Why Can't Comedy Games be Funny to Play?

[JasonBurnout16]

Using Portal / Portal 2 as an example, the game doesn't put stress on you or force you to rush at any moment. Because of this, the player is more relaxed and able to enjoy what is happening around them, taking in the comedy and fully enjoying the storyline.

Compare this to an action game where the player is searching for collectibles, trying not to die, trying to shoot the bad guys, hiding behind something - it's all too much. There's too much of a stress on other things, that when a comedic moment does happen it's hidden behind gunfire and other worries that the player will have to deal with.

I'd also mention that it's hard to die in Portal, so you're unlikely to hear the same line more than once from any of the characters. In contrast it's usually fairly easy to die in adventure games if you're not paying attention, and to hear the same line more than once is death to comedic value. This can be linked to the fact that comedic moments usually happen at the start and end of a puzzle in Portal - this means you don't have to stop what you're doing in the middle of a puzzle to listen to the comedy.

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Why Can't Comedy Games be Funny to Play?

Yahtzee tells us that the plot might be funny, but the gameplay rarely is.

Read Full Article

 

[Britishfan]

Damn, somebody said Portal 2 before I could.

If repetition kills comedy, why are catch phases such as "Listen very carefully, I will say this only once" and "Don't panic, Mr Manwearing!!" Still raising laughs after all these years? I can't answer either, just a thought.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

I remember thinking Armed and Dangerous for the Xbox was really funny. With it's dry comedy interspersed with truly imaginative weapons. This is where "LAND SHARK GUN" came from after all. And it was varying degrees of effective against different groups of enemies.

It's been a while though. And it didn't look good or particularly play well even when it was new so I'm sure it's aged horribly in the interim. It'd be difficult to go back and judge it fairly at this point.

Maybe I'll see if I can find a "Let's Play" series or something.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Sandbox and physics are a large open-end for humor. I had a demo of Unreal Tournament 2k4 and we didn't have internet for a while. My roomates and I would take turns in the single demo level devoid of bots leaping into an instakill pit that had bars throughout it. The game we played was to see how spectacular a death we could before the respawn timer kicked in. We even had a Tony Hawk-ish style where we named certain "moves" and attributed a points system to it.
But the unintended consequence was the humor factor. Each death seemed to be funnier than the last. Watching the character bounce from pole to pole, only to hang from one then slide down slowly seemed to be the epitome of humor.
Its little things like that, the unforseen consequences (HL3 confirmed) that make games funny to play.

 

[Ymbirtt]

Well, how about Octodad?

Octodad is absurd and surreal in pretty much every conceivable way - you're an Octopus who pretends to be a human by shoving his tentacles into a suit, which is somehow enough to fool a woman so completely that she agrees to marry you and have two children with you.

The gameplay revolves around "being a normal human", but with appropriately surreal controls. Rather than having a "walk" button and a "pick up item" button, you have the mouse buttons bound to lifting each leg up, moving the mouse causes that leg to flail around, and releasing the mouse button then drops that leg wherever it was hovering. This is the only way to walk.

The challenge is then not spazzing out - if you do too many "suspicious" things, people will realise that you're not actually a human and therefore must be an octopus. Since the controls are so awkward, the game can quite comfortably ask you to do such mundane things as clearing out the fridge and mopping the kitchen floor, and then rely on the awkwardness of the controls and the sheer surreality of an Octopus in a suit flailing around the kitchen to produce some brilliant slapstick comedy completely organically.

The gameplay and challenge mechanics entirely reflect the context and tone of humour.

 

[Undomesticated Equine]

I am surprised that Psychonauts were not mentioned in the article. I replayed it few weeks ago (thanks steam trading cards for making me start a new game). And the i think that game play and story are exceptionally well combined and almost everything is funny the dialogs, character reacting to the stuff you do and the level design and art is just superb.

 

[Sylocat]

Well, there's Conker's Bad Fur Day, but come to think of it, for all I love the game for its humor and wit, I realized later that many of the funniest moments weren't really that fun to actually play, with clunky controls and haphazard level design. At the time, I loved it, but I've actually gotten more fun out of watching Let's Plays of that game.

On the fun side is No More Heroes, with its over-the-top combat, and the sword-fighting is just fun enough to make the repetitive-ness of it amusing (the parking-lot level in NMH2 notwithstanding) until you get to the bosses, each of which has awesome puzzle elements.

