Games That Affected You In Real Life? (spoilers)

[Silvanus]

Silent Hill 2.
Silly, yes...but it was all about the experience.
I was working at SCEA around...oh say 2003, and had a day of freeplay, so I checked silent hill 2 and a few other titles out and spent the day playing.....I didn't notice when everyone left. I was plugged into headphones, zoned to the system, bladder, bowel, hunger forgotten near lunch and decided 'lets try the horror title'. I finally rose out of my cube around 7pm and realized...'I'm alone, there's no one here' and I could hear a grating, metal grinding noise in the distance in the dark and cube filled floor. I crept out of that place with what was probably a days worth of suddenly URGENT to escape stress weighing down my....mind. It's haunted me ever since, I can't play it though I try once in a while. and if I hear something similar to Pyramid Heads blade scraping the ground, I get instant goosebumps and my heart rate JUMPS.

SH2 would be my choice, as well. The only game that has driven up my heart rate and made me feel panicky. Incredibly effective horror title.

Another mention goes to Okami, the reasons for which I already gave in the 'Games that made you cry' thread. Emotional stuff.

 

[Gauntlets28]

Persona 4.
I played it when I was around 15-16 I think. At the time I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with the various mental and physical issues I (slightly exaggerated) having, as well as a lack of proper meaningful friendships. Persona 4's main story is all about various teenagers realising the issues and struggles they have, accepting them, but still managing to be good people despite them. It could be that they're insecure, that deep down they're angry, or that they're just embarrassed with their life in general, but they were all really well written and it never felt like it was demeaning the effects that these kinds of issues can have on insecure younger people or that it was judging people who couldn't accept themselves, only those who used their issues as an excuse to make life worse for others.

Good fucking game.

I totally want to play Persona 4. I just need to remember where I put my PS2...
Funny you mention Persona though. I was gonna talk about Persona 3, and how it changed my behaviour. I'd just changed schools, so I had no real friends at the time, and my grades had gone through the floor because I was totally depressed. But Persona 3's whole system of social links and succeeding in the school half of the game being all about studying and such, I started getting the habits in real life because I started imagining that the world was just some kind of video game, and it totally worked! I tell you, Persona games are amazing.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well there have been plenty of games that have made me fly into a rage Donkey Kong Country being the worst even thinking of that game now instantly pisses me off whats that like 20 years on? damn thats a long time.

There have also been many games that have made me reflect on issues or how awesome they are or driven me to get better at them but cant say that there have any that have affected me in a big way.

Apparently I was arguing with someone about fishing and how to cook fish when they were trying to wake me up after playing Dark Chronicle a lot and yeah you guessed it fishing for ages. I really need to play that game again its been a few years now. I hope they are actually making a third one since apparently they have renewed the trademark recently.