Comedy in Games Should Be More Than Just Quips | Extra Punctuation 

Edit: fixed! Thank you! Subtitles are desynced by about 1:30 from the ad read. I was very confused by the images chosen till I realized it was an ad lololol 😅 Please fix it

Of all the Loot Box advertisements and advertisements in general thrown down viewers throats, this one looks quite interesting to me. Signed up. What've I got to lose?

Maybe mention it's only available in US and Canada? First fricking sponsor bit I've actually been interested in for quite a while, and that's a LOT of stuff to click through before you find out, at the last step of the process.

Very sad we can't get in the U.K.

I am deeply confused by you not currently having a kitchen? How does that even work?

A good example is that time your teacher dies in Hogwarts Legacy and Rookwood cursed Anne.

The equivalent of the jumpscare for horror

I feel like there's gotta be some kind of Hollywood quip farm somewhere, where writers in cages are fed small portions of scripts and told to "punch up the dialogue" without any context. If they can't make a focus group full of midwest moms who religiously use Facebook laugh, they get sprayed with the hose.

I'm always reminded of "Every Frame is a Painting"s essay on how visual and engaging Edgar Wright, Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan's comedies were, and how modern "comedy" movies are an absolute shitshow in comparison.

@@thymicere3911 who

I lost my shit at the scene where 4 separate officers spend a good 15 minutes of real world time roasting the shit out of you and each other for losing your badge

Just discovered this game from a friend. Missed the skill check for seducing the woman at the beginning of the game and ended up blurting out, "I want to make fuck with you". I nearly died laughing.

I started a replay of it last week and it actually made me laugh out loud again, the newly added voice acting makes it even better! The writing is master-tier. No game has done a better inter monologue, the things in your head telling you to do absurd shit based on how you built your character in so gratifying. It really does influence you in-game.

Having not yet played the game, that description made me laugh out loud. 😂

Being told by a receptionist that you are behind on your room rent and you owe alot of moneyy, So I did the smart, logical thing. Ran away and did a max payne style dive while flipping the receptionist double birds.

I agree. Comedy games either need to be railroads that send you down the tracks of set jokes (like Stanley Parable or Portal 2), or designed to have funny gameplay (Team Fortress 2 is my golden example of this. The taunts, voice command lines, ragdolls, and ability to set up keybinds to ragdoll or fucking explode at a keypress leads to natural genuine comedy gold from players just fucking around).

@@conflictt3224 The point is that Stanley Parable doesn't railroad you. Every choice you can possibly make becomes a joke in of itself

@@carrot708 The Stanley Parable is a wide variety of pick-your-own railroads, though. Each path you can take has variations, but they're linear experiences that mock the very idea that you ever had a choice. Even the endings where you do make a choice still kinda prove you don't, like the explosion ending. As an example: Once you start the confusion ending by going down the lift, you can't pick up the bucket, climb out the window or close the door on your office. It's a railroad from start to end, but you have to choose to get on it.

@@LordSusaga "once you [make a choice], you [suffer repercussions of that choice]" damn it's almost like choice can exist inside a framework in which every possible option has been found. that's literally the point. or something. idk. didn't play it. guess we're the same in that respect.

@@NoConsequenc3 I have played it. There is literally a line spoken to you that says "No matter what you choose, you'll be walking someone else's path. Turn off the game. That's your only real choice." Also, if YOU had played the game, you'd know that the window, door and bucket are unrelated to the confusion ending. The reason they were removed was to KEEP you on the confusion ending, instead of dropping you in a different ending. In other words, it's a railroad you can't get off. And the comedy comes from the railroad sections where you have no choices, even if it's based on the choices you made to get there. One ending starts with "Wait, how did you choose that? That wasn't supposed to be an option", and it's a rigid railroad from there to the end credits.

People in stressful or demanding occupations where they see a lot of bad stuff, e.g. first responders, coroners, ER doctors and nurses, combatants, often use detached humour or irony as a defence mechanism. It makes sense that a group of teenagers who are effectively that but dealing with supernatural horrors, not just everyday ones, would do the same.

I didn't watch much of Buffy so can't comment on that. But I did watch Firefly and the quipping worked because it came across as a coping mechanism for the deeply flawed characters of the show. Yes, Captain Malcolm Reynolds is a smug bastard who likes his quips. But that's because he's a disillusioned drifter trying desperately to hold onto the last shred of hope in his idealized philosophy about freedom. Now take that to his other lesser works. It doesn't work very well for all the reasons and quickly became old hat when applied to the MCU. Kinda worked well for Tony Stark, but again, when well written he's a deeply flawed recovering alcoholic who just had a rude awakening on the harshness of reality.

