Being a gamer isn’t just about sitting on a couch or at a desk with a gamepad or mouse; it’s also about spending hours on YouTube, Twitch, and Ustream watching all the crazy crap that happens when other people play games.
2015 was full of impressive and hilarious glitches, mods, and Let’s Plays, and GamesBeat has gathered our favorites here. But because the Internet is a huge place full of stuff, we’re sure to have missed some quality clips, so be sure to share your favorites in the comments below.
Here are our picks for the funniest gaming videos of 2015.
Glitches
Major developers are getting increasingly ambitious, and as the worlds grow, they just add that many more lines of code with which something can go wrong. We mostly love glitches because they’re like little surprises that make the already fantastical worlds we’re playing in go completely insane. We’re less enthused when a bug makes a game unplayable or deletes our saves, but the truth is that someone will still find that funny — because people are often cruel.
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Batman: Arkham Knight — basically the entire game
Publisher Warner Bros. outsourced the PC port of developer Rocksteady Studio’s batfinale, which is also available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. And while that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, this time it happened to result in a product that was nearly unplayable. It was so bad, in fact, that Warner halted sales of the buggy mess and is even offering refunds until the end of the year. Meanwhile, we got a steady stream of players showing off how broken their copies of the game were, and we hope that someday the people who had these experiences will be able to laugh along with us.
We found so many videos showcasing issues in all versions Arkham Knight that instead of just picking one, we compiled some good ones into the playlist below. Highlights(?) include a stubborn Batmobile, a horrifying new look for Oracle, and an explosion so big that it shatters space and time, creating a second Nightwing.
Fallout 4 — The Commonwealth is a strange and terrible place
The latest entry in the postapocalyptic series (out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC) is amazing, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. All kinds of weird stuff is going on in the wasteland of the Commonwealth, and that’s saying something considering “normal” means scorpions the size of cars and people whose faces have rotted off.
Fallout 4 is already a pretty funny game, but check out what happens when things don’t go as its makers at Bethesda planned:
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — we’re going to need a lot more apples
The third Witcher game contains a beautiful fantasy world full of strange and terrible beasts, but your horse is not supposed to be one of them. One player discovered this bizarre creature during their travels, and while we appreciate that this two-headed horse will leave way fewer “road hazards” for those journeying on foot, we’re pretty sure it would be impossible to ride.
Mods
One advantage PC games have over their console cousins is that players can create their own content. Sometimes, mods serve to fix problems in the released version, but more often than not, they just let people play around in ridiculous ways.
Grand Theft Auto V: Monster fight!
Marvel’s Hulk is no stranger to the Grand Theft Auto series; modders added him to Grand Theft Auto IV a couple years ago, and even the third game has a green-skinned … um, skin for those who want to lay waste to developer Rockstar’s urban sandboxes as an angry monster.
But this video from Grand Theft Auto V, which came to the PC in April, doubles the carnage with a huge battle between the green giant and his similarly powered foe, the Abomination. The mod is really impressive; Hulk can pick up and throw cars, jump ridiculously high, and can even unleash his trademark Sonic Clap (which sounds like a nice-ish name for a horrible disease but is actually a thing the superhero does by slamming his hands together really hard).
But the best part is that hapless police officers are still trying to restore order while superheroes use them as the targets in their epic game of Lamp-Post Whac-a-Mole.
Batman: Arkham Knight — you get way more than a Pennyworth
While owners of Arkham Knight’s buggy PC version waited for their patch to come, they found other ways to “play the game” by fiddling around with its code. One brilliant modder found a way to play as the Wayne family’s loyal butler. Alfred is so devoted to his family, in fact, that he’s given Master Bruce some time off and taken to the streets of Gotham to Batman the hell out of some guys.
According to the person who did this, “[Alfred’s] moveset is very limited; he cannot perform counterattacks, environmental takedowns, or dual takedowns, but he can still kick plenty of ass.”
