Game Reviews & Funny Quotes

[Ascending Wordsmith]

I don't know about other people, but I can't stand game reviews that lack some kind of humorous slant. Show me a guy who writes a straightforward account of a game with no kind of humor, and I'll show you a guy that needs to get out more often.

Kurt the Future's review of Mike Tyson's Punch Out on the NES is one the funniest I've read in recent weeks. Here's a piece from his review:


Tyson is a big gap-toothed bully who’s very, very tough to beat. He questions my manhood and makes me weep. I curl into the fetal position and stop playing. The world drops away. Reality is too harsh and cruel. I cannot go on playing a game in a world so uncaring.

Think of a few game reviews you've read that had a good sense of humor attached. Now think of the funniest quotes in them, and then post'em here! Give us a good laugh. LOL

[Captain Wrong]

Game Informer is always good for this, even if sometimes they get a little juvenile. I think the best one was on Mario Party 3. Something about Nintendo would have to figure out a way to get a controller up past the cervix to reach their intended audience.

[digitalpress]

Dark Chambers (synopsis)

What I had initially thought was a Marilyn Chambers movie filmed at night actually turned out to be a rather good Gauntlet clone (or is Gauntlet a Dark Chambers clone?). Top-down dungeon exploration with plenty of action and two-player simultaneous mode for Atari 7800 owners. If you liked "Deep Throat", you'll love this game.

Berzerk (excerpt)

You probably think about this as much as I do - and feel exactly the same about it - but I just want to go on record as saying that I'm not really looking forward to the day when robots take over the world. I guess that's the reason why this game scares the living bejeezus out of me, then. I play Berzerk MUCH harder than I would play a game like Defender, for example. I mean, who would believe ALIENS taking over the world? That's just plain crazy. But each and every game of Berzerk is like a training exercise for me. I'm going to be ready when the robots try to take over. I'm not going down without a fight, you tin creeps! Fortunately for us humans, Berzerk is here for us now. It's not only a great exercise, it's also an awful lot of fun to play.

Skin Diver (excerpt)

Skin Diver does to faulty game design what the Leaning Tower of Pisa did for faulty architectural design. Slight difference: this game doesn't so much "lean" as it does topple into a huge pile of rubble. And there are people underneath when it happens. And they're orphans. Handicapped ones. Some will question why I would spend the time to sit down with this game, explore it thoroughly, and report back to the masses my findings. Why - they will wonder - for such a complete and utter piece of trash. And that, my friends, is precisely the reason why I'm doing it. To provide one final warning to anyone who may not have already spent $1.00 on this game to save your hard earned buck and buy yourself a packet of Pez refills instead. For this game is perhaps the worst history has ever witnessed.

Super Bomberman 2 (excerpt):

One of the many philosophies I live by is the self-imposed belief that your life is only as happy as your ability not to fuck yourself over. Everyone gets stuck with situations that they have no control over. Death. Unemployment. Psychos. And unless you're very lucky - good or bad - you're probably going to be dealt about the same amount as everyone else. So if you take away these "common denominators", you're left with the situations that you DO have control over. Survive them, and you're into the bonus rounds of life. But move the wrong way, and you're Bomberman. Surrounded by walls with high explosives at your feet.

[Daniel Thomas]

Pac-Man (2600)

There is some serious flickering going on when the ghosts get close together, which varies depending on how many of them are in the game. Mighty distracting, I’ll tell ya. Then there’s the missing bonus items suspiciously replaced with a “vitamin tablet”. No cherries, strawberries, etc... just that tablet. A square, orange tablet. Complements the square dots, square maze pattern, and squared-off Pac-Man and ghosts. My friends, this game is squarer than the squarest thing you ever saw.

I have to say this was always my favorite review. DP has always had better reviews than any of the American prozines -- we all know that.

Unless, of course, you were to count the Dave Halvorson mags (Gamefan, Play, etc), in which every single review somehow worms in the phrase "this is the greatest game ever made!!" On a review for Kolibri (I think) on the 32X, the reviewer boasted that it was "the best side-scrolling, hummingbird-based shooter ever made." Uh huh. Behold, the future reporters for Fox News.

[Kid Fenris]

Unless, of course, you were to count the Dave Halvorson mags (Gamefan, Play, etc), in which every single review somehow worms in the phrase "this is the greatest game ever made!!" On a review for Kolibri (I think) on the 32X, the reviewer boasted that it was "the best side-scrolling, hummingbird-based shooter ever made." Uh huh. Behold, the future reporters for Fox News.

