These fighters, they get knocked down, but they get up again. Or at least, they try to.
My fondest gaming memory: half a dozen boys squeezed tight into a uni halls bedroom, gathered around a monitor watching two boxy men stumble and push each other over, in endless loops. We’re losing our minds, laughing so hard that we gather a crowd from the fl ats above and below.
That perfect half-hour was well over a decade ago now, but on its strength alone, Sumotori Dreams would probably still rank in my all-time top 100 games. It opened a door, one that led me to a world of slapstick games. I can’t be sure that Sumotori was the first, historically speaking, but that combination of ragdoll physics and unreliable controls spawned an entire genre, encompassing everything from QWOP to Surgeon Simulator, Gang Beasts to Overcooked.
My current obsession is Totally Accurate Battle Simulator , a game I suspect would cause my teenage self’s eyes to widen like that one exceedingly horny wolf from the old Droopy cartoons. A disjointed wrestling match between two drunkenly-animated fighters? Yeah, that’s alright, I guess – but how about dozens of them. Hundreds of them. As many googly-eyed warriors as my CPU will allow, all rushing to the centre of the battlefield to clash in thick clouds of primary-coloured flesh.
In these games, not every death or collision is a slapstick masterpiece. Which just means that, when they are, it takes you by surprise – always one of comedy’s sharpest weapons. You never quite know when a grenade is going to lodge someone in the rafters, or when a sleep dart will send your target flopping over a railing, a perfectly planned non-lethal playthrough ruined.
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