Something else about Buffy was that it knew when NOT to joke (at least early on). There are a lot of situations where something genuinely bad happens and nobody cracks a joke--or if they do, it intentionally comes across as awkward / inappropriate in universe.

Another good example along those lines is Farscape. The MC gets isekai'ed to the other side of the galaxy, and spends several years out there. He's constantly making pop culture references that literally no one but him understands, because that's how he's holding onto his memories of his Earth life, even as he acclimates to alien culture.

for me the comedy came from the subversion of expectation (as much as that term has been dragged in recent times) an example, from the spinoff series angel, angel and spike are having a "who's the protagonist" pissing match over some false prophesy that says one of them (it says "the vampire with a soul" or something which applies to both of em) would drink from the chalice of endless torment or something pretentious like that. they go through this dungeon, and fight, etc etc and in the end spike gets to the chalice first, drinks it, braces for pain and then goes "it's mountain dew" that made me laugh, they went through the whole "my first D&D dungeon" set up so the chalice not only not being anything special but (presumably flat) mountain dew, was funny. or in the case of firefly, there is this scene, the crew are being hunted by henchmen of this guy they had betrayed in an earlier episode (or mighta been earlier that episode i don't remember) and they have defeated them and have em lined up outside the ship, he goes to one and says "this is all the money i owe [guy's name] take it and leave us alone" or something to that effect, the guy says "we will never stop hunting you" and makes a big speech, and the captain goes "shame" and kicks him into the turbine, goes to the next guy "this is all the money i owe" the guy cuts him off "got it, we'll leave you alone" or something to that effect. that was a funny scene, i didn't expect him to kick him into the turbine, and the other guy doing a 180 from the first after seeing that was funny. the quips were hit or miss, i remember "dawn's been kidnapped, must be a tuesday" (buffy aired on tuesdays.) oh and i remember this scene, this big all powerful demon had just been put back together (he was cut into like 5 pieces and each pieces spread around the world) he gets more powerful from sucking the energy out of people and is going all chain lightning on a mall and buffy shows up, he mentions how "no weapon forged can harm me" she goes "that was then, this is now" and pulls out a rocket launcher. angel and drucilla were next to the demon and when they seen that they jumped out of the way and the demon just says "what's that" before being blown to pieces. i thought that was funny. one i quip i kinda liked, angel is trying to pull a sword out of a stone demon, only someone worthy can pull the sword out, he goes through this big ritual and such, goes to grab it and gets flung back, spike taunts him in a sing-song voice "someone wasn't worthy" that gave me a chuckle.

Most likely. I wouldn't even mind it quite so much if that were being done out of a genuine desire to make things more accessible, but let's be fucking real - it's done out of a desire to make it as broadly appealing as possible to make as much money as possible.

as a non native English speaker I can confirm that sometimes studios need to change the joke to the point of nothing make sense when translating to different languages, its even worse when watching subtitles. Animes are a good example, there was a time where fansubs would explain the joke so they wouldn't lose the original essence, now its clear that professional subs change the joke so they make senses in English.

I think the issue is that engaging comedy is hard but shitty dialogue isn't. Best example is Mr. Bean. Atkinson never said a single word throughout the whole thing, yet he's a comedy darling across the globe. Or the Cornetto trilogy and Jackie Chan's Hong Kong stuff where the comedy is visually presented as a cause-and-effect manner, rather than shitty dialogue explaining the joke. Tldr, "quippy comedy" can be manufactured en masse, but proper visual comedy is hard and requires talent.

Also they can be easily added at the last minute by comedy writers, hired to punch up scripts with quips. That's about all they could be asked to do, as they can't change anything, because all the action sequences are being animated before the final story is ever figured out.

@@danilooliveira6580 all according to keikaku

Honestly the idea of someone Banging on a Flatscreen is hilarious in it’s own way

Why do you think he keeps falling off them?

@@Nulthazor You can lay it on the floor and use it as a mat

On the contrary, that makes it even easier to fall off.

Wasn’t there a torture device that you’d sit on and it’d split you in half? That’s now a plasma screen tv Also, I watch more TV on my phone than anywhere else. Am I supposed to have sex on my phone?