I'm thinking now of I Wanna Be The Guy, which has most of its Easter eggs in the form of funny traps and hazards.

Also, as Yahtzee has often mentioned, the Mario RPGs often have fun and funny attacks and stage hazards, particularly the audience interaction in PM:TTYD.

 

[windlenot]

In tempted to say Dead Rising 2 because the story was rubbish, but the gameplay of picking up almost anything reflected how silly everything was. Yeah, you'll always go back to the weapons and combos that actually do stuff, but slinging useless items at zombies is a laugh.

 

[LAGG]

"But I had to ask myself - what kind of gameplay WOULD suit a comedy action game?"

Comedy games are funny to play. Ever played Magicka, Postal, Metal Slug, Dead Rising, or any game with ragdolls?

If "comedy" games can't be funny it's for the same reason "tactical" games can't be tactical, "horror" games can't be horrifying, "stealth" games can be stealthy, "strategy" games can't be strategic: the over-usage of linear scripted content and trying to be movies instead of games.

 

[BrotherRool]

Messing with pedestrians in a sandbox game is funny, and screwing with guards in Metal Gear Solid is funny.

So maybe the trick is, the player has to feel completely superior to the AI and that means you have to give the player enough control that it feels like it's them whose doing it. A funny kill animation is funny once, because you're effectively watch someone show you a gag. But being able to tap someone on the shoulder, and then teleport behind them as they turn round (ala Dishonoured) is funny for much longer because it feels like you invented that. What you need is the AI to be responsive enough that they can react to you outwitting them and then a flexible control scheme that allows you to taunt mooks with your movement and combat. And then you combine it with more challenging elite mooks who are much more of an actual threat but do have the nice fancy kill animations (but still the opportunity to make them look stupid if you're good)

 

[Kargathia]

Magicka might be a good example here. The plot itself is rather silly, but the real comedy gold isn't provided by the throwaway gags in the environment, but by the repeated murder-suicides your spells cause.

 

[Naeras]

Banjo Kazooie fits the bill, in my eyes. Everything about that game was silly and cartoonish in a rather adorable way, and there are lines and situations in that game that really at the very least put a smile on my face. Also, I laughed out loud the first time Mumbo accidentally turned me into a washing machine. And so did my dad, who was playing with me at the time(I was 7 years old).

Super Paper Mario and all the other Mario RPGs I've played also fit the bill fairly well.

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

Beyond Good and Evil. It takes place on an alien world that is an odd ball collection of things. The architecture looks Mediterranean yet there is a heavy Asian undertone to the world, almost like a light hearted version of Blade Runner. The people are a mix of not just cultures but species. You have a rasta rino, cat people, pig people, humans and you have a huge collection of strange animals that look like there right out of the Dark Crystal. Its this huge mess of different things thrown together without out any real exposition and brought together with a uniform art style.

The game play is similarly varied. You mainly play as Jade who hops around and whacks things with a stick but there are so many other elements of play thrown in. You have stealth sections, Jade can earn cash and upgrades by taking pictures of different species, you can play a kind of air hockey game with a shark....roll that last one around in your head for a moment, you can race, you can explore a small but open world, and you get into space battles.

Even the story keeps throwing things at you. You start out thinking military is trying to protect you from an invasion and that there is a terrorist group trying to sabotage their efforts. Soon it turns out There the bad guys and you end up doing guerrilla journalism style missions with said terrorists to expose the military. Then you end up in space fighting an alien mastermind that is apparently your father and you bring a pig back to life. And there's still another twist after you beat the game.

Beyond Good and Evil is a perfect marriage of gameplay setting and story. Some things are pulled off better than others but they all come together to make something truly amazing...too bad they can't seem to get a second game off the ground.

 

[the7ofswords]

The Fallout series, while not exactly "Comedy Games" per se, certainly have a lot of humorous elements within. In fact, exploring the world and stumbling across dark bits of comedy in the back-story is a big part of why I love those games so much.

(Confession: I've only played Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but I gather there's a lot of comedy value in the earlier titles, as well.)

ETA: And I TOTALLY agree with the above post regarding Beyond Good and Evil!

