(First, a point of order. I like Blogspot for posting blogs, as it makes a lot of things very easy. However, there's not really much of a mechanism for gamers like me who might be interested to stumble upon it randomly. With that in mind I'm seriously considering moving the Surplus Gamer to a more gamer-oriented community and I'm considering a few different options for that. So far Destructoid is winning, as it seems to have a very active blogging community and a mechanism for 'promoting' particularly good blog posts to the main page. Obviously if I move then I will post the details up here and I'd consider keeping this page active by linking to my new blog, in case anyone finds it easier checking this page for updates than wherever I end up going.)

Right then, Homestar Ruiner. It's the first episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, an adventure very much in the same vein as the Sam and Max series, also by Telltale, with classic point and click style puzzles which seem to be a very good fit for the style of the Homestar Runner cartoons. It came out yesterday on PC and Wiiware (Europe gets it at the end of the week). If I'm sounding pleased but not overwhelmed, then that's good because that's how it was supposed to sound.

You see, for all that I found the game charming, funny and enjoyable, I have a problem in that I just came from playing Braid (no, not in that way, you dirty minded person). It's always strange finishing a game that you found truly special, a defining moment in your gaming history and then moving on to something that's merely very good. Braid, however, added another wrinkle to this, in that it reinforced something I've been feeling increasingly - that adventure puzzles are (on the whole) just no damned good.

Braid reminded me what a good puzzle is. Even most of the basic puzzles present you with a situation that first appears impassable but with a brief application of logic and use of the tools available to you, the solution becomes clear. Once you figure out the answer to the puzzle, it's usually an obvious 'Eureka!' moment that you've found the right answer and often during the process of working out, it happens in layers ('Okay, so if I do this I can get to this ledge, but now I need to work out how to get that thing over here at the same time'). I get it that Homestar Ruiner isn't trying (and doesn't need) to have fiendishly challenging puzzles. But it is supposed to at least have good puzzles and it seems to me that Braid not only has those more challenging puzzles but also much higher quality puzzles - something that is much harder to define.

What you usually get in adventure games are one of two or three things. You might get something that is so obvious that it isn't even a puzzle (for example, someone tells you who has something you need, you go to that person and get it). Many puzzles, then again, are ones that that fail to satisfy you with that 'Eureka!' moment I mentioned earlier, that you've cleverly figured out the trail of logic that leads you safely down the wobbly path to a solution - it's more of a tentative 'well, this might work, I'll try it... oh, neat, it worked.' To me, that's not the mark of a good puzzle. To its credit, Homestar Ruiner doesn't have difficult enough puzzles to commit that other sin of wanting you to do something that most gamers wouldn't think to do in a million years with no clear line of logic leading to it.

It's understandable that for pacing purposes you might not want every bit of gameplay in an adventure game to feature puzzles as subtle as the ones you get in Braid. Sometimes it's enough just to bring the thing to the guy so he'll give you the other thing to bring to the other guy. Also, I will acknowledge that I have played some very clever and satisfying adventure game puzzles. My complaint is that these are too much in the minority. For a genre whose bread is the story and butter is the puzzles, we've seen all kinds of variety of breads but far too much of the same old butter we've been putting up with for years. Even though the actual mechanics of how a puzzle plays out is very different between Braid and your average adventure game, seeing the former in action gives me a glimpse of some hidden potential in adventure games. I'm not sure what form that potential should take - which may seem like a cop-out - but I just know it is there, waiting to be discovered. There's a Crocodile Dundee scene playing in my head with Braid walking up and saying 'Call that puzzle? This is a puzzle.'

In the meantime, if you like adventure games and enjoy Homestar Runner, you've every reason to spend the next five months enjoying Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.