Games come in all shapes and sizes to suit every mood. For those who want something relaxing, like Abzu or Flow, and for those who love risks, there are live dealer casino games. But sometimes, they lack one important detail – humor. It seems to like everything: the gameplay, the visuals, the audio track, but because of the excessive seriousness, the whole mood somehow disappears. Many developers are aware of the value of jokes and often insert different humorous aspects in their products. Somewhere it will just be ironic and, in other cases, outright banter. In the extreme case, the whole game can be built on humor, and then that’s the only reason the product is worth buying. We are going to tell you about several video games that are definitely not worth playing if you don’t have a sense of humor.
Grand Theft Auto V
To begin with, GTA 5 is the most ironic, angst-ridden game the world has ever seen. GTA 5, like its predecessors, incorporates a huge number of references to real life, which make fun of literally everything. Instead of iPhone – iFruit, Sprunk instead of Sprite, and instead of the Statue of Liberty – the statue of happiness with a plastic cup of coffee in his outstretched hand (the last one you can see in the fourth part, and in the fifth part you can see only on TV, which is also a treasure of ironic references). Sometimes the humor in the game is so direct and black that over-sensitive people might be highly offended. All walks of life are obfuscated: ghetto blacks, white boomers, toxic youth, corrupt politicians, boar businessmen, and many others.
Saint’s Row
The series is for those for whom GTA doesn’t seem crazy enough. Saint’s Row crosses all boundaries of logic and common sense, with situations becoming more and more unbelievable with each installment. The characters’ journey begins on the streets: there is a gang war in the metropolis, and we find ourselves at the very epicenter of events.
Having come to success, a group of people under the guidance of the main character is already running a big company, and in the fourth part of Saint’s Row, the main character becomes the president of the USA. Saint’s Row parodies many famous franchises: it got to “Star Wars,” “Matrix,” “Predator,” and a number of cult games. The references are perceived not as borrowing but as a tribute and recognition of service to the industry.
Portal and Portal 2
A legendary puzzle game that is beautiful in literally everything. Throughout the game, taking control of the test subject Chell (a human being), the gamer must use the portal cannon to solve riddles from the test tester Glados (an artificial intelligence with a poor understanding of humans). The latter, meanwhile, is so poorly versed in human psychology that she motivates Chell to pass the tests for a cake and spurs her on with insults along the lines of “No one loves you, especially your mother.” In Portal 2, a robot companion will appear, thanks to which the humor will take on new humor. So Portal 2 is a terrific representative of a game where just three characters make for an incredibly comical yet painfully dramatic story.
There is also a fourth character, which is just a soulless plastic cube with a drawn heart. But no spoilers here at all: the story with him is Oscar-worthy.
Untitled Goose Game and Goat Simulator
Two games should be put side by side because their essence is the same, only the perpetrators of chaos are different. In both cases, it’s necessary to take control of your ward and go to sow destruction in the human world, which has no idea how much trouble a single animal can cause. In the first version, the monstrous anti-hero will be an annoying goose, and in the second – a reckless goat. Already can you imagine what outrages can be arranged in conditions of total permissiveness and how much fun it is?
Saints Row Series
Someone unfamiliar with the intricacies of gameplay might ask why this list includes a “clone” of GTA when GTA itself has already been described above. In fact, they are completely different games, although, from the outside, they look similar. Both are large open world-city games full of crime. You have to play for the criminal comrades making their way to power. Everything around is drenched in humor. But the fundamental difference is that in GTA, the humor is ironic with references to reality, and in Saints Row, it’s much more absurd. Here we have to fight against the aliens (anal probes are available), save the universe, and rob banks in self-masks to the applause of the whole town.
But if in GTA, the humor is more moderate, so to say, to play Saints Row, you need a special state of mind and a pack of tissues because you will have to cry from laughter.
Sims 4
Sims is a life simulation of ordinary people. But it would be too boring, coming from work or school, to open the game and continue to live an ordinary life. So the developers soaked their product with humor so that it oozes out of every crevice. Here men can get pregnant by aliens, vegan vampires rescue stray puppies, children can build a rocket in the backyard and fly off into space, and the bony Death herself can be persuaded to come a little later and give the doomed one a last swim in the pool without ladders.
The latter is also a local meme. If you remove the ladders from the pool, the character is swimming in. He can’t get out and dies. It’s both a laugh and a sin.
South Park: The Stick of Truth and South Park: The Fractured But Whole
That’s when you urgently need a concentrated dose of the blackest and toughest humor. Not only are both games great examples of turn-based RPGs, but they have more jokes than grains of sand on Omaha Beach. Everything that could be touched upon was touched upon: race, social classes, religion, ageism, lukism, politics, and science. In the first part, the final boss is a Nazi zombie princess surrounded by a retinue of zombie Nazis. Just to understand the level of humor. Although, if you’ve seen at least one episode of South Park, you can guess what’s waiting for you in the game from the same creators.