“Your teacher dies in Hogwarts Legacy and Rookwood cursed Anne.”

@Speed McWeed the comment didn't deserved any further input because it doesn't say anything of value. I understand your confusion, but sometimes is better to let irrelevance go back for whence it came.

@@klaussone whence

A work in any other genre can fail and still work as a comedy, but a bad comedy has nowhere to hide.

@@alex.g7317 cual es tu punto hermano? Incluso si trato de ser sumamente caritativo, dudo mucho que tu intencion fuera de mejorar nada.

Very good point. I think that's also one of the reasons I felt like Tony Stark became less iconic and interesting the further the franchise went, because everyone was quipping and he no longer came across as uniquely disconnected

It should also be noted that not everyone in the Avengers was quippy. Captain America - Tony's foil - was notably not quippy, instead being sincere and earnest.

It also worked in firefly, because not everyone was quippy. Quippiness is good if it fits the particular character. It's like garlic - characteristic and zesty, but you wouldn't add garlic to blueberry pie, unless the management would pressure you into doing it because, apparently, their excel tables show that kids love garlic and want it everywhere. Borderlands3 have this problem that not only they put garlic everywhere, they forget to cook it into something edible.

I think it also worked in Firefly because they all had good, and different, reasons to be quippy. Jayne was abig douche, but also sort of insecure, Zoe was coping with having to go into danger just to make a living, and Mal was an actually inspiring leader, like when he and Wash are captured, and he's trying to keep spirits up.

Arguably, you could blame Bill Murray for popularizing it.

I haven't played the game but I have seen that scene via Dunkey's vid on it. That shit had my dying laughing. I agree wholeheartedly, the game literally won't even let you get the actual bucket of water if you go for it first.

Probably the funniest game ever

LISA the Painful is probably one of the funniest games ever made. And also one of the most heart wrenching.

I had the exact opposite reaction, I personally quit the game right there. It's funny in isolation sure, but part of me just couldn't handle it so I had to stop playing. I even came back some months later and stopped playing again when we got to that fight where you have to lose people to win.

Much like the games that want to be "souls-like" but only copy surface elements. It turns out losing your xp when you die and getting it back if you run back to the spot doesn't really work when you haven't designed the levels to make that traversal tense.

That pretty much hits the nail on the head. It's the old "cargo cult/monkey see monkey do" problem. Big heads make their people build elaborate mock-ups of airstrips, performing bizarre rituals that emulate the day-to-day activities of airstrip operation, in the hopes that they make a bounty of goods manifest out of the aether, without understanding the intricacies and minutiae of how modern goods are manufactured and distributed. It happened with Half-Life and Amnesia, with the wrong lessons being learned from those high-profile successes, and we're still feeling the damage caused to those genres. Though thankfully, the Boomshoot Renaissance and recent revival of classical survival horror have helped heal the ills caused by a glut of ill-conceived spunkgargleweewee and mechanically-minimalist haunted houses respectively.

Indeed. 1 "quippy" character is fine. That can be their "thing". When every character is MCU Iron Man, it stops being novel and funny.

@@PacMonster0 Firefly had all of the main cast be "quippy", and it worked out well for that show. What made it work though is that they were all "quippy" in a different way, about different situations. It also helped that each character had a personality other than "quippy", which is what a lot of these fail.

@@keltzar1 You beat me to it. The souls games are popular for a lot of reasons, and boiling it down to a few mechanics and having a slowly dying world as the setting isn't going to get you any of that. It's like going to a really good restaurant and trying to copy their food at home by just making something with steak, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. I'm sure it'll be decent, but it won't be the same. A gourmet dish isn't good just because it has specific ingredients, it's the execution and how the individual ingredients are mixed together and prepared. There's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from a work, that's how art works, but you have to understand what made the original good. Dark Souls wasn't good because of a stamina bar, difficult combat, and losing your souls, it was good because of the give and take between offense and defense that the stamina bar creates, combat that rewards skill, determination, and meticulousness, and the care that you had to take when navigating the area, lest you lose your souls, but the forgiving and rewarding nature of the mechanic where you can recollect them if you can just make it back to where you died. The souls games are difficult, but also very fair and rewarding, and aping a few mechanics and the setting isn't going to get you the same magic.

