GamerNode: Columns - Leave Them Laughing

..article continued from page 1

I sound overly critical, but I mean well, if by meaning well I mean journalistically campaigning against poor Hollywood humor thrown at games like knives at a magician's assistant. Prince of Persia had the oddest, most plot hole-ridden storyline of any game I played in 2008, but the game itself was absolutely fantastic. The reason the Prince of Persia games on the previous generation of consoles appealed to me so much was because the lack of humor indicated to me that this was a serious game with a serious story to tell, and to have a story left untouched by humor for the sake of a decent narrative you could respect was, well, something I could respect quite a lot.

But I started playing the recent title in the franchise, and within five minutes I'm introduced to a foppish lad who seems more concerned about making sexual innuendos about a donkey than focusing on the fact that he's about to be killed by a god the size of a small skyscraper. Humor's all well and good, but when it's resulting in having the logical and cognitive abilities of your protagonist removed to do so, is it really worth it?

A really great example of humor that is always very open and physical while still retaining a lot of dry, moody dialogue, is, well, any title Tim Schafer has ever worked on. Grim Fandango is a hilariously dark game. Even when combining the wrong items to solve a puzzle, there's no error noise, just the protagonist's sarcastic reason as to why the combination won't work.

Psychonauts is another brilliant example, as a summer camp for psychic children is something you'd usually think of as serious through associations with the X-Men. However, the game contains some interesting twists on generic humor archetypes; the mad scientist's assistant is the most sarcastic character you're ever likely to meet in a videogame, and the shock factor of being told to "go and die" combined with a ruthless smile is something that brings us that little bit closer to voluntary immersion within the medium videogame enthusiasts so actively pursue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for a game that makes me wet myself every five minutes, nor am I campaigning for a title that makes me grin my way sadistically through a dark but hilarious gaming experience. I just wish developers would sometimes remember it's a very difficult balancing act. The Monkey Island titles should be their sounding board. If something is too funny, it becomes something you want to watch, and not interact with for fear of losing the humor you're enjoying so much. But if you inject too many serious frowns into your title, you end up with something that's all gameplay and no emotional experience.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the comic geniuses who write for sitcoms and darker, but still funny productions would try their hand at the videogame scripting job market. The results may either be terrible or pleasantly surprising, but either way it'd be nice to see someone that made cocky jokes in a videogame that didn't instantly make you wish they'd be the first to die to the level's first miniboss.

Something to take away with you, then. Link never says a single word. He hasn't in over ten games. But he's still one of the funniest protagonists in gaming history...because he doesn't say anything. In art, voids will always fill themselves, and humans will always find humor in places there is none.

• (0)
• 
• 
• 
•