In recent decades, video games have explored almost every genre imaginable: from popular genres such as war stories and science fiction to unusual genres such as romantic comedy and musicals. However, the genre that video games seem to struggle with most often is comedy. Many games try to get comic gold, but at least as many fall as they succeed.
Video games’ struggles with comedy can be due to a few factors: lack of writers with comedic experience, desperation to laugh, or the complexity of timing jokes in an interactive medium. However, the games that overcome these hurdles and succeed can be funnier than most modern comedy movies.
10 Fall Guys Is All Colorful Slapstick
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was a surprise hit when it came out in the summer of 2020. The addictive Battle Royale gameplay and ridiculous title characters made the game a huge success for streamers and a delight for gamers of all ages.
The best thing about the comedy of Autumn boys is that it comes largely organically from the players themselves. The guys are so clumsy to control and can be hurled across the screen in so many unpredictable ways that hilarious situations will happen without any prior planning from the developers. It can get competitive, but even players who lose usually smile.
9 Katamari Damacy is surreal humor at its best
Katamari Damacy and the sequels make no attempt to hide how ridiculous their premise is. The player controls a small, oddly shaped alien prince whose goal in each level is to roll a giant ball made of as many objects in the environment as possible.
Between missions, the player is treated to a series of bizarre skits and nonsensical characters who will laugh in disbelief at their pure and genuine craziness. The sometimes messy physics of the Katamari that the prince has to roll can cause frustration for players, but can also be chaotically hilarious.
8 The Outer Worlds is satirical brilliance
The outer worlds follows in the footsteps of precipitation‘s capitalist satire, not surprising given that the developer, Obsidian, is also on one of precipitation‘s most celebrated episodes: New Vegas. However, while precipitation tends to waver between dark comedy and serious sci-fi drama, The outer worlds is a wacky parody of late capitalism and ineffective governments from start to finish.
A way for players to get the most out of comedy The outer worlds is to set the main character’s intelligence as low as possible. This turns the protagonist into a hilariously dense character and opens up dialogue paths that will confuse and infuriate the NPCs. It also opens an extra ending where the main character decides to fly their ship straight into the sun for no apparent reason.
7 The Secret Of Monkey Island Introduces A Comic Legend
Most modern gamers would assume that a game about a young man who wants to be a pirate would be a third-person action title or an action RPG. In 1990, however, The Secret of Monkey Island took that storyline and turned it into a silly point-and-click adventure where the only fight is based entirely on who can think of the best insults.
The Monkey Island games are always very funny and endlessly quoteable, but Secret deserves credit for establishing some of the best jokes in the series. Stan’s used barrels, the veggie cannibals and the pun-based recipes are all jokes that would come back everywhere Monkey Island‘s long history.
6 Strong Bad’s cool game for attractive people is a fun game for internet people
In the early 2000s, there was no animated web series as beloved and outlandish as Strong Bad Emails, short videos released weekly on Homestarrunner.com. Many fans who grew up with Strong Bad, The Cheat, Homestar, Strong Sad and others can still recite the classic episodes by heart.
The pinnacle of Strong Bad’s commercial success came in 2008 with the release of Strong Bad’s cool game for attractive people, a point-and-click adventure from Telltale Games. The game consisted of five episodes that are released monthly. Some humor was based on the player’s knowledge of the website, but the games turned out to have surprisingly clever puzzles and loads of new jokes.
5 Octodad: Dadliest Catch is all about fatherhood
Octodad: Dadliest Catch has an absurd premise; even Pixar would struggle to make a story out of it. The game is about a suburban father who is also an octopus. As the titular Octodad, the player must find ways to spend quality time with his family while the neighbors don’t get to know his true nature.
The wacky premise is made even crazier by the beautifully clunky movement system. The player switches between controlling different tentacles on Octodad’s body and tries to maneuver him while still disguising the tentacles as arms and legs. The goal is to complete each stage without causing a nuisance, but players may find it more fun to forego progress in favor of spreading chaos.
4 The Hitman trilogy is grim and hilarious
IO Interactive’s first episode hitman franchise was released in 2000, but most fans agree that the series really peaked in 2016 with the first game of what is now the world of murder trilogy. hitman, Hitman 2and Hitman 3 they all have expansive levels with a range of objectives and an endless amount of side challenges for each map.
From an external perspective, hitmanThe stern protagonist, violent iconography and straightforward cutscenes can give the impression that the games take themselves seriously. But once players embark on the missions themselves, the games turn into fish-out-of-water comedies in which the ridiculously self-serious Agent 47 uses exploding golf balls and bananas to extensively kill his targets, much to the bewilderment of confused bystanders.
3 The Portal Games are comic masterpieces
The Portal games are some of the funniest games ever made, despite only having two characters that actually speak dialogue – not counting the cores and sentry towers, which have only a few repeated sentences. The MVP of the Portal games is undoubtedly GLaDOS, the temperamental AI whose passive-aggressive jokes and poor understanding of human emotions give the game its comedic backbone.
Voice actor Ellen McLain deserves a lot of credit for Portalhis humor. Her performance mimics a robotic monotone with perfect accuracy, but she allows GLaDOS just enough non-robotic emotion to let just the right amount of irritation, arrogance, or amusement into her lines.
2 Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Is Surprisingly Emotional
The classic Lucasarts adventure game Sam and Max are on the road is widely recognized as one of the pinnacles of comedy in gaming, but the Sam and Max games developed by Telltale Games should not be overlooked. Telltale’s episodic series debuted in 2006 and ended in 2010 with the final episode of The Devil’s Playhouse.
What stands out? The Devil’s Playhouse is that it ends with an emotional and heartfelt ending in a surprising twist from a game franchise known for being irreverent and cartoonish. The Devil’s Playhouse treats certain character deaths seriously, and Sam and Max’s friendship has never felt more like true love. It’s a funny game, but the biggest surprise is the drama.
1 The Untitled Goose Game is a beautiful and simple comedy
The Untitled Goose Game couldn’t have been a less likely blockbuster. The player controls an average goose looking to complete his to-do list, which is full of basic tasks that only make sense in a goose’s head. Despite its simple premise and a pleasing, but barely breath-taking art style, the game was a huge hit when it debuted in 2019, beating digital sales of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, released the same week.
The charming chaos the goose creates in the nameless village is made funnier by the goose’s unclear motivations itself. Players hoping to find out why the goose has to steal a boy’s glasses will be out of luck. The goose’s mysterious and hilarious nature has made him a video game legend in his own time, and fans are still eagerly awaiting a sequel.
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