Plus those dialogs within a d&d campaign are created on the spot. No script, just in the moment. Maybe games need to connect with that. Let the atmosphere create those moments. It does not have to copy everything out there. Let it gain its own identity from start to finish

People always forget that comedy loves a straight man to play off of.

@@fluidthought42 it is like a song, it has to build off from a melody, the beat, harmony, and lyrics + vocals. It cannot function with just one part alone Sigh. Why do they keep missing what makes comedy work?

It also helps that dnd is played with other people and my sense of humor degrades the instant i'm actually around other people. Plus if someone tells you to stop quipping you hear that in the session and not after the game or something has finished

@@kadosho02 probably why Yatzee liked High on Life. Justin style of comedy is to get a weird and funny scenario and just mine jokes out of it through non-stop improv.

Haha, that sounds great! Thanks for the recommendation!

Top of my head I think 30 Rock and Community are the only live action comedies that would do stuff like that for time to time

Yeah case 1 is the thing you see push back against. And I think it's because it makes them look like psychopaths. It works for Deadpool because he is one, and, like you said, the rest of the world reigns him in.

That is true, and yet the MC of Forspoken constantly fluctuates between quip master and serious (while also being just an all round not very likeable person) that it just really begs the question is this a serious story or not. Not that you can't have moments of brevity in a serious story, I've seen good examples, where they use the settings own logic for the humor that makes sense in universe and doesn't poke fun at itself or meta. Forspoken is just not one of those.

I think a great example of that is True Detective. Rust Cohle's downbeat, pessimistic, brutally and deliberately serious philosophical dialogues work a million times better with Marty being the straight man- not just because it makes it easier to listen to for viewers who aren't into that sort of thing, but because it also makes them fucking hilarious. It also helps that Rust is saying meaningful things, and the contrast to Marty's 'commonsense normality' (which the show goes on to demonstrate everything wrong with) heightens the impact of the philosophy. Rust himself also isn't entirely humorless. And the show itself is about some really serious shit, but it's also one of the funniest shows I've seen because the humor is so organic and doesn't take away from the horror. Most importantly, it knows when to let itself be totally serious and not undercut it with jokes.

​@@FrankDux-uo7igThey weren't quipping

That’s upsetting, mainly because it seems accurate and plausible I wish that developers thought it was OK for us to actually think a little bit. We don’t need to be fed everything in a game.

​@@tealablu3759 the devs are not paid to think, unfortunately

Shane Black also has a subtlety that Joss Whedon often lacks, which i say as a person who enjoyed Buffy and Firefly.

@@SonofSethoitae "Had." Remember The Predator?

The quipping in Lethal Weapon, at least the very first one works because a lot of is borderline gallows humor. Riggs (Gibson) is a suicidal mess (he's the Lethal Weapon) and so the humor between him and Murtaugh (Glover) is always understood as being a way for them to deal with some serious issues, such as Riggs wanting to very much to not be alive anymore. It's like the scene in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs where James Franco says to the other guy on the (literal) gallows "First time?" It's funny because it's (literal) gallows humor, humor in the face of real danger and real dramatic stakes. But real danger and real stakes have all been sanitized by corporate focus groups and parent organizations so all we're left with is quipping in the face of some slight and very very temporary discomfort, and not any real danger.

Agreed. Kid Icarus Uprising is super underrated.

A perfect example. I watched reviews, and they agreed. I never played Uprising, because I did not have a 3DS. But to know what it was capable of with its narrative, and character dynamics. That is amazing

Hi fi rush was also pretty funny.

Not to mention it was able to balance the fourth wall breaks in away that they never detract from the tension Like there’s a loading screen joke and a reference to smash bros but the characters never jump out of the screen to tell sakurai that the premise is idiotic or they pause the action and add a monochrome filter to talk about the fight and cliches

It helps that it used the double screen of the 3ds to literally separate dialogue and gameplay. Man I miss Games like Kid Icarus Uprising, they come out so infrequently

I remember setting up a pie-making machine in Plate Up that would burn the place down if the pies were allowed to back-up too far. Part way through the day I suddenly shout "Oh no, the pies are reaching critical mass!", and two of us have to start running in and out of the restaurant taking pies to the bin. It was so absurd I completely broke down laughing for ages, perfect emergent gameplay

Personally crossover Fighting games are a great source of comedy, things like seeing ryu kick donkey Kong in the dick or frank west running spiderman over with a shopping cart never gets old for me.

its probably why Kojima games work so well, he is the master of emergent gameplay and negative possibility. and its a strange juxtaposition, because his games tend to be super serious and dramatic, and you can play them like that, but then it kinda let you break the tension ? like, the game are designed in a way that it doesn't feel strange to break the tension.

