Ohh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator sees the world of competitive insult slinging comes to Xbox only to find it hampered by the same flaws as its PC counterpart.
Ask any gamer what their favourite memory of “Secret of Monkey Island” is and the answer will almost always be the sword fights, or more precisely the unique mechanic that they used as these encounters were less about your sword skills but instead more about your ability to insult your opponent into submission. Now with Oh…Sir!! The Insult Generator, we have a game that essentially tears that element out of Monkey Island and tries to give it legs as its own game.
Picking one of the colourful characters, who harbor various Brit stereotypes, also includes a bit more randomly H.P Lovecraft, Serious Sam and Lo Wang, you’re thrust into the world of competitive insult slinging as you trade barbs to solve such situation, such as shooting a man to use him as a table for your teacup or replaying the overused Monty Python dead parrot sketch. The game sees you constructing your insults using a random selection of tiles similar to Cards Against Humanity; the stronger the insult you build the more damage it does to your opponent.
Each character comes with their own unique set of weaknesses as well as their own themed tiles that can be worked into their insults, which is great if you want to hear Lovecraft referencing Dagon but at the same time it’s the kind of humour that can be lost on a player not familiar with the character. Additional bonuses and damage can be caused by reusing the same topic or by finding that character’s weakness and just beating them down with it.
While the game has a certain charm to it, it is however a game whose scope is limited, which dawned on us after about an hour of gameplay. Where the insults that the first couple of times ’round may have raised a smile or two, now they became almost as tedious as seeing the Dead Parrot sketch being rehashed for the umpteenth time (seriously, they had better sketches). It’s also at this point where the real breaking point for the game became clear as both players pick tiles from the same pile. It soon becomes less about constructing long drawn out insults but rather sniping key tiles to stumble your opponent. While the computer will play fair, any human player you face will undoubtedly use this tactic instead of trying to beat you with the clever wordplay, which it would seem that developer Vile Monarch intended for the game.
This game could have been vastly improved by the player being giving their own set of tiles to play with rather than the shared pile. At the same time do we really need the forced British stereotypes? Yes it might be a nice touch be able to refresh your specialist cards by taking a sip of tea but the rest just feels so forced, especially with the special characters having zero to do with the period setting it makes you wonder why they bothered with this setting to begin without of perhaps trying to give the whole thing a false sense of gentlemanly discourse only to end up coming off kind of forced.