What's the most violent/gory video game you've ever played?

[torben]

I know there are alot of violent video games out there right now, but what games have you guys played that actually grossed you out? I have to say that the one game that still grosses me out is the original Mortal Kombat. Subzero's fatality where he rips out your spinal court still makes me go "EEEEEEEWWW!" every time.

[BraheSilver]

While playing System Shock 2, I had to spend five minutes dithering around the escape pod because I was really didn't want to step outside. Those of you who have played it that far should know what I'm talking about.

GTA3 is pretty danged violent, but not in a gruesome fashion. Describing it to others, however, is best to be avoided.

I'll mention the Postal 2 demo, which sounds pretty nasty from just reading the reviews. However, just downloading the file makes my computer crash, so it seems Og doesn't want me to try it.

[KGS]

Carmageddon. Gotta be Carmageddon.

I mean, come on. This is the game where you drive over pedestrians for points. And not just as something you can do on the side, it's the whole point of the game. I don't think it's even beatable with just straight racing, though I tried a couple times.

It's really kinda trippy when you play that game for six hours and go driving for real. I'd think, "Hmm, that group of peds on the corner could get me a 4x combo with a Bonus For Artistic Impression if I turned the wheel just so..."

[Drastic]

While playing System Shock 2, I had to spend five minutes dithering around the escape pod because I was really didn't want to step outside. Those of you who have played it that far should know what I'm talking about.

Hmm. You're talking about the last third of the game where you take the fight to the Many, right? I don't recall that being particularly gory, but that may be overshadowed by the annoyance that suffuses the memory.

I second Carmageddon 1 (and 2--whose major distinction was now limbs could fly off separately). I played the original Postal when it was in free public beta, and that stands out mostly because of all the sampled screaming-in-terror-and-pain going on ("My eyes! My eyes!")

[green_bladder]

Worms

Ok, no seriously, I've played a couple of gory ones including those mentioned above (Postal and Carmageddon), but Mortal Kombat (the original, and part 2) would get my vote because that was one of the first games I was truly addicted to due to its relatively new genre and interactivity (at the time).

I mean, in what other game would you have the chance to decapitate your opponent, slice em 'n dice 'em and pull out their hearts? Certainly none at the time.

Oh, and the idea to add 'babalities' and 'frienships' to MK3 was ridiculous and hopelessly pathetic.

[DreadCthulhu]

I just got the Postal 2 demo - it does get pretty violent/gory/sickening. You can urinate on people, then cut their heads off with a shovel. Or blow their brains out with a gun. Or other things like that.

[Keith Berry]

Originally posted by green_bladder
Worms
Oh, and the idea to add 'babalities' and 'frienships' to MK3 was ridiculous and hopelessly pathetic.

I'm pretty sure that "friendships" and "babalites" were first available for MK2.....at least for the Sega Genesis version.

I think the idea was more of a joke than anything else, but I remember a rep from some video game company giving a statement to the press, to the effect of: "People shouldn't complain about the violence of the game.....after all, there is an option to make a "friendship" with your defeated opponent instead of killing him."

[Nanoda]

I haven't played SS2, but I've played all the rest listed. I guess Carmageddon 1/2 could qualify in the most-people-mowed-down category. Other games with mere guns can't touch the splatter. I've got to say the "gore" in MK seemed tacked on to me though. Like most other games, doesn't rate more than a "hmm" really. OTOH, while Postal 1 & 2 aren't the absolute goriest games around, they are the only games I'd actually be ashamed/embarassed to have someone catch me playing. It takes a really rough day at work to play that game; any other time, and it just seems a bit anti-social to be whanging heads off with a shovel.

[green_bladder]

Originally posted by Keith Berry
I'm pretty sure that "friendships" and "babalites" were first available for MK2.....at least for the Sega Genesis version.

I think the idea was more of a joke than anything else, but I remember a rep from some video game company giving a statement to the press, to the effect of: "People shouldn't complain about the violence of the game.....after all, there is an option to make a "friendship" with your defeated opponent instead of killing him."

Yep, my mistake. You're right about that, it was the 'animality' they added to MK3 wasn't it?

