The next chapter in my quest to have discussions with people online without starting hate filled arugments had lead to a topic that surely can't anger any one. Humour!

I'm currently playing Redneck Rides Again (An expansion for Redneck Rampage) and I've been thinking, is this game supposed to be funny? 90's FPS games were not known for being serious and when I'm playing Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior and Shogo: Mobile Armour Division In left in no doubt that these games are trying to make me laugh a little.

The thing about Redneck Rampage is I'm not sure what the joke is. I get the feeling the redneck stereotypes are meant to be the joke but I can't see anything funny about people who are allegedly poor, stupid, inbred, unclean and ugly.
But it does remind me a lot of another FPS, Borderlands 2
If the humour in RR comes from the fact you are and are fighting rednecks a lot of the humour in Borderlands 2 seems to come from parading rednecks and midgets. Again I don't see anything inherently funny about either. In fact both games remind me a little of freak shows.

And as there seems to be a strong divide as to whether Borderlands is funny or not I felt like seeing what the guy over here think.
Is this another example of me just failing to laugh at the super funny joke, or is there a deeper art to video game comedy that these games missed?

Thank you for reading

Humor is a bit hard to do, something is either funny or not.
I think the first game that really made me LOL was The Secret Of Monkey Island even though I could translate just half of it.
Duke Nukem 3d and Shadow Warrior made me chuckle but was on another level, but the games were perfectly playable even if you found the jokes immature.

Well, you can't really conflate the questions of what is funny, what is intending to be funny, and what you think is funny.

Clearly both games are intending to be funny.

Hang out in Alabama for a few hours.

It's not funny. IT'S FUCKING HILARIOUS!

And in a very scary sense.....authentic.

The following picture is real and has not been altered in any way.

I can't speak for Borderlands 2 since I have yet to play it, but for Redneck Rampage, the humor is mostly crass and poking fun at the stereotypical southern USA atmosphere but I personally find the fact that it is a nineties FPS game with intense action that has that atmosphere. It isn't so much the redneck stuff that makes me laugh but the general premise that cracks me up.

Why is a redneck wearing a t-shirt with a Unix reference on it?

Or is it like the time I saw an elderly Japanese woman in Osaka wearing a "I fuck on the first date" t-shirt?

I think I kow what you mean. On one level I do think that some red neck jokes are funny, on another I don't see anything about redneck rampage that is funny. I tried the demo way back then and did not like it, I bought the game here and it also did not change my first impression.

I can laugh at people who laugh at themselve, I can laugh at people who choose to be the worst of the worst according to my own values (while feeling fully aware that I am to be laughed at according their values), I can't laugh at people who don't know any better which that game portrays. (beside, game wise, the levels aren't well done)

I must say that I base my impression on part of the first level of the first game. Maybe it gets better afterward but I did not feel compelled to find out.

Now if you want a good funny redneck comedy, check out the movie "Tucker and Dale vs Evil". I haven't seen its equal in videogames or movies and don't expect to, ever.

So the lobstermen of X-Com were real after all. =P

For me, it is the art of the Borderlands games mostly, and the writing, that is reminiscent of the old Cracked and Mad magazines I used to read as a kid which appeals to me. As for the humor... ‘tis more the grin-and-bear-it style, rather than the laugh-out-loud kind. Looting and staying alive is serious business on Pandora too.

It also seems to me that if a corporation was going to put people on a hostile planet mining colony I wouldn’t expect to be running around meeting college educated people dressed in suits or preppy casual wear doing all the hard work. Plus those midgets are small fast moving, deadly adversaries too. I just don’t feel the negative stereotype vibe in the games.

Often if you're missing the humor, it's because you're hoping for something more. Those games aren't funny for you. What is? We can probably recommend you some that the non-hipster half will enjoy. The hipster half already enjoyed them before we knew about them, I'd assume.

I don't know about funny games but the funniest movies I've seen were The Naked Gun films. "I like my sex like I like my basket ball. One on one with as little dribbling as possible!". Neither my Hipster or non-hipster halves have very high standards.

I have also been seen laughing at Faulty Towers, Futurama, The Simpsons, Airplane, Monty Python, Noises off, Zero Punctuation and the Rap Critic. There you have it. The entire list of things in media that have made me laugh. I'm not proud of being this picky at what I laugh at. (I will shamefully admit to having laughed at five or six Family Guy Jokes)

P.S Thanks for the Idiocarcy clip. That made me laugh too. I'll confess, I don't get this either. Maybe it's an American thing. Like how the Yorkshire/Lancashire rivalry is meaningless to someone who hasn't lived in ether county.

Well, hell. No matter how I label these axes, if I try to plot those nine titles on a single graph it looks like a Jackson Pollock.

Hm. Futurama and Simpsons aren't exactly highbrow. Have you considered keeping an eye on the South Park: Stick of Truth game for a sale?

Airplane and Monty Python and Fawlty Towers always make me think of the older Sierra games, especially Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory) and [url=http://www.gog.com/game/kings_quest_1_2_3]Quest. Ever try them? (incidentally: I have no idea why that's the connection my brain makes)

How about Papers Please? There's a grim darkness to some of that British humor. On the other side of the grimness coin, maybe something downright silly like the series of games, or the [url=http://www.gog.com/game/kings_bounty_the_legend]King's Bountyseries?

Sorry. This ended up being harder than I thought when I threw a half-sincere, half-smartassed remark your way :P

EDIT: Added more links because INTERNETS.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/

I think you'll find that most things about super-rural America have a pretty strong horror vibe >.>

Also: Seattle's pretty chilled, but you might get shot at a few times in Orlando. I mean, seriously. Five hours in line for a ride? In a country that constantly upholds the implied right to carry hidden firearms most everywhere you go? How do you not think you're getting shot in that situation?

"I can't laugh at people who don't know any better which that game portrays" Ahem to that.

As for the level design. Every level does feel like it was designed by a spider on crack (Like all FPS games back then) But the quality goes up an down. Some are pretty good and some are abysmal.