So video games are pretty serious, huh?
In an industry dominated by pulse-pounding gunfights with foreign robot aliens (brought to you by Brawndo), few games are designed to actually make you laugh. Why would they be? Who has time to laugh when saving the world from evil villains? Certainly not a lone wolf like you who must go it alone because the solitary path is the one you travel by yourself. Seriousness!
Yes, video games are pretty intense these days, but they don’t always need to be. On the contrary, some of the best moments to be had in games in 2012 were actually pretty funny.*
*On purpose. We left out unintentionally funny games. Sorry, Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2012.
Retro City Rampage easily has the most jokes-per-minute of any game this year. The moment you start playing, you’re hit with references to Batman, the Ninja Turtles, Mega Man, and dozens of other nerd icons. Even some of the in-game songs are parodies of famous game music. And while the game itself can be iffy from time to time, there are a lot of jokes for any kid who grew up when Nintendo was king and batteries weren’t included.
Here’s a real conversation I had with Brian Altano while playing Scribblenauts Unlimited:
“Can you make a rabbi?”
“Try it.”
“Whoa! It’s in there! What about a giant evil rabbi?”
“Type it in.”
“It’s in there, too! I love this game!”
“The giant evil rabbi just killed Cthulhu.”
“As it should be.”
You get to burn family photos. And if you can do that without laughing, you had a much better family situation than I grew up with.
Little Inferno’s focus on burning different objects (batteries, plushies, spider eggs) makes it more of a creepy toy than an actual game, but that doesn’t make it any less hilarious to watch.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Years after it seemed like the hilarious Penny Arcade RPGs wouldn’t properly finish their story, we get another entry from Zeboyd, makers of the incredible Cthulhu Saves the World.
The dialogue between the characters is fantastic, and the 16-bit RPG style gives the series more room to make fun of video games themselves. Like Retro City Rampage, it’s as much a comedy in its own right as it is a parody of the biggest and dumbest themes in video games.
One word: Kersti.
While most tutorial characters get annoying fast, Kersti’s brightly sarcastic personality made each of her appearances a treat. She acknowledges how ridiculous the quest for stickers is without ever breaking the game world, and her constant comments on the various enemies and characters (especially Kamek, whom she hilariously calls a “hipster”) are awesome.
Paper Mario: Sticker Star isn’t just as funny as other games in the series, it’s funnier.
When most video games talk about “dark humor,” they usually mean cheesy over-the-top kills. When Hotline Miami talks about dark humor, they mean cheesy over-the-top kills that make you question your sanity and role in a series of increasingly absurd homicides. Every weapon, puzzle, and cutscene makes you question just what the Hell is going on. And when men in animal masks question your motives, you kind of have to laugh.
If you think Twin Peaks is funny (and it is), you’ll love Hotline Miami.
Stay with me here. The Walking Dead is also probably the most somber game of the year, so it’s a real testament to the series’ writers that there are a lot of laugh-out-loud funny moments. In fact, it’s the humor in The Walking Dead that makes it all the more tragic (Spoiler Example: Duck asking to be the Robin to your Batman as you solve a mystery).
Tokyo Jungle is a post-apocalyptic adventure game in which you play as a... pomeranian. That’s right, you don’t even play a cool dog. Okay, well, yes, there are other animals to play in the game. You can have a crocodile fight a chimp. And as deer, you have to avoid pigs. So there’s a lot to unpack here. Oh, and there’s deer sex. Hot, nasty deer sex.
Thank you, Borderlands 2. Thank you for showing that shooters don’t have to be incredibly serious to be fun. Thank you for making jokes that developed villains and heroes. Thank you for Claptrap. Also, screw you for Claptrap depending on the situation.
Borderlands 2 succeeds at taking the wackiness of the first game (screaming, flaming little mutants) and applying a layer of fantastic writing. Just compare Handsome Jack to the demons in Diablo 3. They serve the same function (“Here I am; come and get me”) but one is funny and the other was Diablo 3. I don’t want to get sidetracked here, but, God, those demons were bad at being villains in Diablo 3.
Mike Drucker co-writes "Up at Noon," IGN's video game talk show. He's also a comedian and has written for The Onion, Saturday Night Live, and Nintendo's Treehouse localization team. You can follow him on Twitter at @mikedrucker.
Source : ign[dot]com
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