[Murcielago]

The Carmageddon series was bad, but I think Soldier of Fortune 1 & 2 were worse. In those games the objective became to shoot off body parts of your enemies just to see their reaction before you finished them.

[Revtim]

I've played Postal 2 (the full game) through a couple times. It's pretty rough. You can blow apart people's heads with the shotgun, in which case you see chards of white skull flying in addition to chunks of brain. And sometimes when you burn someone to "death", they aren't actually dead afterwards, but try to crawl away pathetically. And for some reason, you can put a cat on the end of your shotgun and shoot through it, although I wasn't able to figure out what that gains you, if anything.

After you beat it once you can play an "enhanced game", where in addition to more powerups and more powerful weapons, you piss napalm(!).

And the game "plot" is mighty tasteless. One of the tasks you have to accomplish is to take piss on your father's grave. A church is attacked by muslim stereotype terrorists. And the last task is to deliver a birthday present to uncle Dave, who turns out to be:

SPOILER:

David Koresh. This level is you fighting the ATF while they invade the Branch Davidian compound.

They thankfully left out burning children.

[Lynn Bodoni]

Parasite Eve is the goriest game I've ever played. Lots of gross stuff. I liked the game itself, but I was sort of grossed out by a lot of the scenes. I've heard that PE2 is even gorier, which is why I didn't buy it and play it.

[Miller]

Doom. It had literal rivers of blood.

[leafrog]

Well, I don't play many games, but the one I have played which fits this category was Red Neck Rampage. Damn, that was a fun game...totally got into your head. I still think about some of the locales and can't remember if it is a place I used to go in real life or if it was just on the game....

And the shooting! And arrows, tipped with dynamite. Yee ha!
After I mastered the game, I would go through and try to kill every living thing (whole bunch of chickens and pigs in every scene...)

Get off my land!

[klockwerk]

Back in the day, Blood was quiet the gory game. Then a year later (I think) Soldier of Fortune came out. That was quite gory; being able to take a shotgun to someone's gut and observe as their innards spilled out.

SOFII was even more gory than the original, but the gameplay was terrible. Every one in awhile I reload that game to play through again. There's nothing wrong with running into a room with a shotgun and blowing off people's legs, then cracking their skulls apart right?

As for Postal 2, it's not as much so violent as it is just disturbing and sick (pissing in people's mouths to make them throw up? That's just a bit beyond my limit)

[RawkStah]

The demo version of Soldier of Fortune I had a de-bug mode that allowed you to spawn anything in the game. You could tie the spawn command to a macro, and then just sit there and shoot skeet. Of course, the thugs I was spawning might not have actually been named Skeet...

Mark of Kri for PS2 was pretty odd. Featured Disney-style character designs (I think the designers worked of Don Bluth at one point), but realistic violence. Chopping people in half, beheadings, all that good stuff.

[Antimanics]

Something by Bloodlust Software.

[TheRealJohnPeat]

I'll 2nd Mark of Kri - for a game which isn't courting the 'blood and guts' market particularly - it's seriously nasty in places...

Each 'killing move' is shown off to it's best degree - you don't just stab people on the ground, you "stir the sword around" - you sneak up on people and then rather than just cut their throads you lop off the entire head in grandiose stylee etc. etc.

Not for the kiddies that one

Games like Postal are deliberately made to offend - free publicity means sales etc etc - and MK and GTA are just 'parody violence' (tho that's an argument I'm not getting into

TTFN

JP

[flybynight]

Originally posted by KGS
Carmageddon. Gotta be Carmageddon.

I remember if you hit a pedestrian just right, you could knock off a leg, and they'd hop around on one leg with blood spurting out until you finished them off. And you could run over animals too... any game that has a slider bar for "Gore" in the set-up menu has my vote

[Badtz Maru]

I bought Postal 2 after playing the demo - the game is insanely fun, quite unlike any FPS I have ever played. Yeah, the graphics and the AI are not exactly state-of-the-art, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. As far as gore, it's not really that bad, though. You have only a handful of gore effects - you have the 'burnt' skin that characters have after burning to death, you have the blood sprays and puddles from kills, you have decapitation (head intact) from the shovel, and you have decapitation (head splattered) from the shotgun. It's not the amount of blood and guts that makes the game so over the top, it's the sheer scale of the mayhem, and the insanity of some of the stranger weapons (BTW, the cats acts as silencers). My favorite so far is the Diseased Cow Head. You throw it, and where it lands it emits a cloud of vapors that makes anyone nearby throw up blood until they die. After the vapors wear off you can kick it or shoot it and often get it to emit the fumes again.

