different styles suck.  There's a lot of shoot 'em up stages in particular that, for the most part, have nearly unavoidable obstacles, fire that blends into the background and really jerkish enemy placement.  Not to mention these segments being slow moving and just not very fun.  Also, they put instant death traps in these stages because why not in a game where you're not supposed to use continues or it negatively impacts your rating.  But the worst part is whenever the game has solo stages.  Unite Builds are basically out of the question in these stages since, you know, nobody else is with you, and you end up having to fight dozens of enemies anyways without being able to do the thing the entire game is built around.  And did I mention that, on their own, the Wonderful Ones are pretty much useless in combat, taking multiple hits to kill even the most basic foot soldiers?

     The Wonderful 101 is a mess, plain and simple.  It combines things you love into something weird and kind of cool, only to crush all of that before the game is through.  The saddest part is that, if it had just stuck to what worked, the somewhat strategic isometric beat'em up gameplay, I think it would've actually been a really cool hidden gem on the mostly forgettable WiiU library.  A game that would've inevitably become a major cult classic and been a frequent resident of 'best games you've never played' lists.  As it stands, though, it's pretty bad.  I hope you enjoyed my look at the Wonderful 101 and join us next time as we cover Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.  The whole thing.  See ya.

Ethan's backlog: www.backloggery.com/edzoologist