As an increasing number of party games hit Nintendo Switch, it’s sometimes difficult to keep up. Though aimed at only one or two players, two new games from developer Vile Monarch, Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator and Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast are out now on the Switch eShop. Originally developed for PC and mobile, how well do these insult- and quip-ready titles shake out on Switch?
In Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator, you take control of one of a few available classy-yet-flat protagonists, and your objective is to win a verbal jousting match, piecing together insults from a list of sentence fragments to diminish your opponent’s pride. Each match takes place in a variety of locations, from a moving train car to a bustling pet store, and both players start by hashing out some pre-existing dialogue specific to each location. Once pleasantries are out of the way, you’re thrust right into a verbal match of wit and offense. Each round starts off with nine random sentence fragments to choose from, and each player has two fragments in his or her “hand,” which can be swapped out once per round, if desired.
Players then go back and forth selecting fragments to piece together the ultimate insult to wound his or her opponent’s pride until his or her pride meter has depleted. For the most part, the available sentence fragments piece together well enough to come up with a coherent insult, but there are instances where you might put together an insult that doesn’t quite make sense. The game takes all that into account, however, as the amount of damage done to your opponent’s pride depends upon how well put together your insult is. Some sentence fragments will be unique to each location, and you get extra points for repeatedly berating your opponent using a particular fragment or by finding and exploiting each character’s weakness; you also lose points if you string together fragments that are grammatically incorrect.
While it’s initially fun to find out what hurts each character’s pride the most, once you learn each character’s weakness, it never varies, so you can easily hammer each character’s weak spot in subsequent matches—given the correct fragments appear, of course.
Each sentence fragment is fully voice acted for each character, and while you can tell that each fragment was voiced separately—as evidenced by slight intonation changes between fragments—the voice acting is fitting for each character and makes the game far more hilarious.
Visually, the game falls somewhere between pixel art and a sort of 2D-poly look, and it is catching. The game plays just as well docked as it does in handheld, though lack of touch screen controls—especially given this is a mobile port—is surprising. Though there aren’t many unlockables, there are new characters and stages to unlock by playing against the CPU. While the game is fine when playing against the CPU, it’s far better playing with a friend with same-system local multiplayer.
The Verdict
Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator is a fun game for up to two players where besting your opponent in a flurry of insults is undeniably fun. Though there isn’t much an incentive to keep playing aside from unlocking a few new (admittedly flat) characters and stages, and the fun of finding each character’s weakness doesn’t last beyond the initial discovery, Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator does well what it sets out to do, and a fully voiced cast slinging insults at one another is charming—albeit sometimes crude—fun.
In Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast, players will find nearly the exact formula as in the previously mentioned Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator, but with a few changes. Rather than playing host to a cast of high-class archetypes, the cast of Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast consists of mash-ups and parodies of various film characters and famous actors, such as Dirty Harry and Marilyn Nomore. Rather than simply taking place in various locations, each stage in the game is a set of various movie parodies, and the objective of each match is to roast each opponent celebrity until his or her pride is diminished.
Aside from those thematic differences, the game draws many parallels to The Insult Simulator, with the nine sentence fragments to choose from (along with two additional fragments in each player’s hand), the ability to roast the opponent using the same fragment for bonus points, as well as getting a bonus for exploiting each character’s weakness. The difference here is that, oftentimes, the fragments in each player’s hand are specific to that character—so Dirty Harry might refer to “He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named” or “a fistful of Every Flavour Beans.” It’s an interesting and great twist on the formula introduced by The Insult Simulator, and in general, movie buffs especially will notice a nod or two to different actors and franchises.
Though the game’s characters and stages are far more interesting than those in The Insult Simulator, The Hollywood Roast does have just as few unlockables, and sometimes the insults just don’t gel together very well. That said, the movie references here mitigate these issues and make The Hollywood Roast the more enjoyable title of the two.
The Verdict
Building on the already fun formula brought on by The Insult Simulator, Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast takes things a step further by throwing hilarious characters and film parodies into the mix. Though the game does suffer from some of the same issues as its predecessor, familiar movie and character references make Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast more relatable and, in turn, more fun.
Disclaimer: Review codes for Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator and Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast were provided by the games’ publisher.
