Halo: Reach is a landmark in the burgeoning humor game genre.  Not only that, it is more enduringly funny than a lot of the games we usually consider humorous.  Now, before you rush down to the comments section to fire back with your favorite Tim Schafer game, hear me out.  Yes, the story of Reach is a downer; it’s a war tale where everybody dies.  There isn’t much comedy writing in the game, which is how we traditionally measure this genre. What there is, instead, is comedy gaming, which is what the true measure of the genre should be.

Reach is a first person shooter.  You kill things.  And when you’re not killing, you’re reloading.  Killing is grim business, but in Reach, there is a careful concoction of what you kill, how you kill, and how things die that ultimately generates real, honest amusement.

Singing in Harmony (credit: skeozz on XBL)

So how does Reach do it? Actually, let’s start with what it doesn’t do.  It doesn’t do dismemberment or decapitation.  It doesn’t do torture.  And it never, ever has you firing on civilians – or even human military.   You get your kicks by taking out evil space aliens who are bent on humanity’s destruction, all of whom are ugly and threatening but not above looking a little dopey from time to time (the panicky Grunts are clearly there as premeditated comic relief).  And Reach doesn’t even do red blood – aliens bleed in clean splotches of purple, green, blue, or orange.  When you get into multiplayer (player versus player) you’ll see red, but even then, everyone is encased in head-to-foot body armor.  Everyone resembles a robot, and the most spectacular death looks no worse than a tossed action figure.  There’s no grim killing here – it’s okay to smile.

Second of all, Reach is really fun to play.  It should go without saying that all games are fun, but an all-too-common stumbling block of the “humor game” is lackluster gameplay.  Tim Schafer, you are a funny guy, but the actual game parts of titles like Psychonauts and Brutal Legend can be frustrating and boring.  If you are being frustrated, you’re less likely to laugh and that makes a funny game less successful.   If you’re having fun, you’re more likely to laugh.

So what kind of amusement can we expect from Reach?  Answer: impeccably timed slapstick.  Tex Avery, Three Stooges kinds of stuff, with a dash of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Things like tagging a guy in the junk with a sticky grenade and seeing the explosion pinball him off the wall. Using a rocket launcher to flip an opposing jeep off a cliff, only to have the whole flaming wreck tumble down and flatten you.  Even the quiet moments can bring a smile, like watching my body ragdoll over a railing while the smug bastard who just shot me mistakenly sidesteps into oblivion.  We both cartwheel gracefully into the ocean and I can’t stop giggling.

That's me in the foreground. In the background... karma.

What’s so significant about Reach’s humor is that laughs are generated organically.  That means it’s a bottomless well of comedy.  It doesn’t have pre-written jokes to run out of – it’s all emergent behavior (sort of like, um, humor in real life).  Sure, it’s largely one type of humor, but slapstick is primal and it doesn’t get old.

Of course, my description of the comedy probably didn’t seem very funny, because with visual comedy, you sort of had to be there.  Bungie, the developers of Reach, knew this.  To solve that problem, they built a robust Theater mode that allows you to re-watch matches, record highlight reels, and snap virtual photographs (this is where all of the pictures in this article came from).  YouTube is filled with this stuff.  The Bungie developers recently put up their own blooper reel, and I inserted it below.  It’s a little slow to start, but pretty soon they get into some nice vehicle mayhem (they also, helpfully, play things back a couple of times from different angles). You don’t have to be there – they’ve recorded it for you.

At this point, a lot of people comfortable with the “standard definition” of humor games might say, “but none of that stuff counts! That’s just shit-happens, all games have that!”  First of all, no, all games do not have that, and no game has it at the level of Reach.  Secondly, it does count.  Thirdly, it counts much more than cleverly-written cutscenes, jokey gadgets, or pre-built environmental gags.  Comedy writing is hard, but comedy writing in game cutscenes is no more difficult than writing a comedy screenplay, because  non-interactive situations allow complete authorial control.  If you make me laugh during the intro, but can’t make the play funny, you’ve come barely halfway.

Is Reach funny all of the time?  No, especially not in serious competition, or at the serious difficulty levels. But if you choose to be serious… well, there you go.  But what ships in the box, standard-issue, is a comedy goldmine.

And yet.

It is not the pinnacle.  This isn’t the holy grail of comedy games.  But it does shine the light, point the way.  As funny as surprising moments in gameplay are, the background story of Reach is still that downer of a war story.  So, imagine combining the gameplay wit of Reach with, say, the written wit of Tim Schafer.  Hilarious cutscenes, hilarious gameplay – in one.  It would raise the standard for comedy games forever, and it’s something I can’t wait to see.  Until then, watch your step.

Credit to cactipuss on XBL.