Games are entertainment right!?! The whole point is that after a rough day at work you can sit down, grab a controller, clock in, and unwind. Certainly that’s our daily practice.
That got us thinking. It’s all well and good to do that after a normal day. But, what are the best games to play when you are already close to boiling, when you feel like a dwarf in a dodgy fantasy flick, on those days when you’d frag your best friend for real just for looking at you wrong. What are the best games to play when, flat out, you’re angry.
It’s a tough call. The first place we looked was the extremely violent and destructive. The games where you can just take out your frustration on some faceless and soulless enemy. But then we ran into a second problem. For all of their recuperative escapist qualities, games also offer a certain amount of their own frustration. Particularly the action and fighting genre. Sadly there is no shortage of gaming moments that on their own are able to invite our inner controller-throwing madman to come over for a quick and sometimes expensive visit.
Clearly what we were looking for was some special cases. For starters we were only interested in games with a satisfying mechanic that could absorb the rage. This had to be combined with gameplay that would be approachable in a less than ideal state. We quickly identified that when we’re mad, logical thinking goes out the window, closely followed by a patience for narrative.
After much deliberation we came up with this list…
Left 4 Dead – If you really want to let off Steam you need a Valve (sorry about that one). Beyond the pun, nothing alleviates stress and frustration like liquidising a horde of zombies. The success of Left 4 Dead as an anger reduction game is that it combines the visceral destruction of an FPS with a simple yet entertaining gameplay style that greatly reduces frustration. One of the real benefits of L4D is that it is all about keeping moving and not being cautious, all of which a bit of anger induced impatience would help with. The one downside it has is that like most FPSs these days it is primarily an online thing so you do need to deal with other people while playing. But being a primarily co-op game you don’t have to worry about campers, griefers or other issues that you can expect in a classic 64-player fragfest.
Left for Dead: Angry at cost cutting measures of employing the undead at his local hospital, Bill has taken up smoking.
Dead or Alive (series) – Dead or Alive brings together bone crushing combos, lighting quick fighting and hot chicks in a delightfully simple package. Similar to what L4D does to FPSs, DoA does hits that sweet spot bringing you all the fun with a bare minimum of controller chucking. That’s not to say it is the best fighting game out there of course, here at Piranha Poodles we are united by our love of Virtua Fighter but sometimes its layers of complexities and sheer challenge are just too much to stomach.
Blitz II: The League – This is a game that is excessive in all the right ways. Bringing together to roughest and toughest American football experience, again in a simple package, and now with extra-gory CSI-style injuries, it is the best anger management problem for the sports fan. Of particular appeal are some of the stranger game modes, such as the one where every time you get tackled you drop the ball, it makes for a frenetic and chaotic time that is sure to cool your head. Of course if you don’t happen to hail from the US or share in Senortubbs “functional Americanality” you might find the football game game Red Card by the same maker to be more your cup of tea.
The Club - The premise behind The Club is simple. Kill. Kill lots of people. In fact, the more people you kill, the better. And the quicker you kill them the better. It really is THAT simple. Of course there are underlying conditions that dictate how or where you do the general killing for each challenge, but it really is just about committing small scale acts of genocide. I’m not going to lie to you, The Club isn’t the greatest game in the world. But it certainly does hit that primal instinct in us all that gives us instant gratification in violence, particularly when our tempers are running slightly higher than usual. I just thank god its virtual. Real violence is bad kids.
The Club: He's angry, you just can't see it...
Burnout Paradise – Tragically there is no shortage of douches out there that take out their frustrations by getting behind the wheel and being a maniac. To be fair it’s probably fairly satisfying for the ego to drive really fast and knock a few fellow drivers around, so its obvious that we should have a driving game in here somewhere. At first we considered the likes of Forza and Gran Turismo here. No, too complicated. Then we had the Project Gotham Racing series. No, too frustrating. So we settled for the most recent instalment of the Burnout Franchise. One of the best features of Burnout is that it is an entirely acceptable approach to the game to just hit the road and drive really fast, and if you really have that urge to be a douche you can do it online. Personally we find the slow-mo accident mode to be a particularly good reliever of tension.
