Comedy in Video Games
 

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Should video games be funny, are some video games funny?

I found this article quite interesting as I play a ton of games and watch a ton of funny movies and TV and yet I never noticed the lack of comedy in games. Now that it has been brought to my attention, it seems to be a glaring omission. With the exception of the odd backhanded gag in Splinter Cell in conversations between Sam and Grimsdoitter, I really can't think of any funny moments in recent games.

Are we video gamers so serious and goal orriented that we can't or won't accept humour in our games?

I find humor in games all the time....


Recently:

Halo 2: Master Chief and Co.'s noisy entrance to an area:
Cortana - "do you have to make so much noise?"

Master Chief steps out of the landing pod and equips a rocket launcher


GTA San Andreas: OG Loc's terrible rhymes. Also, Rockstar's "ownage" to Reflections (developer of Driver 3) pertaining to it's crappiness:

guy playing videogame in mansion: "damn Refractions, how did you screw up AGAIN? Tanner, you SUCK!"


World of Warcraft: Any of the Voice Emotes for the Silly function. Hilarious.


Metal Gear Solid 3: You shoot the monkeys from Ape Escape in a mini-game



Need for Speed: Underground - the first race gives you a badass car with nitrous and hundreds of HP, then you beat the race and the narrator says "you didn't think it would be that easy did you!" and basically starts you with a Dodge Neon.

Haha, I remember that too! I think they give you a tricked out Eclipse, and I remember worrying that I was getting too nice a car too soon, only to win the race and see I get a factory model car instead. :)

I find a lot of games funny, but many times it's a result of the user's actions.. GTA, Halo 2, and other online games are often funny as a result of the player's mistakes.

Just last night, I was playing Halo 2 and had a full Warthog of teammates, and I approached a bridge too fast, rode the ledge a bit, and fell off, all of us dying.. Another time I had the flag, jumped in a Warthog driven by a teammate, and an opposing player hopped onto the turret behind us. The entire ride he was trying to shoot down at us, but it didn't have the range to do so. I bailed with the flag, and my teammate drove the enemy off away from our base.

I think it is harder to make a game funny, but it's very easy for a game to be funny through its player's actions; especially if the game is very open ended and has a loose structure, like the GTA games.

Very interesting thought.

The only game that I can think of that had bits of humor scattered all the way through it was the original Half-Life; I found the random offhand comment of the NPC scientists and Barneys hilarious:

"Why do we have to wear these ridiculous ties?"
"Yep, all that target range time is gonna pay off today!"
"Well, there goes our grant money."
"Gordon! Man am I glad to see you. What the hell are these things? And why are they wearing science team uniforms?"
"This should shake up those grand unification boys, hmm?"
"That'll look nice in my trophy room."

etc.

Still, not much overt humor. Just poking fun at the stereotypes represented by the characters, but I enjoyed it. All the more for being a cubical-dweller in a technical job environment at the time HL came out.

Duke Nukem: chuck money at the dancing girls; "Hail to the king baby!"

Fallout:So many geek jokes and all the easter eggs. Like the crashed alien ship with the fuzzy velvet elvis pic, the tardis, etc

Max Payne: The references to feeling like he was being controlled, like he was inside a big video game. :D

Monkey Island games. Watching FngKestrel play was always funny. Ingenious writing.

GTA is a very funny series. It may not be the central theme but there are plenty of funny things.

In Vice City if you were near water and shot someone, all the surrounding people would jump in the water and drown.

In San Andreas you can start pile ups on the freeway. As the car pile up, explosions ensue. As an added bonus, drivers of the vehicles that get hit get out of the car, grab a shovel, and proceed to kill the guy that hit them. The cops get out and shoot the driver.

Maybe I'm just sick...

Conker's Bad Fur Day had pretty good toilet humor.

Tak 2 has some friggin HILLARIOUS commentary...

He is the great warrior of the Poopoo-Noonoo people!

my recent aquisition Paper Mario 2 has a bunch of lame jokes in it. but, they're so lame you sometimes can't help but crack a grin everyonce in a while. for instance...

you open up these sinister looking chests and this tense/evil music starts to play. the demon type thing inside begins to put a curse on you and laughs about his deed... but the curse always ends up being so very obviously helpful.

i guess you had to be there.

...........................
*conker's bad fur day is funny in a crank yankers sort of way.
*jigglypuff's taunt in SSB:M always gets a laugh
*earthbound had TONS of jokes in it... it's been too long for me to recall some of the golden ones though.
*pikmin is kind of funny in a mad-scientist sort of way
*the intro movies to "Worms" and some of the gameplay quotes are pretty funny.

Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. it's not what most people would consider to be very funny but it had me giggling once in a while.

I was laughing pretty hard when I gave my GF in San Andreas a dildo....

I think a lot of games have humorous moments written into them, but with a comedic theme? I think those went the way of the dinosaur when adventure games went past their heyday.

More recent "attempts" at humor. A Fork in the Tale, voiced by Rob Schneider. I think they wanted it to be funny, but FMV was pretty sad.

More recently, like Coppertop said, Monkey Island series, another adventure game.

Conker's Bad Fur Day is pretty funny. Right at the beginning of the game, the game that Conker's in crashes, and Conker breaks the fourth wall by turning to the screen and saying, "How did the testers miss this one!?" Comedy.

But I'm drawing a blank on any other comedy themed games. I think many of the current generations of games are based on combat based conflict, which limits possibilities for comedy.

Leisure Suit Larry series, Space Quest series, King's Quest series. Hmm, I guess any adventure games by Sierra back in the day qualify.

And Skullmonkies had some awesome cut scenes. And who can forget the bonus room?

Don't forget Earthworm Jim and other Shiny games!

Earthworm Jim, how could I forget?! "For Pete's Sake", best level ever.

A Bard's Tale just came out..

Disgaea's got a good bit of humor in it. And don't forget MGS2, where Raiden:

slips on/in seagull crap
has his package groped by the President
gets pissed on while sneaking around on a ledge

Comedy games cannot be the same as comedy movies. Conkers bad fur day was hilarious, Rachet and clank has some good comedy, but there needs to be something to do in the games, that is why the comedy is left for cutscenes.

Monkey Island and Grim Fandengo are both very funny.

In GTA, one of the early mission had you plant a mine on some guy's car while he was eating at the restaurent. Apparently, the restaurant he was eating at was an all-you-eat buffet and there was that billboard with "Eat until you blow" on it. I thought that was pretty funny.

I found Armed and Dangerous to be pretty funny myself for a recent game. There are also tons of humorus adventure games, mostly older, that you can still play. Games like Freddy Pharkis Frontier Pharmacist, Eric the Unready, and Day of the Tentecle.