I do so much laughing playing Hitman. Sometimes it's 47's shitty puns making me giggle. Sometimes it's because I've gotten into a cock-up cascade with like 20 guards dead in a hall outside a bathroom. Sometimes it's because I killed a target and wasn't expecting the result (the grape press kill in Mendoza being one of those).

Ah yes. I laughed a great deal when in Unrailed, I accidentally blocked my friend, causing him to be blown up by his own dynamite.

SAME!!! Haha came here specifically to post this, glad I wasn't alone! 😅

Fairly certain that was a Monty python joke Might have book ended the lumberjack song

No it just wasn't funny or actually made sense at least to me so don't loose sleep over it mate

@@Assassin5671000 yup its weird that he used that as an example of a good joke when its just a dumb play on words that is something else that is over used lol

It didn’t come across as a joke because his delivery was awful. You need to see Graham Chapman tell the joke while dressed as a prissy old woman.

Fault for the rise in celebrity VA can be largely laid at the feet of Disney, who lied to Robin Williams.

MCU is literally the reason media has devolved into lazy quip comedy

@@Leto_0 I believe he wanted them to not make merchandise of his character or use him in advertising. They told him they wouldn’t, then they did. It’s been a while so I might to slightly wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s the gist.

​@@MapleLeafAceIt's not the MCU's fault, it's the imitators

The original Sam n Max was so dang good. The whole section with the fish eventually ending up on top of the ball of twine is just a beautiful series of increasingly funny escalation mixing different forms from refference to absurdity that's up there with any bit from one of the comedy great fiilms that you could care to name

@@stryke-jn3kv Percent sign ampersand dollar sign

@@stryke-jn3kv Still is. I still play it from time to time because of the humour.

And it makes sense for the situation he's in-neither he, nor anybody he's fighting, can permanently die. You can have a moderately-friendly chat with Megaera or Theseus after you've both killed each other a dozen times. So of course he'd stop taking it seriously.

YES, perfectly described! The dialogues with Hypnos or Theseus, for example, never fail to put a smile in my face simply because the dialogues themselves are so fun to watch.

Deadpan delivery from an angsty teenager is something you would expect, really. Especially when most of the quips are way more horny than funny.

When I played Hades, I was surprised by the _lack_ of banter. I feel like most stuff Zagreus said to the gods was just "thanks". It wasn't annoying but there weren't any funny gags either.

@@Kriss_ch. That may be because while Zagreus can hear the Gods, the Gods can't hear Zagreus back.

Chai getting yeeted into the wall was hilarious!!

Also hi fi rush isnt cynical humor like forspoken.

I found Hi-Fi Rush extremely unfunny (minus a few slapstick gags) and most of what Yahtzee says here applies to that game too. Action games need to have an element of coolness, they can't constantly undercut themselves in fear the audience thinks they're trying too hard to be cool, it just gives a lame vibe.

@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 that too.

@@Froge0 I disagree that hi fi rush is unfunny ngl. I just think it fits the early 2000’s cartoon aesthetic.

@Froge He also compared Forspoken to Army of Darkness, and that's where Hi-Fi Rush succeeds where Forspoken fails. Chai is intentionally an idiot, he's not a super cool badass. When he's being facetious, it inevitably bites him in the ass, which makes it more endearing and less annoying because he's constantly being taken down a peg. It's only when he starts getting more serious and treating the situation with a bit more weight that the game eases up on him a bit and lets him have a few unironic wins.

He’s said before that jumpscares are the equivalent of fart jokes

Such a good movie. Also just having sight gags was hilarious. Like the hot dog fingers king and I happening in the background

That movie was fantastic on every level. Loved it.

I remember seeing a photo make the rounds on social media of a sign in a movie theater. The sign told viewers that the silence in one of the scenes is for artistic effect and isn't a technical problem. Pretty sad state of affairs. And it's not just the beauty of silence- the beauty of not talking. Mad Max Fury Road was so beloved for many good reasons, but one that I heard a lot (and agree with) is that not a word of dialogue is wasted, and that dialogue is only there when it needs to be. When something could be communicated another way, it was.

