cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37932218
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)?
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“Backfirewall_” from a little while back. A masterpiece that deserved more attention! Highly recommend to anyone here who is big on tech (especially programmers)!
Been playing Midnight Club 3 lately and some of the songs are very silly. “Can you make your fatty roll like a 24? (24)”
The Dragon Quest games make me laugh all the time. The NPC dialogues are beautifully written, and frequently have little humorous elements in them. The monster designs and animations are also often funny in their own ways.
Can’t recommend these games enough.
I played Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip and laughed multiple times in the first few minutes
Disco Elysium had me laughing out loud a few times.
Disco Elysium is definitely the most memorable one with the level of absurdity it throws in your face. Thinking about the “Dios Mio, a LIBERAL” still cracks me up.
Hollow Knight Silksong.
Spoiler
The trap bench in Hunters March. After the absolutely grueling effort it took getting there, the relief of finally coming upon a bench, only to see the trap come swinging down. All I could do was laugh.
I laugh at shit all the time in multiplayer games, the more chaos the more likely.
It’s funny when you’re playing soccer and you’re locked in and then out of nowhere a player gets domed by the ball. Especially when you smoothly recover like you meant to rocket the ball off the defenders head.
Portal 2 is a classic and I enjoyed Tales from the Borderlands.
I think the loudest and longest laugh I ever got was at the very end of Untitled Goose Game. Not gonna spoil it for anyone, but once I figured out the joke that had been stewing for three straight hours, it had me laughing for the rest of the night.
On a similar theme, “Thank goodness you’re here!” had me creasing at times. Especially at the lawn mowing bit.
Weirdly - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Despite whole game’s emotional atmosphere being pretty heavy, I think it had very good humor moments in it, I actually laughed out loud few times. Maybe a part of it is that it took me by surprise but I appreciate wittiness of these lighter moments.
Great writing overall by the way.
I really want to try it, also because I am studying French and it has full voice over. Problem is, I never managed to play JRPGs, so I am afraid I would be throwing money away.
Another thing I loved about the game is how much of unapologetic nerds Lune and Gustave are.
I’m playing it right now.
!When Verso tries to recruit Monoco to go to old Lumière, Monoco is like “No thanks, after last time I made a promise to never follow you again”, to which Verso responds “There’ll be lots of fights…”, and Monoco is like “I’ll follow you anywhere!”. The delivery is a lot better obviously.!<
Monoco: It’s time do defeat her.
to Verso Please help me.
Exactly the scene that came to my mind when responding to this thread, delivery was perfect - especially that you don’t know the dynamic at that point yet. Didn’t play with french voice over but they did a stellar job with english one. They also must’ve had a lot of fun recording these scenes.
Small suggestion though - I’m not sure if I wouldn’t hide this behind a spoiler, you never know which detail might affect someone’s experience.
Good suggestion
I still need to start this.
But I know the feel - games that expand their emotional range often get the best reactions because moving to an extreme of seriousness, sadness, or even humor, can shock the player.
Acts 1 and 2. 3 was sad.
It actually happens fairly frequently, but almost entirely as reaction to unexpected gameplay moments as opposed to any deliberate comedy written in by the designers. Some of that can be funny too, but only really to the point of a grin or light chuckle.
I remember a moment playing BG 3 when one of my characters just got yeeted into lava literally at the start of the fight. I laughed my ass off then went on with what ended up being probably a much more difficult than intended fight.
Sometimes it can be something as simple as the physics or an NPC bugging out.
That’s why I specified moments designed to be funny.
Witcher 3, which I played like 3 months ago. There was this one goofy quest where you had to save a mage by getting a magic book with a weird name that you could abbreviate to GOG. You needed a spell from it to disable the mage’s tower defence and regulatory management system (something along those lines), or DRM for short.
Baldur’s Gate 3, quite often
Playing “RV There Yet” with friends. I’m replaying “DELTARUNE” and that game has me laughing out loud every 5 minutes (same goes for UNDERTALE). Also recently played the demo for “Yapyap” and laughed a bunch.
