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IS HUMOR HARDER TO PULL OFF IN GAMES?
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Dragnfly
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CloseAs somebody who's currently suffering from his favourite type of humour going extinct, I figure I'll weigh in here.
IMO comedy in 3D games is a bit tougher than other mediums because you might not be on rails when the joke drops, and may not even be looking where they want you to. Of course good game design can reduce that problem but, for example, when my brother plays a 1st person game he never NEVER N E V E R stops moving the camera. It's like his character is a bobblehead tied to a rollercoaster. He misses lots of comedy, lots of horror, lots of plot hooks. So some people just can't be helped.
The old adventure games and a lot of the stuff by NIS have already been mentioned so I won't re-mention them. I remember Mana Khemia (by Gust) being really funny, mostly because of two characters. I'm pretty easy to get a chuckle out of but hard to have me rolling on the floor laughing. But out of all the RPGs I've ever played and all that hilartious dialogue, I think I laughed the hardest in FF7 when
For RM, I laughed a lot at Hero & Daughter. But it really made me agree that humour in RM games is likely either going to be in the dialogue or in satirising games.
So yeah I think it can be harder to pull off in games, but at the same time you get a whole new venue for humour like in games like Lisa
IMO comedy in 3D games is a bit tougher than other mediums because you might not be on rails when the joke drops, and may not even be looking where they want you to. Of course good game design can reduce that problem but, for example, when my brother plays a 1st person game he never NEVER N E V E R stops moving the camera. It's like his character is a bobblehead tied to a rollercoaster. He misses lots of comedy, lots of horror, lots of plot hooks. So some people just can't be helped.
The old adventure games and a lot of the stuff by NIS have already been mentioned so I won't re-mention them. I remember Mana Khemia (by Gust) being really funny, mostly because of two characters. I'm pretty easy to get a chuckle out of but hard to have me rolling on the floor laughing. But out of all the RPGs I've ever played and all that hilartious dialogue, I think I laughed the hardest in FF7 when
you win a boss fight, the dude turns tail and runs.... and then gets hit by a truck completely out of nowhere.
For RM, I laughed a lot at Hero & Daughter. But it really made me agree that humour in RM games is likely either going to be in the dialogue or in satirising games.
So yeah I think it can be harder to pull off in games, but at the same time you get a whole new venue for humour like in games like Lisa
RyaReisender
200
author=Liberty
I don't think that's necessarily true, Rya, just that pure comedy games tend to be catered towards only one or two types of humour (usually the stupid-is-funny kind like South Park or Spongebob) and it doesn't work for everyone.
A lot of games, even serious ones, have humour sprinkled through them in parts and a lot of the time it works out fine because you've got a contrast between serious moments and lighter ones, so the lighter ones tend to shine a bit more and seem more unexpected (one aspect of comedy is how easily you can guess the 'punchline'. The more unexpected, even in stupid-is-funny comedy, the better the 'joke'). When every joke is fighting against a ton of other jokes, it tends to overdo it.
My impression is rather the opposite. Pure comedy games like South Park seem much better received than comedy in otherwise serious games.
I'm thinking of stuff like the Star Ocean games, that are always criticized for all the scenes I personally liked because they were funny (like the dialogues with Welch in Star Ocean The Last Hope) or how everybody hates on the characters in Tales of Graces even though their dialogues are pure comedy gold.
There's also the aspect of not really remembering many jokes even though they made you smile. They don't stick in your mind much during a more serious game, even if you were laughing at them at the time. Unless they're very very good and memorable, they get lost in the rest of the story/gameplay/etc.
That's also the opposite for me. I remember the jokes better if they were only in a part of the game rather than when the whole game's purpose was comedy.
I guess I can remember humour in games actually better than humour in comedy shows even (which usually end up with "I remember they were real funny but couldn't repeat any of the jokes").