Soldier of Fortune 2 had much more realistic and gorey effects. You could shoot off any body part, to varying degrees. The head was made up of something like 19 separate parts so you could have a countless variety of partial decapitations.

[Gumbercules]

I know it's kind of old, but one time hwne I was playing Quake 3 Arena I hit a guy with a rocket. That may not sound so bad, but we were both in midair when it happened. He was apparently low on health and armor because when I hit the ground I was treated to a shower of blood and giblets.

I have played EVERY single fps type game for the PC in the last 5 years, but that is the grossest thing that ever happened.

[Incubus]

My vote goes to Postal 2. Even when you set people on fire, it takes them a LONG time to die. After the fire goes out all their skin is burned off and they crawl around screaming in agony. Then they curl up in a fetal position and twitch for a while.

Also, Postal 2 has the 'karma' engine which allows you to knock around some objects (garbage cans, boxes, etc) well this includes dead bodies. Probably the most brutal thing you can do utilizes this:

One of the items in the game is catnip. If you EAT the catnip, you get this wierd high where everything in the game (except you) is in slow motion. You can start whacking a dead body in midair when doing this. Or, better yet, set a corpse on fire and whack it into a crowd of people. Pretty brutal!

I saw a screenshot where someone did a mock 'house of 1000 corpses by getting as many dead bodies as he could find and knocking them into the basement of the house. I swear there must have been over a hundred dead bodies piled on top of each other. The Karma engine is pretty interesting.

[HPL]

Fallout and Fallout 2 had some pretty gory and disturbing deaths(I.E., the Lietient in the military base litteratily falls to pieces, and the Overseer on bloody mess, well, I didn't realize one could crawl that far with half their guts hanging out).

[Sublight]

The bloodiest one I've played is Unreal Tournament, although I realize this is a few years behind now.

UFC 2: Tapout is rather nice, as by the end of a long match the ring will be liberally doused with blood. The 'crick' sound effect when you bend your opponent just the right way and make him tap out is particularly nasty.

And of course I've done lots of not very pleasant things to my Sims, but that's not so gory.

[Dunderman]

I'd just like to mention the game Technocop. It's been over a decade since I played it, but my adolescent self loved the way the victims convulsed in death throes as blood spurted from their disintegrated chests.

[klockwerk]

Anyone remember a 3dRealms game called Rise of The Triad (ROTT for short?). Much like Doom (and all the other Doom clones at the time).

I remember a cheat code that enabled extra blood and gore, so if you nailed an enemy with an RPG, the entire area would rain gibs for about five whole seconds.

Along with that, you would be able to shoot a certain enemy, then he'd drop his gun and beg to live. You could choose to end his life (I usually stuffed a rocket down his face, and enjoy another blood-shower), or turn your back only to have him get back up and attack you again.

Those were the days.

[Harvey The Heavy]

The granddaddy of them all is Chiller, an old arcade shooting game. The objective is to torture and kill helpless victims in a dungeon. They can't fight back, and they can't get away. You've got heads blowing apart, decapitations, rivers of blood, the rack, and rodents feeding on the leftovers. You have to give them credit for actually getting this released in 1986.

[Revtim]

klockwek, the ROTT cheat that made it gorier was called "Ludicrous gibs". The best-named cheat ever, IMO.

[Morbo]

I came into this thread to mention ROTT. Aside from the lovely Ludicrous Gibs (which you were sometimes rewarded with during normal gameplay), you also had the Flamethrower. It shot a wall of flames at the bad guys, who all burned to a crisp, and when the charred skin fell off the skeletons, it played a little xylophone sound as the bones collapsed to the ground.

