Oh, Sir! The Insult Simulator is one of the most bizarre games available on Xbox One. It doesn’t feature grown women dressed up as kittens throwing rats in your face like in D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die; it’s not as random and nonsensical as, say, Goat Simulator; it’s not as balls-to-the-wall as Saint’s Row 4: Gat out of Hell, but Oh, Sir is as weird as they come.
Oh, Sir can only be described as a turn-based one-on-one fighter but without any actual fighting. Choosing from a colourful cast of caricatures ranging from old British women to fake Russians, you have to pick from lists of verbs, adjectives, connectives and more, all of them being immensely amusing and offensive to the most pompous of upper-class, elderly nonces. Taking turns, you slowly build up your insults, taking words off the board and crafting the most beautiful, witty and offensive abuse you can throw at your opponent all while trying to sabotage your opponent by stealing words or phrases that they might be eyeing up.
Insults take damage from a constantly looming health bar. Depending on how much your insult makes sense, how bulky it is, and how complex the slander you chuck at your opponent ends up being your insult will hit your opponent right in the feels, taking away chunks of their life. There are numerous ways you can go about defaming your opponent and members of their close family; you can play it safe making short, witty insults to chip away at their metre or you can spend your rounds crafting the biggest insult you can. Be careful though because as words disappear from the board and are replaced with new ones, you may not be able to complete your insult to the level of quality you should, causing you to spend minutes on a terrible insult like a slow-minded bully in a high school playground.
While its intense pace is kept up well due to a fifteen second time limit per round, Oh, Sir isn’t really the most realised title available on Xbox One. The goal of insulting your opponent can get tiresome after a while and while developer Vile Monarch has added a hefty number of phrases for you to work with, it doesn’t hold its charm for very long, and if I’m completely honest I don’t see how it ever could.
Oh, Sir is one big joke, it’s the very definition of the phrase “one trick pony”. While its premise and execution are well done throughout, there isn’t really much substance to Vile Monarch’s joke entry into the simulator genre. Much like drinking the sugary water from a jelly bowl before its set properly, Oh, Sir: The Insult Simulator is a fantastic, if watered-down at times, flavour that doesn’t make you feel fill.
That doesn’t mean that Vile Monarch have skimped on content available in Oh, Sir. Its joke may be simple and it may run out of steam fast, but Oh, Sir is packed to the brim with characters and options to play through. With a handful of modes, a substantial cast of characters and online and local multiplayer all for an immensely miniscule price of three dollars, there’s really no harm in giving Oh, Sir a chance at all.
Summary
For such a cheap price, there’s no real reason to not recommend at least trying Oh, Sir. It’s simple, it’s underwhelming but it does have short bursts of fun. Alright on your lonesome, fun with friends, incredibly amusing with a couch full of drunk mates; Oh, Sir is an amusing and eccentric party game that is definitely on that list of games to boot up when you’re boozed.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.