Strong Bad Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands (WiiWare)

Baddest of the Bands is something of a departure from the previous episodes. Normally they sprinkle little things to do on the side throughout the episode, the highlight of which is a playable retrogame. But in this case, Strong Bad’s game system is broken and he needs money to get it fixed. He goes through a few variations in his plan, but they all add up to the same basic idea of staging a concert to raise the necessary cash.

Like the previous episodes, this one is primarily a point and click adventure where you guide Strong Bad through solving his own problems while causing trouble for other people. Featuring much of the same random humor and nods to 80s and 90s pop culture as the website series, this game should last you about three or four hours. And despite the overall theme of music and bands, the humor actually hits a wide variety of topics so there’s sure to be something you’ll laugh at.

That said, Episode 3 has a major split between the quality of its writing and its puzzles. It’s pretty well written, and I laughed at more things in this episode than either of the first two. On the other hand, the puzzles are just plain confusing. To be fair, most adventure games will have a mix of puzzles where some players get them easily while others remain baffled, but Baddest of the Bands often requires you to backtrack to places you wouldn’t even think of having anything important, has far too many red herring hints, and doesn’t make it clear when alternative controls are being used (one puzzle requires you to guide a character using your Wiimote as a mouse pointer, but it’s not made at all obvious). This isn’t to say that all of them are like this, but I found myself needing either little hints or outright direct answers to about a third of the game’s puzzles. Fortunately, plenty of help can be found online.

Despite that complaint, or perhaps because of it, Baddest of the Bands demonstrates a vital concept in the point and click adventure genre: The gameplay isn’t the main appeal, it’s just a means of telling a story. This game’s story is pretty hilarious, so with that in mind I think it does generally earn its 1000 Wii Points price tag.