Somebody reminded me recently that there haven’t been any really genuinely funny videogames (or computer games) made recently. And it hadn’t occurred to me, but I think it’s true. Games are evolving (albeit painfully slowly) to be more subtle and artistic, with a little more thought to the artistic design than “and we’ll put pentagrams and decapitated heads all over the place to make it look bad-ass!!!” But they’re still not making headway with the comedy; there are few I can think of that are genuinely funny and not just funny “for a game.”
The Sims has some great stuff, especially with the voice work, but I don’t know if it really qualifies as comedy more than just “quirky.”
Tropico has a funny premise, but once the game starts it’s just straight-ahead city-building.
And just about every other game from Japan is funny, either intentionally or not, but I don’t know if “weird” necessarily equals “funny.”
Plenty of games have side jokes, but they’re usually either corny programmer humor or references that are only smirk-worthy if you’ve played the first 10 games in the series.
The kind of thing I’m looking for is Sam & Max Hit the Road, or You Don’t Know Jack (especially “Movies”), which are IMO the twin pinnacles of comedy games.
So: any recent candidates? And, what do you think is the funniest game ever made?
Lucasarts did a pretty good job in this department with their adventure games. Grim Fandango had me in stiches at times(when Manny tries to pull a hammer on Domino in chapter 3), and The Monkey Island games were pretty good too.
Some RPG’s had from snippets(Some of the Final Fantasy games have had me chuckling at times) to more, but darker bits (Fallout series) of humor along with some oddly appropriate references.
Hell, I’ve seen some amusing moments/qoutes in “Half Life” and “Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2” as well.
Gex: Enter The Gecko had some funny lines, and some of Gex’s moves made me laugh. Favorite lines uttered by Gex (both while in invulnerable mode - covered in flame): “Flame On!” & “I’m flaming…in a masculine way!”
Blasto was very funny too, between the Saturday morning cartoonish look of the game and Phil Hartman’s perfect delivery of Blasto’s lines. But some of those lines took on ironic meanings after he was murdered by his wife. “Hi, honey, I’m home!” for one, and his often uttering, “Not in the head!” while being shot at in the game.
Don’t miss the Oddworld games for good, intentional laughs.
General Azlick gets me every time, and it is in general a laugh a minute, when you aren’t dying. Heck, even when you are
So thats Abes Oddessy and Ummm… Something or other Munch, and another title, but they go under Oddworld, search for that.
Interestingly, that was an adopted quote from… uh. C. M. Kornbluth’s story, “The Marching Morons,” a dystopia based on tyranny of the stuuuupid majority. Very funny, very scary. True classic of science fiction. Also referenced in Robocop, for the same reason.
