Why Can't Comedy Games be Funny to Play?

[BehattedWanderer]

A game that comes to mind is Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, a game that was what Duke Nukem Forever only wished it could be. Admittedly not the best game, with a broken cover system, but the game was hilarious, and was even reflected in the gameplay, with them in on the joke. The protagonist, a washed up shooter protagonist, will occasionally comment about how the shooting used to be easier when it was all on the same plane, or how the enemies look slightly different. There's even the spoof section that was made for kids, where all the weapons are replaced with super soakers. It's mechanics might have been sticky and clunky, but they were still funny juxtaposed alongside the game making fun of the progression of shooters. Here, have a sample:

Spoiler: Actual game footage inside

 

[Itchi_da_killa]

I really loved the MDK games. They were very funny. On my first play through of MDK, I was scoping an alien Orc looking guy when he spotted me. He flipt me the bird and then started shooting.

 

[gjkbgt]

Quite interesting
I like the metric of comedic value
Maybe do a FPS style mechanic where the most immediate rout to the goal is also the least funny (or a lower form of comedy)
longer parts have slower more refined whit.
so if you die doing the whit run you can burn through on the family guy run
Because lower rent comedy is more repetitively funny and is funny at a fast pase
might be fun

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Bulletstorm is a game with writing about as subtle as a size 300 boot to the face, but the whole game is like that: humor comes from the Skill Shots,and most of them range from useful, to awesome, to pointlessly excessive, but most can earn a chuckle or two.

Gore can be humorous. Didn't Yahtzee once say that Dead Space 2's gore was too over the top to take seriously?

 

[Covarr]

Comedy doesn't need to be married to gameplay to make a great comedy game, but it shouldn't be limited to dialogue, either. Far too often, the world itself is straightforward in an otherwise humorous game. Pepper the world with amusingly-named shops, L4D-style graffiti conversations, GTA talk radio... In the funniest games, the comedy is coming from all sides, not just the player character.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. JRPGs would make for great comedy, if any franchise outside of Mario would ever bother trying.

 

[maximalist566]

In addition to mentioned Psychonauts and Conker, I'd like to add Roguelike games.

Binding of Isaac, Dwarf Fortress and FTL have lots of different situation that almost never repeat. And they can be fun cause of all the stupid deaths, strange combinations of items, ridiculous situations. Such things as Boatmurdered proves it.

 

[Bostur]

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.

Interesting question. I think it's because repetition can give the audience a false sense of familiarity. A lot of humour uses the surprise element, so by using repetition the audience can be caught off-guard. It seems familiar but if used in a different context it can become a new joke.

"How many X does it take to change a lightbulb?". If the answer is simply a number it wouldn't be funny. Instead the repetetive joke depends on subverting the expectations of the audience and do something different.

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Yahtzee is on to an interesting subject. I think most games that accomplish funny gameplay does so partly unintentionally. Maybe it's a matter of having enough variation in animation and physics that funny situations sometimes emerge on their own. The GTA games can sometimes create funny situations because there are so many diverse ways to get hurt, a variation of slapstick humour basically.

I found the gameplay in the campaign of "Space Marine" funny sometimes. The orks look hilarious when they get mangled in a hundred different ways, the variation is probably a big part of it. Maybe brawling gameplay is easier to make funny than shooting.

Death animations is a another important element. A victim has to do more than getting hurt, it has to get hurt in a funny way. It sounds very brutal and cynical, but humour often is.

 

[Vale]

Wizard Suicide Simulator (known in some coutnries as Magicka) is a perfect example of the comedy of the story not being congruous with the gameplay (because it's just silly throwaway gags and references) but the gameplay itself is also pure comedy (of a Wizard Suicide via Hilarious and Exteremly Varied Usually Magick Assisted Methods) so it all kinda works out.
And the gameplay is REALLY good. Like, EXTRA good.

 

[Bostur]

In case anyone laughed at the silly made-up non-sequitur that was "putting the spaghetti on the mummy" in the article... no, that really happened.

You had to flush the spaghetti down the time-travelling toilet to get it to the right era, and the player in that era has to use the spaghetti on the mummy, and then they have to use the fork to make a decent hairstyle.

How else was that mummy going to win the beauty contest?

...Day of the Tentacle was a damn good game.

There is something weird going on with adventure games and comedy. It works very well, but I have no idea why it is. Maybe it's the process of being told part of a joke, and slowly having to unravel it yourself.

Are jokes more funny if the punchline takes a while to get? Normally if we don't get the punchline we would forget about the joke. But in an adventure game the joke can be told slowly.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I can't tell (because I didn't read all the comments) But has anyone said Ratchet and Clank yet?

There's a gun that makes enemies dance! How is that not comedy gold?

Saints Row, obviously.

That's... all I can think of at the time.

 

[Kuomon]

I think its hard to point out exactly what part of GodHand makes the comedy in the game so organic and enjoyable. If you break it down, you have:
-A highly customizable fighting system where the player is given full control of their combos
-Ridiculous and borderline offensive characters lifted from all sorts of material like Westerns, Horror or Samurai Drama
-High difficulty level that demands precision and practice.
-Rockin sound design that borrows heavily from the early days of console games
-Simple environments with very limited interactivity
None of these things by themselves are what make GodHand funny, as far as I can tell. It's the expert way in which they are combined that allows the game to make me smile and laugh every time I play it.

