This is also why laugh tracks are so annoying. If something is actually funny, you don't need to point it out to your audience. The more you mug around the place telling everyone how funny a joke was, the less funny that joke becomes.
Somewhat ironically, given how well Saints Row does most of the time compared to other games, this is exactly where it falls flat with one of its most cited "jokes":
Saints Row, on the other hand, simply can't stop itself dancing around the place and pointing out how funny it is that you can hit people with a dildo. It constantly draws attention to it, points out there are achievements specifically for using, forces into your hand as soon as possible, and so on. It's the very worst of the laugh-track-esque style "you should be finding this funny" failure at humour, made all the worse by it being such a blatant copy of a joke someone else already told.
Somewhat ironically, given how well Saints Row does most of the time compared to other games, this is exactly where it falls flat with one of its most cited "jokes":
The dildo bat was done first in GTA San Andreas (although given Rockstar's recent behaviour who knows if it's actually still there). It was funny for precisely the sort of reasons Yahtzee notes here - it was unexpected (as part of the story you have to seduce an apparently straight-laced secretary who turns out to have an S&M dungeon as a bedroom), and the dildo is just sitting there. It's not mentioned by the game at all, it's just there. You could hit people with a baseball bat, but ha! there's a dildo. And that's it.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Saints Row, on the other hand, simply can't stop itself dancing around the place and pointing out how funny it is that you can hit people with a dildo. It constantly draws attention to it, points out there are achievements specifically for using, forces into your hand as soon as possible, and so on. It's the very worst of the laugh-track-esque style "you should be finding this funny" failure at humour, made all the worse by it being such a blatant copy of a joke someone else already told.
