self deprecation is just an inverted form of narcissism and egotism and it’s almost never funny in my experience, games or not. i think games are so often self deprecating because developers and gamers subconsciously know that the hobby is kind of stupid, but are unable to embrace that stupidity whole-heartedly. ironic detachment via self deprecation so you can protect yourself from your own negative feelings is a god damned curse
AND it’s not funny!! it never is!!!
anyway i think intentional comedy in video games is possible - for instance, Undertale is actually pretty funny! My favorite is Papyrus’ special attack being “I turned you blue.” It’s very funny because (1) another character lied to you about it, (2) it seems like it is as incompetent as everything else that Papyrus does, and yet (3) it’s actually pretty effective at catching most people off guard the first time and changes the entire dynamic of the fight so that previously pointless attacks are actually challenges now.
That’s a real joke! It has like, intentionality about it!! It’s also mechanically realized in a way outside of the writing, but it also meshes with the writing!!!
Anyway I think I realize now that Undertale felt like such a breath of fresh air because it crossed the very low threshold for “games that are actually funny”, and the real takeaway is that it’s kind of sad that most games that try to be funny can’t cross that threshold.
But I guess that’s true of most intentional comedies. I generally don’t like anything billed as a comedy, they usually are too self-conscious of their goals and kind of suck. Same reason I don’t particularly gel with stand-up comedians - things that are just funny usually don’t work for me. You gotta have something other than comedy to prop up the funny bits, or it just gets old.
The only exception is Airplane!, which seems to be the only piece of media that is Oops All Jokes but still actually funny.
I keep meaning to start up a “new” game. One of the big-studio games I’ve collected over the last few years, like Death Stranding or Final Fantasy XII or Yakuza 7 or getting around to trying to finish Sekiro, but in the last couple weeks, I’ve started up replays of Shadow of the Colossus and Persona 3, and am replaying stages in Dicey Dungeons every night before bed. lol
I only every played P3 FES and P3 Portable, so I decided to go back and play the first version, before the extras. So far, happy to report that I’m enjoying it greatly and am feeling confident about continuing to refer to it as one of my favorite games. Its mood, atmosphere, flow are all so good. After stewing about how much I disliked P5 for the last 3 or 4 years, it’s nice to confirm that I really do think P3 is a much better game.
Unrelated thing: I’ve been combing through itch looking for a bunch of small games to catch up on over the week I have off between Christmas and New Year’s (I may end up just playing Dicey Dungeons all week, idk), and I’m surprised to find out how much I’m like… really bored/almost annoyed by the Pico-8 palette/presentation? Which is kinda weird, because half my “aesthetic” is retro stuff with minimal color usage and heavy usage of negative space, etc etc, but… Idk, it’s gotten to feeling a bit cloying to me. I’ve enjoyed quite a few Pico-8 games but I’m feeling a weird kinda fatigue about the whole scene.
i made a post somewhere (think it got axed) with a similar sentiment. going through steam screenshots and sighing to myself “wow, another game with beautiful pixel art. i’m so sick of all this gorgeous spritework.”
i wasn’t able to watch the little interview segment the high on life people did for e3(?) or whatever a while ago bc i just kept thinking about how uncomfortable it would be to have to sit next to this rich and brittle tv comedy guy/studio owner and laugh awkwardly at his jokes and riff with him at these circa 2007 deconstructions of a game format that nobody really even makes anymore. idk maybe that’s why most of the funny games i know are freeware and so many of the commercial ones have that hellish feeling of like a manager forcing their underlings to do skits at an xmas party. games where people are reciting quips while their own dead-eyed character models act as standins for the people who don’t get to be funny because they’re kept too busy making commercial-quality props.
Thinking about how the only memorable gag in Neon White, a game where every dialogue is an attempt to grind your ribs to dust with absolutely relentless elbow nudging, is a mostly generic challenge level designed by a sadistic bunny girl that ends with this short sequence. They put so much unnecessary effort into giving your companions presence in the levels and the only time one of them is allowed to display a semblance of personality is the one time the game doesn’t even use their model.
Gags where the player is allowed to be the butt of the joke seem to be the only ones that get me consistently, you usually need confidence in your vision and the medium to attempt them
I think the hardest I laughed at a AAA game was during CoD Advanced Warfare. You’re…I guess storming a battle ship, and your AI buddy kicks in a door, and there’s a guy on the other end, and he just blast him with a shotgun, and then there’s a beat, and he just goes “Son of a Bitch”. Like, Keith Davidson kind of deadpan “I’m too old for this shit” type line.
House of the Dead (Saturn) is made umpteen times more difficult by the fact that Sega’s home console just couldn’t pull it off. If the camera could just follow the action properly I would suffer far fewer offscreen hits, not to mention hiding peekaboo cheapshots between loading screens of 5 seconds at a time
Compiled-compiled and ran 2022 Angband in DOSBox, after having to smooth out some hiccups in the Makefile. Edited my @ to the DOS : D. ^ _^
Runs a little slow and steamy, unfortunately, so I guess it won’t be my main Angband front-end, drat!
Update:
Ahah, found a font Perfect DOS VGA 437 Font | dafont.com that has the DOS symbols in it and can play in regular Angband front-ends, at full speed–particularly sharp at size 32 in SDL2:
That bit in Disco Elysium where dialog trees are pointed out as weird and unnatural and it is suggested that you use them because police indoctrination has somehow warped your brain is a good one
Been playing the MegaMan Zero games, after years of having only played the first. It’s neat to see how they progress. The rank based score system is kind of brutal, since you are not allowed to access the entire elf power system if you want to get good ranks. Feels bad, playing loose and not for rank feels good till you discover that some things in levels are only there if you enter with a high enough rank. Kinda love these games, but kinda hate them. Still it’s a kind of refreshing break from metrovania formulae without being a straight forward left to right hold on tight experience like a Metal Slug game.
Got covid, so I setup retroarch on my dinky laptop to game away this sickness. Started Snatcher and okay first off- it looks real cool and the tunes are nice. Look at this city!
But you can’t go five minutes into this game without realizing that your dude is a total sleazeball. Seriously, man, leave Mika alone. It’s so obnoxious. Why is Kojima so weird about that stuff!
So, I stopped playing. I don’t think I’ve ever beaten a game by the Koj. Maybe I got through all of MGS: Subsistence? Thinking about it now, the dude that lent it to me also ended up being a creep so maybe I just gave it back unfinished. Dunno why I keep trying to play this dweeb’s games, just not for me!
The first three MGS games have relatively tolerable writing because Kojima had a co-writer, Tomokazu Fukushima, that brought in all the interesting stuff
Yeah Kojima’s stuff is all totally worthwhile in the abstract but it’s impossible to recommend it unless you can be sure you are immune to stomach-churning homoerotic misogyny (i.e., are a dude, usually).
