Despite its snappy art and voice acting, there’s not much more to Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator than Magnetic Poetry. But for just a buck and change on Steam it’s an amusing enough way to entertain friends at a party for 20 minutes. It’s at least better than forcing them to listen to my record collection again, or god forbid, having to play Cards Against Humanity one more time.
I played The Insult Simulator alone, though, insulting and being insulted by random people on the internet. (So just like regular life, ha ha.) The premise recalls The Secret of Monkey Island’s insult swordfighting, but it’s not a call and response format. Each round lays out a selection of words and phrases which two players pull from to assemble grammatically-correct insults. Once fully-formed, insults deal damage based on some opaque rating system, with bonus damage for combos (eg, insulting someone’s dad twice) or hitting a character’s weak point. Each character has a unique sensitivity, such as personal style or fear of mortality.
Mostly it’s a race to grab the vital “and” from the board first so you can chain together a longer burn, with a few crappy rounds mixed in where the best either player can do is something like “your hat looks silly.” All the words and phrases are voiced—so you get that uncanny effect when voice clips are chained into a sentence—and I guess that’s why there seem to be so few to pick from. The drought of good nouns and adjectives to pick from means the best insults end up being the bluntest:
“Your father is deceased!”
“Your mother will always be alone!”
“You are not interesting!”
“You are worthless!”
“Some dog probably murdered your son!”
Now those are funny. But many of the words are impossible to use in a funny way, or are tired Monty Python references, so a lot of the time I’m just saying nonsense like “Your hovercraft looks like your mother” or “Your country supports your sister and farts in your general direction.” Some don't even end up being insults.
The voices are a great part of the presentation, but without them I have to imagine the devs could’ve filled The Insult Simulator with more rare words and topical references (like say, “the 49ers' defense”). As it is, my insults have mostly been about weird familial relations and math teachers (why did they think “your math teacher” would lead to anything funny?). Here are my best concoctions so far, as well as a couple that were used against me.
“Your hat smells of a public loo, you inbred twit!”
“Your wife was born in a red-arsed baboon!”
“Your husband farted on your sister!”
“Your mother is very naughty and has worse hair than a hamster!”
“Your mother still uses Windows Vista and dances like a frightened schoolboy!”
“Your math teacher worked with your father and sucks at Overwatch!”
“You worked with a Muppet, so go back to your seat!”
That’s about the best you can expect, I’m afraid, but The Insult Simulator is nicely designed otherwise. And for under $2 it’s a great way to tell your friends that their relatives have been farting on each other, if that’s something you’ve been looking for an opportunity to do.