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Ragdoll physics, since day one have never ceased to be a source of constant amusement. Especially if done badly. In the early days of Hitman you could shoot people into other peoples faces. Most humour I get from games tends to be unintentional. Like a Combine trooper spazzing out while pinned to a wall or Max Payne inadvertently chilling out on a sofa after a shootdodge. In GTA 4 The funniest thing to do is a physics glitch that launches you miles across the city. Comedy is about subverting normality and normality in games are the preprogrammed rules. If you break them or make them do crazy things, it's funny. The important thing I believe is the user being agent in the comedy. It's why discovering a donkey can climb a ladder is so funny. You discovered it by playing, it was never the programmers intention.

 

[Deacon Cole]

If repetition kills comedy, why are catch phases such as "Listen very carefully, I will say this only once" and "Don't panic, Mr Manwearing!!" Still raising laughs after all these years? I can't answer either, just a thought.

Kevin Smith noted that repetition is part of comedy in the commentary on the Clerks DVD. The scene he noted this on was the scene where an old guy is asking Dante if he can use the bathroom. The guy comes over and asks if he can use the bathroom and then goes away. And then comes back and ask about the toilet paper, which is rough, and convinces Dante to let him take some softer toilet paper from the shelf to use and then goes away. And then comes back and asks if he can have some reading material, namely a porno magazine, to keep himself occupied while he pinches one off.

The repetition here is in action, but the content escalates with each occurrence. This is just part of storytelling in general. Actions escalate the stakes. So the comedy needs to escalate as well. Having Deadpool make the same half dozen quips every takedown doesn't escalate things. Maybe after you hear the same takedown line a few times, one of the other goons says "Why do you keep saying that?" That would be hilarious. Pointing out the limited quippage of video game dialog. Maybe even have that guy escalate. Going from puzzled "Why do you keep saying that?" To worried "You know you're just repeating yourself, right?" To pissed "Say that one more time and I'm gonna murdelize ya!"

Octodad is a new genre I've dubbed "Fail Games." The thing about Fail Games is that they usually have nigh-impossible controls with unfair obstacles between you and a deceptively simple goal. The point of these games is not necessarily to win but to fail in as spectacular a way as possible. If you manage to limp across the finish line, that's only a bonus. Games such as Happy Wheels, Enviro-Bear 2000, Incredipede, and possibly I Wanna Be the Guy fit neatly into this genre.

 

[shrekfan246]

screwing with guards in Metal Gear Solid is funny.

Thinking about it, I do have to agree with this. I often say that one of the most enjoyable parts of the Metal Gear Solid games is just messing around with the AI, because it's so good and yet at the same time so utterly, hilariously dumb.

Octosnip

So someone took that "Sir Bearington" D&D story and made a video game heavily influenced by it?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

You know i loved Conkers Bad Fur Day. Its still my favorite game of all time because it played the juxtaposition of comedy and serious grittiness differently. Comedy to me stems from the interaction between the comedy and straight man, the normal thing that emphasizes that whats happening is wacky. In Deadpool, Deadpool himself is the comedy and the game is straight man. So spending the whole game with him is very tiring. Its no longer funny if the comedy is just being thrown at us. We already know its supposed to be goofy, but there is no moment of levity is Dead Pool is always saying one dumb one liner after another.
In Conker and Portal, the player characters are the straight men(or squirrel and woman as it is) to the comedy of the situation/setting. Conker openly makes fun of the goofy characters, plot and setting. And not in a Duke Nukem way; its a little more subtle.
Give you an example; You fight a giant bale a hay as a boss fight and after you defeat him, the floor collapses and you fall several feet into a pit. The boss is on fire and we assume he's gone. But then the oddly terminator-esque music starts. The hay monster jumps out of the fire and its a robot! Now in Duke Nukem and DeadPool, those characters would have dropped a terminator line. "I guess he came back." or "Hasta la vista, baby." Or something equally obvious. In Conker our squirrel comments on the music well before the terminator hay monster returns. "Uhhh...I dont like the sound of that music." In Portal, GLaDOS would have come in over the PA and said "Do you like that music? I wrote it for you. I call it the 'You're about to die' suite. In A-Minor."
See the Duke/Deadpool is the bad joke because its the character himself forcing in the humor in. With Conker or Portal, yes they're telling jokes, but their not the subject of the joke. Conker recognizes the game is trying to b like terminator,not just going along with the terminator bit.
Conker is fully aware he's in a video game, but unlike Dead Pool, he's not too happy about it. Dead Pool just wants to tell jokes and shoot thing; Conker wants to go take a nap, so he's less inclined to go along with the game, and its funny.