...Been a while.
Some games are funny. I think we can all agree on that. Some games can hit you with humor so hard and so often that you have to stop holding your side in order to hit a button. Some games make you chuckle a bit and get back to shooting.
I can think of some fine examples of the former class. Most of the Lucasarts adventure series, for one. Grim Fandango was fully voiced-over, but you needed to have the subtitles to know what the characters were saying. Why? Because you were laughing way too hard to hear the voices! And don't get me started on the nonstop silliness of the Monkey Island games. Some games took this route to less of an extent, including the excellent RPG Mario & Luigi. Most of the time, you're focusing on the game, but hardly a cutscene went by where I didn't chuckle a bit. Humor was really what made those games for me. This was the only time in the history of gaming where the presentation made the most impact on me.
I'm not advocate that some games abandon gameplay for humor, I'm just saying that if it is done well enough, the humor can have a lasting and positive impact on the memory of the game. I don't remember Mario and Luigi's battle system. I'm not even sure I remember the plot. I just know that the jokes and nonsensical gibberish of the plumber brothers cracked me up. I don't really remember the story too much, but I remember most of the jokes made. The humorous presentation was what stuck with me the most.
These are examples of games that had humor as a main part of the game. In them, it's completely unmistakeable and unmissable. But then there's the other class of games.
Most games I've played got a laugh from me at some time or another. Most of the time it only happens once or twice a game. In Halo 2, the marines yell stuff like "Hey aliens! How about you, like, turn down the suck?" In Metal Gear Solid, the game throws humor your way every now and then ("Snake... Trust your instincts as a soldier... as a gamer..."). Even WipEout Pure contains a joke or two in the ship/course descriptions. Meteos had that "galactic fork" ending. Almost every game has some humor in it, to lighten the experience. For me, this is a good thing. Some may disagree; for example, I know of a person who loved Metal Gear Solid, save for the out-of-game style of humor, which he considered abrupt and detrimental to the immersive experience.
Whether you like or not, games will try to be funny. It's not a trend I can see no end to in the future, and truth be told, it's older than gaming itself.
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