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While it didn't quite come out of nowhere, nobody could have predicted just how huge Undertale would become this year. At the time of writing, 19,394 positive reviews to 321. Half a million sales, by SteamSpy estimation. Beating Ocarina of Time in GameFAQs' Best Games Ever list. Making people give a crap about GameFAQs' Best Games Ever list. It's quite the thing.Few games have ever touched so many people so deeply, or been so misunderstood by their critics. I'm certainly not saying that I think Undertale is the greatest game ever, since I think we all know that prize goes to 1984 classic "Bouncing Babies". It's not, however, just a collection of in-jokes and drippy warm goo glued onto the back of Earthbound nostalgia, as you'd think from insult names like 'memetale'. It's something harder to process - an incredibly smart, well-written and insightful RPG that's comfortable enough to do the gaming equivalent of showing up in a tracksuit and sneakers. You look at any part of it and yes, it's simple. Combine the pieces, and it's special, and far more than just another parody of the JRPG style like Barkley: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden, Cthulhu Saves The World or those pretty tedious Penny Arcade Adventures.
Even if you don't care about all of that blather, it doesn't hurt that it's one of the funniest games ever made. I've watched a ton of LPs since it came out, purely to enjoy the sound of people laughing themselves into a stupor at some of the jokes, both direct, like skeleton guards Sans and Papyrus' antics near the start, and indirect, like the raw raised-finger the game delivers to players who've murdered their way through the game only to end up having... a bad time.
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