And that lack of countering ability leads to the funniest part of this video, which has Alfred ineffectually chasing evil plastic surgeon Professor Pyg around his operating table because winning that fight depends on that function.
Hotline Miami 2 — we fail to see the problem
This clever update to Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number removes all of the controversial blood and guts and replaces them with sparkly rainbow confetti and silly string, respectively. That’s the plan, anyway; it’s still in progress, but it does have a super-catchy name: “Hotline Miam-E for Everyone.”
“Hotline Miami 2 is a game about trying to win a tickle fight between you and your best friends,” the description on this demo video says. “When they start throwing rainbow sprinkles, that means you’re winning! And if you tickle their tummies reeeaaally hard, they might drop some silly string, too!”
And because you don’t want your ticklers to wear out from all that tickling, you’re outsourcing it to guns, knives, and chainsaws. Obviously.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain — you just had to put his nose there, didn’t you.
While we’re doing some model swapping, here’s a really confusing creation for Metal Gear Solid V. We had no problem whatsoever with adorable puppy D.D., but the Internet is never one to pass up some lols, so one intrepid modder went ahead and replaced that fuzzy little wonder with Ocelot, your (human) sidekick throughout the title.
And for some reason, the person who did this made the change in such a way that Ocelot’s crotch is where D.D.’s nose was. It makes the following video an interesting journey through confusion, disgust, acceptance, hilarity, and then right back to confusion. It’s like the Five Stages of Loss and Grief, only nobody really feels any better at the end.
Let’s Plays (and the rest)
Games don’t need bugs or modification to be funny; sometimes just watching someone play is sufficiently entertaining. And the people providing that service in 2015 provided amusement for those times that we should have been working but just weren’t. And when we couldn’t find someone funny playing a game and still didn’t want to work, other content creators were making game-inspired videos to help us waste the time.
Outside Xbox’s Third-Annual Xmas Challenge
While more productive people were planning travel, meals, and quality family time or whatever, the rest of us were sitting around watching YouTube. And the Outside Xbox channel was putting on its third festive, game-related contest to see once again who would win Christmas.
Over 12 days, the three co-editors took turns drawing prewritten tasks out of a hat and attempting to complete them. This year’s events included a dangerous night-time run in zombie-Parkour fusion title Dying Light, winning a fight in Mortal Kombat X while blindfolded, and an improvised task involving punching the mayor of Fallout 4’s Diamond City and then escaping the settlement alive.
And all of that had to happen while the player character was naked because that made it funnier.
Daz Black can not even handle Boogeyman
Vine star Daz Black also has a YouTube channel full of Let’s Plays and reaction videos. And it’s all pretty good, but the real magic happens when he sits down to a horror title.
In this episode, Daz takes on Five Nights at Freddy’s 4-inspired Boogeyman, in which you take the role of a kid trying to keep the monster from getting into their room. All you have to do this is a flashlight, which will scare off the creeper as it tries to come in through the window, closet, hallway door, and a vent in the ceiling. But because it’s a horror game, your batteries run out so fast that you wonder who thought they were good enough to sell and why your parents bought them. You can find extra cells under the bed, but guess what? The Boogyman might be there, too.
You can kind of guess how this goes for the excitable Daz (video is NSFW).
Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’? — Dance Central 3
The second episode of the current season of this Internet show from siblings Ashly and Anthony Burch blows the lid off of the seedy world of dance crime. And in a world in which dancing has fallen into the wrong hands, only one Dance Cop has the guts to take it to the limit.
Star Wars: Modern Lightsaber Battle
This video from Mr.TVCow, who also brought us last year’s amazing “Assassin Kittens,” isn’t entirely gaming related, but it’s still pretty great and contains a quick nod to Minecraft. It takes a look at where past and current trends in the Star Wars franchise’s lightsaber designs might be headed. It starts off with The Force Awakens‘ odd Sith broadsword and gets increasingly silly from there. And we’re pretty sure that if Lucas had gotten a few more movies made, we would have seen some of this stuff in there.
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