I agree about Indiana Jones. I always found "why is it always snakes?" To be very funny, because he's genuinely terrified of them and not playing it down, and they are in fact everywhere! 😂

I find Blackadder a great example as well. The protagonist is incredibly quippy, always making comments like he is above everyone else. Partially because he is. Being British humour, you get self deprication like in the Somme scene ("it will work the 17th time, they'll never expect it"). But what makes the witty humour work is how is criticising something. Blackadder is always making a point about something, showing it's absurdity, and laughing in a usually grim manner. The Somme scene is a great example as it shows an officer class that is stuck up in its own ways and convinced that it will be successful, even after the "17" failures. We can also see this through Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Arthur is presented as a clearly dumb character that makes witty comments, such as the "unladen swallow" with the man from scene 23. The Quippy humour doesn't exist on its own in shows like Blackadder and Monty Python, but in combination with everything the materials do to built up it's humour. While both are comedies and thus are able to decide their whole time to perfecting their humour, any comedy being put in a show that is primarily another genre can still learn from it as to allow for brevity. I feel shows like Arcane and Castlevannia are great examples, and I find God of War Ragnarok to be a pretty good example in gaming.

@@freewyvern707 Blackadder was the rowan Atkinson one right?

@@jiminyhickerbottoms1846 yeah

While Yaztzee is clearly using it as a negative example in this vid, that's exactly why buffys quips work for me. Buffy isn't trying to be funny all the time. It's honestly a pretty depressing show at times with how much shit the characters go through. The quips work because they come across as a very human attempt to maintain some level of normalcy amidst the traumatic situations the characters are constantly being put through. Can't help if yahtzee doesn't find it funny, thats all subjective, but I think he's wrong to lump it in with this phenomenon (though Wheadons later works, particularly his superhero movies, are absolutely part of it).

Well said. One VERY important thing to remember in the modern day is that dangerous political extremists LOVE cynicism, disengagement, "it's all pointless" conspiracy theories, and "they're just as bad as each other" rhetoric. Voter disengagement and cynicism makes it very easy for their small, motivated hardcore to have disproportionate influence.

@@quintessenceSL I agree.

Thats also why I vibe with hi fi rush, its so uncynical that the previous ceo of a megacorp is somehow genuinely a decent person.

​@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 That's the weirdest example to bring up considering there really are no good CEOs

​@@paulgibbon5991If anything I'd think the "extremists" are the ones that want to act, and it's the centrists and apoliticals and "moderates" that want nothing to change because it scares them.

That's what I'm saying; BL2 had Anthony Burch write the story and possibly much of the comedy. I don't know who he is, but he must have a better comprehension of how comedy works, or at least how to properly apply it to the wacky world of Pandora. BL3 had THREE writers, who probably did only rudementary research on how to comedy in Borderlands, not having actually played it.

I think a lot of writers these days are deadly afraid of their serious stories coming off as campy or corny, that people will look at the big dramatic scene and call it melodramatic and laugh at the writers effort to create serious tension or drama. Making the characters quipy, making them detached and make fun of the serious things happening is almost a reflexive self-defence mechanism, just make the character constantly lamp-shade all the stuff, nobody can really laugh at us if we laugh at ourselves first. Except of course, many of us want to take the serious stories, well, seriously. We want to engage with the worlds, want to be immersed in it, we want to be feel that tension, be swept along in the drama. But if the creators constantly undermines all moments that could be tense or dramatic by having a smarmy character constantly take the piss out of it, than it's not going to work. If the characters can't take their own reality seriously, how can I as an Audience?

Spoilers for Hi Fi Rush >Almost convincing a baddie to switch sides after a boss fight >Everyone surprised at Chai being smart >Chai taunts the baddie >Side character literally says “OH COME ON!” while baddie enrages You’re so bloody right xD

@Will Phoenix spoilers again Chai, after defeating the baddie proceeds to hit her head on every single door frame. on the way out. At the final door he carefully steps through, only to have it pop closed and whack her in the head again. Later in the game a side character comments on a robot that showed up in a cutscene "Someone probably spent a lot of time building that. It's strange that we never fought it. I bet that person was kind of upset that we never did" 4th wall breaks literally talking about the making of the game. Just *chefs kiss*

I think Love & Thunder was when the MCU hit quip overload for me.

