You forgot the biggest culprit of them all: The KFC Dating Sim game which managed to get Rule 34 drawn for it
7 months ago | 29
I still find the Wendy’s account to be pretty funny, at least the reaction videos to it.
7 months ago | 12
Snarky and Snide humor probably started it's trend when the MCU was starting, where everyone was trying to emulate the success of Tony Stark's character (especially the MCU itself)
7 months ago | 3
I think that Borderlands 2 is what popularized that kind of "ironic" humor
7 months ago | 30
It would be interesting to study the era that came before that. I tend to call it "the Douche Age" or "the Dudebro Age". I've also seen Matt McMuscles mention it as "the Jackass Age". Heck, the first result if you google "The Douche Age" is a starter pack I posted that a friend made. I've seen plenty of people discuss the Y2K aesthetic and era, but not many really go in depth on that sort of hypermasculine-tinged, industrial-goth-loving, fratboy-obsessed 2 edgy 4 skewl ethos that fed into the mid-late 2000s "everything is brown, gray, ultrarealistic, and miserable and if it's if it's not, it's for babies" that in itself led to that sort of sneering, dweeby "I'm so dorky and such a loser, isn't that funny" where nothing is taken seriously. Heck even that dudebro era was just building off the earlier grunge-heavy grossout boyish stuff of the late 80s/early 90s (AVGN called that the Barf Age). Just overreaction after overreaction after overreaction. Kinda fun to map all of it out in retrospect.
7 months ago | 20
You know, Matt Hazard would be really cool if it tried to own up to all those video game troupes and make it all cohesive. I just watched the show Venture Bros. and that took a bunch of Saturday morning cartoons cliches and molded it into an intriguing setting that made sense and I wanted to know more about. It would be cool if the kid friendly weapons were actually like splatoon, futuristic technology with unique applications. Or if the COD-esque player enemies were actual android or something controlled by people elsewhere.
7 months ago | 11
I remember liking retor city for the first hour and then realised i really didnt care about the story and like all the refrences and it slowly lost its touch for me
7 months ago | 5
Honestly, I enjoyed Retro City Rampage in terms of gameplay, it felt like GTA 1-2 but smoother to play. But it definitely didn’t make me bust a gut laughing in my seat wading through the hit and miss dialogue.
7 months ago | 3
I’d say the real grandfather of all this is The Big Bang Theory show lasted 12 years and was a show about nerds written by people who never interacted with one
7 months ago | 2
I've started watching arrested development again, which got me thinking about Matt Hazard. I never played it, but the square reticle was memorable.
7 months ago | 3
I'd love to see a full video of yours talking about Retro City Rampage
7 months ago | 0
The Wendy's twitter account I truly believe had negative repercussions on social media in general now with how the white house is acting
7 months ago | 1
Having played Sunset Overdrive (just recently - like bought it a few days ago on steam), it's less "Nay Nay Baby" and more "Puppymonkeybaby". Surreal in its presence, dense in its irony, and proud of it, but unlike Matt Hazard, there clearly is a degree of charm. The Eminence In Shadow as an action adventure game
7 months ago | 4
At least the Wendy's Twitter account gave us "Smug Wendy's Mascot" who's still pretty popular.
6 months ago | 0
Ah, yes. Retro City Rampage. The first game that I have ever felt strongly enough to use the Thumbs Down rating feature on Steam for. That takes me back.
7 months ago | 0
I liked RCR overall, its gameplay was fine and its soundtrack was great, but I thought its story was definitely its weakest aspect even at the time. If a game doesn't want to have a deep story, that's completely fine, RCR wanted its gameplay to feel like a merciless power trip and it built itself around that. But, there were definitely moments where it was super groanworthy.
7 months ago (edited) | 1
A real good ironic game that has come out recently was Slayer X. Compared to other ironically bad media that deliberately does something incompetent with nothing else to say, the core joke of Slayer X is egomaniac, who write what they think is cool self insert. It also helps that the previous game that the devs worked on hypnospace had fake behind the scenes on Slayer X that just adds to the joke. The game I believe actually understands what makes so bad its good media work compared to others while the gameplay and music are pretty good.
7 months ago (edited) | 0
I was introducing cartoons to my son that I used to watch and we landed on chowder and I never realized how self referential it was. I mean I remembered the occasional 4th wall break but towards the later episodes there was one episode that was almost entirely about how the show and characters were extremely self aware, looking at the camera speaking to the audience and pointing out tropes that cartoons use. And if I'm being entirely honest, it was still primo content 😅 I don't think there's been any other cartoon to perfectly emulate that kind of humor without it seeming like a knockoff
7 months ago | 1
Tactical Bacon Productions
I'm disappointed in myself, I was looking back on my Matt Hazard video, and in particular the part of the video where I was discussing the pervasiveness of ironic media in the early 2010s, and there are two things that I only thought up in retrospect that would have been perfect to illustrate that opinion.
1. The Wendy's Twitter account. The first of the snarky and self aware social media accounts used to try and humanize major brands. Which was funny/novel for all of 5 minutes.
2. Retro city rampage. A game that had pretty much the exact same tone as sunset overdrive, but with reference humor instead of a plot.
7 months ago | [YT] | 432