History Main / CatharsisFactor

''Video games tend to provide excellent catharsis.''

The existence of this effect, with both videogames and other media, is sometimes cited by opponents of banning pornography and violent video games.

[[AC:Sports games]]

* Store up enough finishers in the latest {{WWE}} wrestling game and unload them one after another...especially if it's a wrestler whom you can't stand.
** Where's the imagination in that? Use the create-a-wrestler feature to make pretty much anyone you can't stand, give them a pathetically wimpy moveset, and go to town on them by unloading finisher after finisher, letting go of pinfalls just before the 3 count, repeatedly breaking weapons over their heads and releasing submission locks just before the tapout until you feel all better. Wrestling games can be ''teriffic'' stress relievers.

[[AC:Fighting Games]]
* How many people have felt better after a bad day by putting in the latest ''StreetFighter'' game and demolishing whoever was in your way (computer AI, opponent through internet, etc)?

[[AC:Role-Playing Games]]

[[AC:Wide-Open Sandboxes]]

* ''{{Bully}}''. Added catharsis for young players due to the school setting. Look, mom, I'm skipping school! Look, mom, I'm locking a man in a porta-potty and rolling him down a hill with the help of my delinquent girlfriend! I'm on a panty raid! I'm beating up ''everyone!'' And for those who were bullied by preppies, you can now shoot one with a potato gun and run like hell.

[[AC:First-person Shooters]]
* Your troubles can disappear in a hail of gunfire. Or a single, well-placed sniper round. Or a [[OneHitKill instant-kill]] {{backstab}}.
** Special mentions- any game with realistic explosion damage, any game with a bolt-gun type weapon (one that fires a big projectile that sticks around for a while), any game with completely unrealistic explosion damage, any game with BottomlessMagazines, any game with a gravity-gun-based weapon, any game where you can set people on fire (particularly if it then spreads), and any game with ludicrous shotgun impact.
* ''HalfLife 2''. Sure, you can blast your foes with grenades and rocket launchers, or pound them with a double shot from a shotgun, but the most fun thing everyone loves to do is using the Gravity Gun to pick up stuff and hurl crap at enemies, or pick up larger objects and ''people'' and fling those too once the gun is powered up.
** There is also always the option to smash faces or Headcrabs with the crowbar.
* Any of the ''{{Left 4 Dead}}'' games. Start a round where you have a sniper rifle in the saferoom, but don't leave the saferoom. Just shoot off headshots from the safety of your safe house. The AI director even realizes that you're doing this and spawns more zombies for you to kill. Ahhhhhh...
** For those of you with the second game:[[LudicrousGibs ~ map c1m1_hotel mutation 14]]. You're welcome.

* AlienVsPredator. Skirmish. Marine-Smartgun. Don't even have to aim. Just press LMB and watch the limbs fly.

* Few things in life beat [[ModernWarfare flipping that switch or popping open a laptop]] to unleash a world of hurt on the unwitting fools facing you.
* Well.. this is a substantial reason for {{Painkiller}}'s existance. You have hordes upon hordes of mooks and some of the most creative weapons ever to reduce them to LudicrousGibs with. Arsenal and enjoyment options include (but are not limited to):

* Wolfenstein3D: Shooting Nazis. That is all.

[[AC:Real-Time Strategies]]

[[AC:Hack-and-Slash Games]]

[[AC:Platformers]]

** Along with RuleofFunny, this has ''got'' to be why you can use pyrokinesis on squirrels in the camp. Raz himself seemed to acknowledge this trope both in Sasha's Shooting Gallery ("Shooting things is fun and useful!") and Waterloo World ("I can set wood on fire with my mind, you know") to a wooden game piece). The second is kind of justified, given the day he'd been having...

[[AC: Simulation Games]]

[[AC: Tabletop Games]]

[[AC:Puzzle Games]]
* {{DROD}}, the most action packed puzzle game in existence. Slaughtering hordes of overgrown roaches, hunting down goblin after goblin, or meticulously cutting apart a gelatinous monster, all while outsmarting the room layout. Blood, guts, and the satisfaction of hard earned victory.

[[AC:Other]]

* {{Tetris}}, starting at the highest level you can.
* {{Godhand}}. The credit song even lampshades this with the line "The Godhand helps me work out my stress!".

** Oh ''yes''. You do not ''know'' catharsis until you've eradicated all life on some lonely little asteroid with the behemoth of a gun that is the RYNO 5.

* RobotDinosaursThatShootBeamsWhenTheyRoar tends to put a giant smile on my face. Not that hard, and you get to be a dinosaur that shoots beams when you roar.

* MadWorld anybody?
* TotalAnnihilation has flying transport units that can "transport" enemy units, especially if they're AI...Oh, the possibilities!
* Are you dissatisfied with ''{{Homestuck}}'''s recent turn of events? Are you tired of [[CompleteMonster Vriska]] and wish she could get her comeuppance? [[http://maroonracoon.deviantart.com/art/PUNCH-VRISKA-flash-190666438 We feel your pain.]]

<<|SubjectiveTropes|>>

-->--[[ZeroPunctuation Ben Croshaw]].

->"Now the first ModernWarfare, by the same token, appeared to have been made with more than just a slightest nod in the direction of the Military-FPS genre's "angrier fans." Particularly the ones who felt the constant focus on boring old WWII meant there weren't enough '''[[AcceptableTargets desert-dwelling brown people]]''' to shoot, thus making it that much harder for them to use the game as their personal 9-11 revenge simulators."
-->-- TheGameOverThinker on his views towards Modern Warfare's inspirations.

** Sadly? Bitches ain't got shit on the Hulk!

*** Skipping the expansion pack by playing ''JurassicParkOperationGenesis'' and let a T-Rex run through your five-star-park or delete the fence of the Raptor Pen.

* ''{{Prototype}}''. It is MADE of this trope. There's nothing like a negative impact for the wholesale slaughter of New Yorkers and military personnel or smashing up dozens to hundreds of vehicles just by going from A to B, [[GrievousHarmWithABody using civilians as projectiles to smash vehicles]], [[CarFu using vehicles as projectiles to smash civilians]], [[BadAss using cars as projectiles to shoot down helicopters]], [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome using busted tanks as projectiles to shoot down helicopters]], [[RuleOfFunny using downed helicopters as projectiles to shoot down helicopters]], [[CrazyAwesome using]] ''[[CrazyAwesome civilians]]'' [[CrazyAwesome as projectiles to shoot down helicopters]], using '''[[MadeOfIron YOURSELF]]''' as a projectile to shoot down helicopters and ''everything else''. Need I go on? And by the end of [[strike: the game]] each play session you will have killed [[strike: at least a thousand]] over 9000 civilians '''by accident'''. Then add up another ten thousand or twenty that you kill ''willingly'' ([[VideogameCrueltyPotential because you will, no exceptions]]).

-->-- TheGameOverThinker on [[strike:ModernWarfare's inspirations]] his own fucked-up view towards Modern Warfares inspirations.

* Minecraft. Play the regular mode and plant a ton of dynamite all over the place and make yourself a safe spot high up in the map, just floating there, with a block of dynamite ready to fall upon hitting it, and save the map. Load it in survival mode and wait for a few mobs to form, then hit the dynamite to turn on the timer and make it fall to the earth. The explosion can be so big that even maximum fog won't save you from the lag, but the resulting aftermath? Worth it.

Related to VideogameCrueltyPotential. Not to be confused with InUniverseCatharsis, though overlap is certainly possible.

-->-- TheGameOverThinker on ModernWarfare's inspirations.