@Paul Gibbon I love Guardians 2 as it's fairly sincere between the quips... it's just when I realized how much time I was wasting on MCU movies without really liking them all that much. They high mediocrities with a handful of exceptions.

@@stevenclubb7718 I think the difference is that GotG 1 and 2 knew when to STOP quipping and actually let a serious scene be serious. L&T just couldn't let a scene finish without that bloody rock man undermining it.

@Paul Gibbon That's why I mildly defend Buffy. Yes, it's quipy to the extreme, but it knew to keep them out of the big dramatic moments. Starlord finding out his father killed his mother wasn't immediately undercut by Rocket going, "well, that sucks". Gunn can be surprisingly sincere at the right moments. The rest of the MCU just seems to struggle to make any of the stakes seem real by having characters drop the quips and take the moment seriously

Modern Writers don't know good comedy.

God help me, I know what game your talking about. It's actually "Armed and Delirious". The creator was quoted as saying "It was not the product of a deranged mind.", Yet playing it for more than five minutes immediately disproves that.

@@sarahshydale4051 God, I know of that by proxy thanks to Ross's Game Dungeon and it's a fever dream. Nothing more or less.

Yes we do, but finding a replacement for the late Tony Jay will be hard.

I laughed so hard at that first "kill the rat" quest, and many other points.

who tf has guilt for an adblocker lol.

Same with the sequel, Shadows over Loathing

It probably also helps that most of the time, the comedy is reserved for side quests, while the main story plays it straight in terms of tone. Plus the fact that the protags are either very serious people (Kiryu/Saejima/Majima) or they're just ordinary dudes (Shinada/Ichiban/Akiyama) thrown into absolutely ridiculous situations is a good balance.

I'd say South Park and Saint's Row but yeah, series aren't really aiming at comedy anymore.

I laughed so hard at West of Loathing. Well worth the $10 (or whatever it was)

Scrolled too far down to find this! Loathing games are brilliant comedies that I can't recommend to people enough!

Its almost as if comedy is all about timing 🤔

"Hrgh, I think that enemy ... got the point." - Archibald

Hi fi rush feels sincere and is actually having fun. Forspoken feels like it hates itself.

TBH I don't see Ash saying anything meaningful if he was dying, just something raw. Also depends on who was seeing him die. Just him? A good ol' "Fuck....". Someone he looks favorably towards? Aiming for positive or nonchalant. Enemy? Smarmy. But there would be emotion there.

@@leadpaintchips9461 Meanwhile, forgettable girl's last words is a run-on paragraph for no one listening.

Hi fi is a genuinely funny game, absolutely. The well rounded cast and the light hearted tone definitely help it. Forspoken is a pretty dour game in terms of the setting, while hi fi is a cool number about a band of underdogs, one of which is a genuine idiot (and not fake dumb either, genuinely dumb, which is used for great comedic effect) taking down an evil corporation

I hope not personally. I hardly laughed once during it. I'd hope for more Banshees of Inisherin esque humour

I think the Army of Darkness comparison applies to Hi-Fi rush too, Chai acts cocky but he's really a buffoon and his unwarranted ego makes it all the more hilarious each time he screws up.

You capping bro? There is a sequel

@@Froge0 HUH? You mean Tim made another one of those?

​@@KitePerson Psychonauts 2. And also Rhombus of Doom for VR as an interquel

Also, I know these vids are made primarily by Nick the editor, but putting on a clip from the “shooting a kid” bit while Yahtzee is talking about how the game doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard was an unfortunate choice, considering that scene is the most “trying too hard” scene I’ve seen in that entire game

Yeah his High on Life review definitely gave me pause. It's one of the few times I think he genuinely missed the mark completely on his conclusion with that game. The way he said it succeeded in not giving a shit about itself just felt wrong since it's writing feels like it's trying way too hard to SEEM like it doesn't give a shit. The comedy forces itself upon you and keeps slamming itself in your fave like it's saying "is this funny yet???" I still like Yahtzee but that HoL review was just...idk man.

@@MapleLeafAce I’ve sort of been coming to the slow and difficult conclusion that Yahtz isn’t exactly on the level as far as comedy writing goes ever since I read one of his books

Yea. That High on Life review was hard to watch, especially given how weirdly disconnected this video ABOUT COMEDY seems to be from every opinion he has about that game. High on Life is the DEFINITION of "trying too hard," and his inability to at least partially recognize that makes his other scathing criticisms feel a good bit more random and aimless.