Poll: So do you actually like "violent video games"?

[Goatmeat]

I voted for stylised.

Violence is one of those things where I don't really think it adds to most games, but it can really piss me off and put me off certain games. An example of a game where I did find the violence amusing and fitting the tone is probably the God of War series. Kratos tearing off heads and disembowling centaurs and being all like "Ain't a thing, yo," and then walking off to murder some more people is extremely fucking cool to me. Similarly, I don't like violence in movies, but love the Evil Dead series.

I also liked the violence in Fallout and Fallout 2 because I sort of felt I'd earned it. Yeah, I don't think that shooting a guy in the eyes with a 10mm pistol will cause his entire fucking shoulder to disappear, but it only really happened if you got a good critical hit, or if you use a weapon where you'd be surprised if it didn't cause them to lose a couple of limbs. In Fallout, I didn't get one of those animations until I was a few hours into it. In Fallout 3, severed limbs and heads were flying about before I'd left Vault 101, so

If the game focuses too much on the violence, I can't and won't play it. Manhunt, for example. I was 18 when it came out and my brother's descriptions of how the first mission involves you murdering a guy by suffocating him with a plastic bag made me feel genuinely ill, the same way that torture scenes in gangster films make me feel really depressed. Even when I was 12 or 13, I don't think I'd've been into that. I think that can be used to great effect in some games (the finger scene in Heavy Rain worked really well, even though it was minimal violence and no real gore), but when you essentially get the highest score for violencing up people, it makes me feel really uncomfortable.

On a similar note, I feel the same way about swearing in games. I liked Assassin's Creed, but I didn't get far in Assassin's Creed 2 because in the few hours between the games, the blonde woman in the Real World had suddenly developed a fairly severe case of Tourette's syndrome, and it sounded forced and pissed me off. See also: Prototype. It's not that I have a thing against swearing, but it just reminds me of 9 year olds who swear all the time to look cool and it just ends up seeming kinda obnoxious.

TL;DR version: Violence can be good, but usually doesn't add anything, and when it feels out of place or happens too often or is the main focus of the game, I hate it.

 

[mrhappy1489]

The only time that I feel violence is necessary in a game is when it is justifiable and key to the players survival or that of weaker or other groups or innocents in the game. If it is pointless and proves nothing (like fighting games) I personally don't enjoy it.

 

[funguy2121]

I enjoy a compelling experience. It can be a totally bloodless puzzle, or an ultraviolent shooter/fighter with buckets of blood and gore. If it's a compelling experience, I'll check it out.

Enjoying violence just for violence's sake shows a lack of both character and intellect. And it can be found in individuals who speak of how "awesome" the Transformers movies are.

 

[striderkiwi]

helllz yeah! Ex: the game Splatterhouse, the only thing to like about it is the over the top insane violence and gorgasmic gameplay it presents. The only stuff i liked about the game

 

[RastaBadger]

As long as the game is fun to play I couldn't care less if it was violent.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Depends.

I like the games where it's possible, but doesn't happen all the time. Guy exploding from a pistol shot? Lame. Guy getting ripped apart by sustained heavy machine gun fire? Visceral, and thus awesome.

I really like it when you shoot someone, and there's a little bloody spot on their shirt, like in RDR. Makes it so much cooler. And HL2 was made so much better by letting me repaint the walls in Combine brain red with the shotgun.

That said, Soldier of Fortune: Payback is made so much more awesome by the cheesy gore.


It's impossible to not absolutely eviscerate people in that game. Use a weak pistol? There arms will still get blown off at the lightest of glances. And it's glorious.

 

[Burst6]

Not really. I just tune out the gore. I'm more of a flashy lights awesome attacks kind of person. The blood doesn't really do anything for me. If they took out the blood from games i wouldn't mind at all (as long as they don't replace it with something else. Something about different colored blood annoys me).

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I gotta say, I love gore. God of War, Gears of War, Mortal Kombat, Left 4 Dead 2, whatever. If its an action game, gore just adds that extra OOMPH to me. I even appreciate it in games where you aren't fighting human enemies, like being able to blow the limbs and heads off of robots in Vanquish. It just makes everything feel much more visceral, and is an easy way to say "yes, your weapons are having an effect. A pretty damn good one".

