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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Video game moments that make you laugh out loud

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

07:40 / 01.11.06

It doesn't happen often (to me). Last time I can remember is when I was playing Tekken: Dark Resurrection. Going through the Story Mode as Dragonov, who is some sort of Russian special forces commander or something, I come across Devil Jin.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Devil Jin is a character (Jin) in his "posessed by a demon" form, complete with large black wings, glowing eyes, and huge horns sprouting from his forehead. Dragonov is apparently looking for him, and to make sure he's got the right guy he REFRENCES A PICTURE. As if he might have stumbled across some other dude with horns, wings and laser beams shooting from his eyes, and needs to check with the picture to make sure he's got the right one.

I chuckled.

Also good was the bit in the first Halo game where you pop out of a dropship and whip out a rocket launcher on the side of which is written AIM AWAY FROM FACE. Hee.

Kirin? Who the heck?

10:59 / 01.11.06

I was laughing all the way through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Great game, and a great sense of humour. Pretty much any of the Mario RPGs (Paper Mario on the GameCube, Mario & Luigi on the GBA/DS) make me laugh. And many more besides.

On the other side of the coin, one series in which the humour is normally cringe inducing is Final Fantasy. The only time I've ever laughed (lots) was in FF VII, at the bit with the lard joke.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:12 / 01.11.06

Both Lego Star Wars games are spit-yer-food-out-funny, but so far (haven't finished II yet) the scene with the Lego Jango Fett head bouncing into the lap of the young Lego Boba is so simultaneously sad and funny it's like an entire season of (good) Woody Allen movies. But with Lego. And Star Wars.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

15:48 / 01.11.06

High praise indeed!

20:17 / 01.11.06

Seconding Lego Star Wars II - particularily the "special" moves of the Gamorrean Guard and Metal Bikini Leia (dunno if you've seen 'em yet, Stoat). Chewbacca's melee attack is chuckle-inducing, and if you get a chance, have Lando attack Leia in the "Betrayal Over Bespin" level at close range. The cutscenes are pretty good too, and really underscore the relative crappiness of the prequels (which also makes me laff).

21:19 / 01.11.06

I have to mention Tim Schafer here. His games - Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Psychonauts, to mention some - are always not only great games but genuinely funny as well. All of them makes me laugh out loud. Grim Fandango in particular is my favourite: for those who don't know it's an old LucasArts adventure game mixing film noir, Art Deco and the Aztec Land of the Dead. What I perhaps love them most about this game is that most of the humor comes from the characters, who the game really made me feel for, and the world they're in - it never feels forced. I could quote it for hours but it wouldn't make much sense out of context.

Currently playing through Psychonauts and while it probably won't be able to match Grim Fandango, for me, it's almost as, if not equally, funny. As in GF, I really have no choice but to love the wonderful characters and the imagination of it all. I've never laughed out loud as much when playing games as when playing these: I don't laugh much at games.

Oh, some of the sillier parts of the Metal Gear Solid games have made me laugh, too, like, most recently, some of the radio conversations in Snake Eater.

17:45 / 05.11.06

Yeah, the MGS has a great streak of bizarre humour. The entire final section of MGS2 - where the storyline goes totally bonkers - is made appealing by the daft jokes that centre around the Codec and game interface.

Capcom are about the best company around for releasing games that make you laugh. None of these are specific moments, but they all deserve mention.

Take the ability to dress Frank up in whatever clothes come to hand in Dead Rising, for example, which then leads to him appearing in those clothes during the deadly serious cutscenes. There aren't many games that have a main character discussing national security while he's wearing a pretty, flowery, summer dress, a horses head and army-issue boots.

The cutscenes in Devil May Cry 3 are also brilliantly funny, while retaining their own internal seriousness. Dante skating around on a dead demon's body, hitting others with a pool cue and eating pizza. Dante jumping on top of a missile that's just been fired at him. Dante riding a motorbike five-hundred feet up the outside wall of a vertical tower. Dante offering to take Cerberus out for walkies. They're directed with such panache and bombastic grace that it's impossible not to find yourself sucked into the HELL YEAHness of it all, but you've got to laugh at the sheer stupidity at the same time.

Still on a Capcom tip, Okami and God Hand are both full of humour, too. In Okami it's all character-driven - funny script moments throughout. In God Hand, it's the fact that everything about the game is so utterly cracked. The special moves - launching somebody out of the atmosphere with a baseball bat, kicking somebody in the nuts to a comdey sound effect and sudden appearance of a laughter track, putting somebody over your knee and spanking them to death. The cutscenes and storyline, which are about as nonsensical as anything videogames have produced to date, but know it and parade the fact with a breathless swagger. The range of enemies - cowboys, an ultra-camp duo dressed in fetish gear and feathers, poison chihuahuas, demons that look like they got lost on the way to a Ninja Gaiden convention. It needs all that funny, though, to temper the frustration that you'd otherwise feel from the rock-hard difficulty setting.

miss wonderstarr

18:58 / 05.11.06

The introductions to each character on Tekken 4 have made me crack up laughing more than once ~ it's the gravity of the voiceover combined with the absurdity of the situation. I think the best was KUMA, the grizzly bear, who went back to the wild after his last defeat, then one day stumbled upon a cabin where he saw a television set through the window and learned that King of Iron Fist 4 was now recruiting. As he vows to beat his arch enemy MARDUK, a wild rock guitar solo builds over the delicate sketch of Kuma peering through the window at the screen.

King, the wrestler with a leopard's head, who's vowed to avenge his mentor ARMOR KING, is always great for a laugh too. And the Panda (called PANDA?) with aerobic-style pink armbands and a satchel full of bamboo, is a bonus.

Lots of yuks in GTA Vice City and San Andreas I'm sure, but it's been a little while since I played them.