Also, it's been said before in the thread, but the original Paper Mario and the sequel, The Thousand Year Door, are great when it comes to marrying comedic writing with comedic gameplay in what is a repetition heavy genre (the JRPG).

 

[MowDownJoe]

Yahtzee, I know you didn't like Borderlands 2, but I think you should check out the lead writer's GDC talk on designing comedy in video games [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jXHsbVPir8cu5hL5Li3XdVoPyUQEGuBtr36AQSjTOpI/edit#slide=id.p8]. He touches on games where comedy is a central component then goes into making a game that isn't primarily comedy-centric (shooters or Diablo-likes, which Borderlands is both) have some comedy injected into it.

 

[Vrach]

If you like really British and really crude humour, I'd recommend Hector: Badge of Carnage. If it's not your thing, it might get stale on you fast, but I laughed my ass off throughout most of it

 

[lacktheknack]

In case anyone laughed at the silly made-up non-sequitur that was "putting the spaghetti on the mummy" in the article... no, that really happened.

You had to flush the spaghetti down the time-travelling toilet to get it to the right era, and the player in that era has to use the spaghetti on the mummy, and then they have to use the fork to make a decent hairstyle.

How else was that mummy going to win the beauty contest?

...Day of the Tentacle was a damn good game.

There is something weird going on with adventure games and comedy. It works very well, but I have no idea why it is. Maybe it's the process of being told part of a joke, and slowly having to unravel it yourself.

Are jokes more funny if the punchline takes a while to get? Normally if we don't get the punchline we would forget about the joke. But in an adventure game the joke can be told slowly.

If it's an absurdist joke (which adventure games often revel in), then the humour and intrigue comes from the space between the set up and the payoff.

For example, if I explained WHY the mummy needs to win the beauty contest, the joke would end. As is, you're probably pretty curious as to what possible payoff a mummy winning a beauty contest would have, and it's a funny idea. When you play the game, they design it so that even as you're playing, you're not sure WHY you're trying to win the beauty contest with a mummy (unless you guessed the answer to a different puzzle), but goddamit, you're got a mummy in an Elvis jacket, some wet spaghetti, false teeth and some roller skates, so you are going to win that contest, dammit!

It's a specific joke type that only really works in adventure games, because other games would be thought of as being "too slow" if they took the time needed to pull one off.

Another good example is Sam and Max (old and new, but especially old).

 

[Negatempest]

Personally I believe that Deadpool game should not of been a hack&slash game. When reading his comics, the majority of the time is that Deadpool does his jokes and a small portion may be dedicated to fighting sequence. At most, deadpool should of been an adventure/exploration game. With some fighting sequences to showcase his agility. With the game being focused on adventure/exploration than hack n' slash, we can see deadpool tinker with the 4th wall constantly. Which is why we all enjoyed deadpool when he wasn't fighting clone wave number 34.

Conker and Portal were not really hack n' slash focus. To occupy the possible quiet time, that is when the witty part of the game came in.

 

[Fiairflair]

I wonder what blurting out a love of cock would do to Tony Abbott's election chances...

Anyway...

Comedy could become more prevalent in non-shooters. The portal gun in Portal was a stroke of genius in that it allowed puzzle solving and exploration with a device conventionally used for putting bullets into bodies. If other games are to avoid turning into Portal clones then the gun-based gameplay may have to go. Earlier point-and-click games are good but I'm not sure audiences have the patience for them. Comedy could be (and was) the solution to that impatience.

 

[DanielBrown]

I'm a bit confused. Is this a Yahtzee article thread? His post isn't first for me. ._o

Anyways, to contribute with something: The Bard's Tale works pretty well. It's a simple hack 'n' slash game with tons of humor. I haven't gotten very far yet, but it's really funny and all the comedy so far has been in cutscenes, so you're never missing anything. I wish there were more games like it.

It's currently on sale on Steam. Believe the price was 2.50 euro when I bought it, and you get the earlier Bard's Tale triolgy as well(though I don't know anything about them).

 

[Piorn]

Psychonauts was fun.
It hardly repeated itself, because to hear all the great one-liners you had to stop and listen, and it was always worth it.
And Raz didn't talk during combat.
AND the game has a lot of variety, more than I've seen in any game in fact. It's like in that fake Duke Nuken ZP, you start as the average summer camp kid, and half the game later you're uncovering global conspiracies and play board games against Napoleon.

 

[weirdee]

Psychonauts was fun.
It hardly repeated itself, because to hear all the great one-liners you had to stop and listen, and it was always worth it.
And Raz didn't talk during combat.
AND the game has a lot of variety, more than I've seen in any game in fact. It's like in that fake Duke Nuken ZP, you start as the average summer camp kid, and half the game later you're uncovering global conspiracies and play board games against Napoleon.

my main issue from psychonauts aside from the collectibles sometimes being very iffy to reach, is that it's really easy to miss all of the funny one time gags of the dialogue if you don't slow down instead of blowing through all of the tutorial zones, plus most of the summer camp jokes are location, context, and timeline sensitive, so you basically have to either know beforehand where they are, or spend an hour wandering around trying to trigger them, and then accidentally skip part of it because you thought it would repeat, but then it doesn't

due to the game's forced ingame timespan of one day, it also doesn't allow enough character development to the point where you'd actually get half of the jokes being made in the last half of the game unless you really hunted down every detail

 

[Keith K]

I found the human cannonball target shooting in Pilotwings 64 hilarious.