That last one was intended sarcasm from Casey "Takuhi" Loe, who's still one the most amusing, insightful, and clever game reviewers I've ever run across. Here's a sampling of his work.

Torico (Import Saturn)


I have several complaints with the storyline. First, isn't amnesia slightly over-represented as a mental illness in video games? Such a cliche! Secondly, isn't the whole "legend says a person like you will come and save our village" deal almost as much of a cliche? And thirdly, though this is just a sub-gripe, how is a town with only TEN people supposed to remember a legend like that for CENTURIES? Did everyone's grandparents pull them aside and say, "In a few hundred years, a man with a strange birthmark will come and save our town. Now go to bed." I know that all of us here in Agoura can't stop talking about the heralded day in 2258 when a man with a birthmark in the shape of Papa Smurf will arrive and avert a sanitation workers strike or something.

Pulstar (Neo-Geo)


Ah, the joys of a really good shooting game. There's nothing like that one moment where the screen is filled with enemies, each of them firing a barrage of bullets. And you, through your years of shooter training, find the single spot that's safe and from there go weaving in and out of a storm of shots so thick that the system's hardware can barely keep track of them all. For that single moment, you are . . . a god.

I suddenly want to dig out my old issues of Gamefan.

[zmeston]

I don't know about other people, but I can't stand game reviews that lack some kind of humorous slant. Show me a guy who writes a straightforward account of a game with no kind of humor, and I'll show you a guy that needs to get out more often.

In weak defense of "professional" game reviewers, the rule of thumb is, the more corporate/popular the magazine or website, the more conservative the humor, if it's attempted at all. For example, I very rarely attempt to insert funny into my GameSpy reviews, whereas I'm able to get away with virtually anything in PSE2.

Game Informer is lucky: as a retailer-affiliated pub, they have certain editorial freedoms because they're not (quite as) beholden to advertisers.

I agree with your POV; this is a hobby about fun, and that should be reflected in reviews. I don't want clinical dissections; I want irreverence. There are those who believe that game journalism needs to get serious (http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ethics/1049994303.php), and there are a few reviewers who can pull off serious reviews by virtue of their wonderful writing and knowledge (David Smith, formerly of IGN and now Gamers.com, is one). If the future of game journalism is the personality-free style of GameSpot and GamePro, however, someone please kill me now.

I raved about Joe's "Santulli Slants" in my review of Collectors Guide 7; he totally knows his stuff, and he uses profanity like Picasso used a paintbrush.

-- Z.

[Dahne]

*coughshamelessselfpromotioncough* (http://dahne.hypermart.net/reviews.html)

[geelw]

*coughshamelessselfpromotioncough* (http://dahne.hypermart.net/reviews.html)

hmmm. i clicky, and soooooo many window open up, i catch cold! ahhhhh-chooo!... :(

lol- funny stuff, otherwise... :-D

[Dahne]

Yeah, Hypermart is crappy when it comes to popups. I'm switching providers soon though.

[Atariguy]

Daikatana:

The release of Daikatana is a very important event for the gaming world. It represents the loss of about 60% of all our jokes. You see, Daikatana has been delayed since around 1973 (I think) and it's become a habit of all video game magazines and web sites to periodically make jokes about this. And by periodically, I mean a couple times every page. Can't think of anything funny to say? Just make a clumsy reference to Daikatana. Like "Steve came into work so late yesterday, I thought Daikatana would be released before he got here" or "This game is so bad. I wouldn't play it in a million years (when Daikatana will be released)" or just an otherwise blank page with the word "Daikatana" on it will send them rolling in the aisles. I expect that we'll continue to see people make jokes about Daikatana just as a reflex action for a while now. "The loading times are longer than the wait for Daikatana.... oh, shit, it was released wasn't it."
To start out with, the demo took a long time to download, so points off there. But I finally got it. First thing you notice about this game is that it's green. Very very green. It reminds me of the first map I ever made for Half-Life, in which I placed big colored lights in rooms. But Daikatana lacks something that map had. Large cubes of water floating in midair. So more points off there.


full review here:http://web.archive.org/web/20020212002847/somerandomguy.com/daikatana.shtml[/quote]3