That said, some games get along fine without it. Halo and Call of Duty do fine with limited amounts of gore, though Black Ops certainly stepped it up in the campaign. I liked its inclusion in WaW's multiplayer as well, if only because blowing arms off with the MG42 was awesome. I couldn't imagine, say, Mass Effect with lots of gore. It just doesn't fit the setting, being that its all shiny spaceships and armor. I also find it strange when some games only go halfway with it. Half-Life 2, for example. You can bisect the zombies, but not the Combine. Its a weird distinction, but at the same time part of me thinks it would be kind of weird if you could.

 

[David Hebda]

Senseless violence is well... senseless. I prefer my violence to have meaning, purpose. While I do occasionally enjoy games like Unreal, Saints row (more cartoony) and what not I really like the Mass Effect series and other with a deeper story and a reason for the violence. Honestly I think violent video games are the one thing keeping this generation from falling apart (anyone between the are of 30 and 20) From what I have seen and who I have talked to, and personal experience violence and extreme violence in video games is preventing more violence then the media claims it inspires.

Seriously how many times have you had a bad day, your just pissed off so you go home, put in an ultra violent game and just blast/hack/chop/slice your way to a calmer self. Seriously without those games I think a lot of people would be "going postal" and the like. (personally I like physical exhaustion better chopping fire wood and the like but that isn't always an option)

 

[jpoon]

I'm fine with blood and gore but it does not make a game. I am just as fine with next to no gore but on shooters you need some form of feedback when you are shooting someone/something or it just feels pretty meaningless. I say yes when it is necessary.

 

[Shirokurou]

Lots of personal, pretty realistic one-on-one violence, but not much gore

Actually, my favorite uses of blood would be in
Devil May Cry 3 (DMC4 got nerfed a bit)
And Metal Gear Solid

 

[babinro]

Dragon Age 1&2 and RE4 are among my favorite games of all time...so yes.

Graphical violence has never been a selling point for me though. For each violent game I play there's several toned down ones.

 

[renegade7]

In EVE Online I probably kill a few hundred thousand spaceship crewmen every day (of course, capsuleers can come back, so they don't count) Borderlands was pretty messy too. I play a lot of RTS games also, so there's a lot of violence going on there.

But I've never really been a fan of unnecessarily gratuitous violence, if it doesn't need to be there, then development resources were wasted on that instead of improving the game itself.

 

[Eggsnham]

So, as we all know, there are lots of people who like to harp on about violent video games and their terrible influences. But whenever I see this, I can't help but think about by own favorite games - games like Minecraft, Civilization, Mass Effect, Portal, TES... of those, only Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls are meaningfully violent, and even they barely feature any gore or totally senseless killing in the spirit of what Fox News seems to think video games are about.

I was wondering about the rest of you - we all know games like Postal or Mortal Kombat exist, but are those really representative of what we actually enjoy? How violent are your favorite games? Did you ever go through a phase where you enjoyed more violent games than you do now? What changed?

I like violence in my games because I'm almost never violent in real life, and like to release stress and other such things on virtual people in videogames.

Head-splosions make me giddy and happy, and a good story only adds to the feeling.

I also like some of the less violent games like Minecraft and more recently, From Dust.

 

[metal mustache]

I have always found myself enjoying my violent actions in video games more if their is a lot of blood. I remember playing assasin's creed, the first time i ever performed a counter kill move, I was just like, ho-ly shit. Hmm, didn't yahtzee recently talk about how weapons in games are funner if their attacks carry a lot of 'weight'? I think that might be a big part of the fun I had at that point, since although there is alot of blood, there is never any decapitation or dismemberment in that game. It was also cool how other enemies would flinch and be visibly demoralized Whenever Altair Grabbed one of them and stabbed him repeatedly, tossing him to the ground and florishing to the rest again.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Not a single mention of Ninja Gaiden 2? A game where chopping off limbs and heads is a minutely occurrence at least?

 

[Magicman10893]

I like games that are violent (Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, Gears of War, God of War, Mass Effect, Fallout, TES, Two Worlds 2, Dragon Age, etc.) but that isn't what is necessary for me to have fun.

As a side note, I hate it when games aren't reasonably gory. When I dig into someone with a chainsaw, or slash them with a sword, or shoot them in the face with a shotgun and there is no evidence on the body that anything happened to them, I hate it. Saints Row 2 lets me use a chainsaw to cut through crowds of people, yet nothing happens to their bodies when you stab them all the way through and cut them from the waist to the head. It looks like they just dropped dead on the ground after having a heart attack or something.

 

[SilentCom]

The guts speak to me and they MORE GORE! =P

 

[Foxbat Flyer]

Violence out the wazoo for me!