God Hand – It’s not hard to spot a common theme running throughout this list. Yes, virtual violence is often a form of respite from the grind of a bad day. But what if I was to tell you that humour is also a good form of relief? And more, that the two could be coupled together into a single video game package? God Hand is a gamer’s equivalent of slapstick comedy. Directed and produced by Shinji Mikami and Atsushi Inaba respectively during their time at Clover Studios, God Hand is the quintessential modern take on the old school beat ‘em up. From the outset, God Hand provides wall to wall action right from the outset without the need for a complicated story or backdrop, with a customizable combo system that will allow you to dispose of the scores of oddball ‘baddies’ in almost any way you see fit. But it manages to keep the tone extremely light throughout, with some of the most insanely strange (and hilarious) adversaries ever created and move sets and scenarios that will have you rolling around the floor in laughter as you brutally throw someones head into a wall.
Wii Sports: Boxing – It’s a bit strange to contemplate a Nintendo title for this list, particularly one so fundamentally mainstream as Wii Sports but the much underestimated boxing game really does have some potential here. What is best about it is the fact that sheer over exuberance is rewarded in Wii Boxing, it is a classic ‘button masher’ just without buttons. Wii Boxing probably also takes the title here of the fastest possible anger relief. A frenetic three minute burst of flailing about like a pinwheel in a hurricane should be enough to completely exhaust you and let you get back to wondering why such a graphically simple game takes such a ridiculously long time to load.
GTA III series: including III, Vice City and San Andreas – These three games fall nicely in the window of offering enough scope for just “losing it” in the world and letting loose some wanton destruction, without having any real consequences or damage to your save-game progress. In true “sand-box” style you have quite a large number of options available to you in cooling off. You can drive like a maniac causing immeasurable damage to cars and pedestrians, you can engage in one of the many rampage style mini-games, or, and this is probably one for people with extreme revenge fantasies, it is quite possible to hold yourself up on top of a building somewhere with some heavy weapons and try to take on a siege from the cops. Truly a series of games with a lot to live.
Bully: Scholarship Edition – For those with a more humble or realistic approach to revenge violence Bully is the game for you, particularly the Wii version. Bully offers up a fully populated school and town along with two fisted “punch control” and a variety of classic “bully” moves such as the feared “wedgie” to unwind with. Personally though I skip all the open world violence and honour the Wayne Rooney-esque appearance of the main character by engaging in the “kick the soccer ball at the nerd for money” minigame, awesome!
DOOM II – The sequel to the retro classic DOOM still a sure-fire way to dispel of some of that rage. Unlike modern shooters (Serious Sam and Black aside) DOOM, the game that started it all in earnest is all about the shooting. I’ve got one thing to say. Double barrelled shotgun and a group of zombie soldiers. (Here comes the cliche) You do the maths.
Dishonourable mentions:
Ninja Gaiden – Nothing gives a player more of a sheer rush of adrenaline, or allow them to take out their frustration and anger on virtual dudes more than Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden games. Hang on a second, let me rephrase that. Nothing gives a player more of a sheer rush of adrenaline, or allow them to become more frustrated and angry at virtual dudes more than Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden games. The Ninja Gaiden series is known for two things. The first is certainly the copious amounts of crimson that the main protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, lets flow throughout the course of the game with combos that can extend into the hundreds for a seasoned player. Violence is a big part of this series, and rarely has it been this stylish. Second however, is its insane difficulty level. At times, these games can be infuriatingly difficult. Whether it be to the sometimes awkward camera angles or just the sheer number of enemies thrown at you at once, Ninja Gaiden has the ability to make you at times want to use the XBOX or PS3 controller like a Wii-mote without the grip.
And so, they returned from a hard day at the office. God of War (left), Ninja Gaiden (right)
God of War – a bit like Ninja Gaiden above, God of War and its equally excellent sequel look on the surface to be custom made for the job of anger management. A big tough brooding character, a lot of unusually brutal violence, and a plot-line that consists of very little more than revenge. Unfortunately however the designers have chosen to intersperse the excellent maiming portions of the game with some annoying and surprisingly difficult puzzle and platform sections. These do serve to mix things up and are an essential part of the flow of the game, but are pretty much the last thing you want to try to do when you’re already a bit miffed.
So that’s our top ten games to play when you’re going off like Russell Crowe with a mobile phone. What did become quite apparent though when we made this list was that despite a very large number of games that had anger and vengeance as central themes, there really aren’t any that seem well designed to be played if you find yourself in a similar state of mind to the protagonist. What we were looking for was the gaming equivalent of a stress ball, providing a safe and practically indestructible target for the user’s worst frustrations. Instead we found that the difficult divertissement is still very much the order of the day. They may offer an arsenal of virtual destruction at your fingertips, but many are still just quirky little puzzles that needs to be solved, with all the inherent frustrations that lie in that.
