Yesterday I played the demo of the new game Dispatch and it is all beautifully written, but at some point, while presenting the team in-game, there was a casual funny line, pronounced by a voice off-screen, so without graphical support and I just burst out laughing (I was alone at home, so not pressed by social influence of any kind).
When I stopped, I realized how uncommon this has become lately. As a kid, I found LucasArts games extremely funny and I laughed more than occasionally, but this aspect of video game entertainment has been dying out.
When was the last time you actually laughed out loud while playing a game for something that was actually designed as funny (no Fortnite or CoD shenanigans stories please)?
Hades 2 when I finally stumbled upon Dionysus. He’s wearing a leopard print speedo in it and his bulge is as subtle as a kick in the shin.
The South Park games got a few laughs out of me.
Borderlands games have a few good gags sprinkled throughout.
The Stanley Parable is very funny. I don’t want to spoil it, especially because reading or watching videos is not the same as interacting with the game, but the narrator reacts to what you do, even if you try to do something absurd there’s a good chance that it has a special reaction for that.
South Park games also are very funny, the first one (Stick of Truth) especially. But it is a very dark humor, e.g. the difficulty slider also changes your skin color.
Stanley Parable is amazing, not something I personally would laugh out loud at, but truly a masterpiece of a game.
Expedition 33 got me to laugh pretty hard a few times.
Disco Elysium. The dialog options are so cracked
Outer Worlds 2, baby! It takes itself more seriously than the first one, which I think adds to the comedy.
What got a chuckle out of me was this statue in the first town you visit. It’s a beautifully-designed, marble statue of some hero. The Auntie’s Choice corporation that’s colonized the area used an advertisement drone to project an image of the CEO’s face over the statue’s head.
There’s also the Protectorate members that have tried to integrate into corporate society saying things like, “I only recently learned that artificial means good!”
I love dry humor, and this game is much more dry than the first.
Cyberpunk 2077, overheard two NPCs sharing a joke:
What does a corpo say before he offs himself?
spoiler
Guys, please don’t shoot.
some years ago, magicka made me regularly pause the game
more recently, broken age had a few good twists and lines (well it’s more recent for me, i just started playing it)The Paper Mario games have several laugh-worthy jokes and scenarios
Spiritfarer has a couple
Animal Crossing New Horizons has a couple
Baby Steps has made me laugh a lot this past month. But my last laugh in gaming was on saturday when I started the new Katamari game and the very first thing I made was given the title Miso Flavour Uranus.
baby steps is hilarious! i’m on my second playthrough right now trying to find all the cutscenes because they’re so good
san andreas
skyrim
undertale
Damn, CJ, why you always gotta be a busta?
Just started playing Wolfenstein: New Colossus for the first time, and everything is just so over the top, it’s funny. The game starts you out in a wheel chair, where you roll through a u-boat, shooting Nazis with an automatic pistol.
Those Wolfenstein games kinda rule because they’re so over the top.
And then you become Terror Billy.
In Kletka when I unlocked the naked skin and my friends noticed the tramp stamp before I did lol
This makes me wonder what the first time was. Pong and Yar’s Revenge weren’t really comedy material. Maybe The Quest for c64, where we got annoyed at the game always saying “gorn doesn’t want to go that way”. I guess that’s not intentionally humorous though. Maybe Monkey Island?
Apart from multiplayer games:
- Psychonauts 2 was both funny and at the same time very moving.
- Return to Monkey Island managed to capture the charme of the originals. It also hit the absolutely right spot for me being a ::: spoiler spoiler father myself :::.
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is fun like watching an Indy movie (until you realize you watch the movie in real time and it is really long)…
Psychonauts 2 was probably the best sequel ever imo. I grew up playing the first game so I’m a little biased, but holy shit is that second one a masterpiece.
