It's All In Good Humor

Falseprophet

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Jan 13, 2009
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The dialogue in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold game for Wii was pretty clever at times. But that's most likely the influence of the show its based on, itself a loving homage to the 60s Adam West Batman series.
 

Falterfire

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Jul 9, 2012
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I find it interesting that he mentioned wanting a back and forth between characters the week after reviewing Orcs Must Die 2. I personally enjoyed the back and forth between the characters there, although it did get a bit old after you restarted the level for the fifteenth time, either to grind or because you couldn't figure out how to beat it.
 

GonzoGamer

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Apr 9, 2008
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You're talking about every American sitcom...except Seinfeld, Arrested Development, and the Dick Van Dyke show.
For some reason I find that (overly) dramatic efforts that fall flat to be even more annoying than comedy that falls flat. It feels like there's been a lot more of that lately in games. Look at GTA 4 or any other R* game this gen. Their formula seems to be 1- kill off a main character 2- there is no step 2 for them. They kind of assume that the drama is so gripping that offing one of these characters will make us cry when it usually just makes me laugh.
See also Heavy Rain.
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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Comedy RPG done right? I think that works best when it's an RPG first, and funny second. For example, the first two Paper Mario games. I laughed at those a lot more than I laugh at most of these so-called comedy games, but if someone asked me what kind of game either one is, I wouldn't say a comedy, I'd say a JRPG.

What makes the Portal series so good is the variety in the crew that made it. It didn't have game designers trying to write comedy that they didn't know how to write, nor did it have comedians writing the game strictly for humor's sake and shoehorning the game around it. Rather, it was game first, designed and programmed by game folk, with a story and humor carefully woven in by people who are good at that.

People have specialties. You wouldn't hire a sound expert to do the lighting in a movie, you wouldn't cast a cameraman in the lead role simply because he showed up, so why do game studios keep trying this? Leave the game mechanics to game designers, and the comedy to comedians. Have the two teams work together, but don't try to use one as a replacement for the other. If someone is good at both, that's fine, but don't try to force it.

P.S. Thanks
 

Steve the Pocket

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Mar 30, 2009
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I wonder what Yahtzee thinks of Magicka and Kingdom of Loathing. Those are the two games that come the most readily to my mind when I hear "comedy" and "game" in the same sentence, outside of the ones that have already been mentioned of course.
 

Rakor

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Mar 9, 2010
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I miss Conker's, anyone else?

I do enjoy me a good jrpg that has a good sense of humor at times. Like Tales of Vesperia. Good times.
 

Mister Six

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Aug 16, 2010
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The main problem with the whole comedy genre is that not everyone has the same tastes, which would be a killing blow for any triple-A game, hence the whole lowest-common denominator jokes that no-one finds funny.

The remake of The Bard's Tale wasn't all that bad and the two Overlord games were pretty decent comedy wise as well.
 

-Drifter-

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Jun 9, 2009
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I was a bit surprised to hear mention of Armed and Dangerous. It was great fun, but it seems scant few have actually played it.
 

Mahoshonen

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Jul 28, 2008
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Well, I suppose there's the Touhou series, but, a) that's not exactly a Triple A release, and, b) Yahtzee is about as likely to review that as he is Pokemon Black2/White2
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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Feb 20, 2011
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I would totally invite my Vanguard Shepard to my birthday party. He'd be a hoot. My Soldier Shepard on the other hand, not so much.
 

duchaked

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Dec 25, 2008
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I feel like if anyone DEATH should be allowed to morose all the time lol :p

unfortunately it seems the opposite of a super serious lead character just leads to an annoyingly sarcastic and smugly overconfident character
 

Scrustle

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Apr 30, 2011
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I think sarcasm gets a bad rap for being "the lowest form of wit". Sarcasm can be quite nuanced sometimes. I agree though that referencing things is probably truly the lowest form of "wit". It basically amounts to "hey, here's a thing you know from somewhere else!". I admit I laugh to it a lot of the time because it's like an in joke. It's not exactly the cleverest thing in the world though.

I think Death has a bit of humour about him though. He doesn't take everything so seriously.

Also I love the sound of a Blackadder game. Someone needs to get on that right now.
 

randomsix

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Apr 20, 2009
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Idea: A Kafkaesque story with BioWare style narration, and dialogue options that either go with the flow or go against it that make a dark/light side bar that goes from nightmare to dream.

You may throw money at me now.
 

Cursed Frogurt

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Aug 17, 2010
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"The sheer weight of silliness in games like GTA4 and the Fable series seems all the more bafflingly out of place when the overall storyline and atmosphere can be kinda gritty and tragic. I've always felt that any work that awkwardly clashes a comedic tone with a dramatic one suffers for it."

Never has anyone so inadvertently explained what I find so annoying about Joss Whedon's work.
 

JPArbiter

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Oct 14, 2010
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so where would Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard fall into in this? the game had thoroughly bland mechanics, and was was extremely referential, but it did so in the same way that Mel Brooks movies are referential, and that made it a genuinely funny game for me.