Remember that level that began with a squadron of bad guys getting mowed down by those rotating blades? Sublime. God mode....Dog mode...the Louisville Slugger...fantastic bosses...("They'll bury you in a lunchbox!!")....good times.

Geeky aside: This was the first game to allow sounds to be played Networked on opponents' computers through TCP/IP. You could press the Function keys to taunt your opponents. "Where are yooo......" "Over heeeeeeere..." "BEHIND YOU!!" Truly a fantastic game.

[float_flyer]

Anyone remember the good ol Turbografx 16? They had a game called "Splatterhouse" that was pretty groundbreaking for gore at the time. Certainly not the realistic people-gore of some of today's games but at the time I was thinking "eww, gross, cool!"

[mouthbreather]

Originally posted by KGS
It's really kinda trippy when you play that game for six hours and go driving for real. I'd think, "Hmm, that group of peds on the corner could get me a 4x combo with a Bonus For Artistic Impression if I turned the wheel just so..."

Not gross, but same thing happens to me when I am playing a lot of LAN Halo.

I saw a golf cart on the side of the road last week, and the first thing that pops into my head is...I wish I had the rocker launcher on me now, that cart is going about 10MPH. If I lead him by 8 feet or so I bet I could flip that motherfucker end over end and make him land right in that lake....

It's a good thing I don't have a rocker launcher.

[MSU 1978]

I'm not into violent video games, but I do like to play Fallout with the trait "Bloody Mess". Love the noises that are made when you kill the big rats, like dropping a plastic sack of vegetable soup onto the driveway. Sometimes you kill someone and they get blown to bits all the while shouting "yaaaahhhh".

[Johnny L.A.]

I've only played a couple of gory games: Blood, its follow-on Cryptic Passage, and Blood 2. The last was fairly lame, but the first two were quite amusing. Especially in "god mode", where you can kill things with your pitchfork. (It takes a while, and makes a nice sound." There were always gobbets of bloody flesh lying around.

Unfortunately I lost the ability to play it when I got my new computer a few years ago because the clock is too fast.

[pcarney]

Aliens Vs. Predator II had a fair amount of blood, including a opening level where you had to chew your way out of some poor guy's chest. That first Postal game was pretty over the top..with the wounded crawling away screaming 'I can't feel my legs' or 'I can't breathe'. I found it amusing for about ten minutes, then its just silly.

I saw a demo for Doom III, and that's pretty damn gory and pretty damn scary. Perhaps my favorite death scene- the monster rips off your head and eats it. You get to see the whole thing from the first person perspective. Hee hee hee.

[HoviBaby]

Soldier of Fortune 2

Absolutely in-fucking-sane. Each bad guy's body has something like 30 points of detachment. A shot to the dome, thier face caves in. Shotgun blast to the chest at close range, they fly back five feet or crumple in a pile of bloody mush. Wing em with a sniper shot and thier skull fragments and sprays a bloody mist. There are other games out there with more blood, but none are as realistic. Anyone who has played it will agree.

[Zebra]

Civ/Civ 2/ Civ 3

I wiped out entire Civilizations in those games. Hundreds dead? Try millions you light weights.


Really though I loved Carmageddon 2 and I wand Postal 2 and GTA 3.

[Kombucha'ShroomPerson]

Another vote for Soldier of Fortune 2 - the ghoul II engine was designed largely to be able to depict graphic levels of gore. As a result, you have game in which live and dead enemies can be violently blown literally into shreds of flesh, bones jut through skin, you can shoot limbs off, and gunshot look pretty much as I imagine they would if you were to actually shoot someone (having never shot anyone myself). Whether or not this is a good thing is debatable.

Its a pretty flat game as far as gameplay goes, though.

Otherwise, maybe the Grand theft Auto games? With the monks?

[asterion]

Originally posted by Zebra
Civ/Civ 2/ Civ 3

I wiped out entire Civilizations in those games. Hundreds dead? Try millions you light weights.


Really though I loved Carmageddon 2 and I wand Postal 2 and GTA 3.

Forget that. Master of Orion/MOO2/MOO3. Wipe out entire galactic civilizations (especially in MOO2 with the stellar converter). Beat that.

[bernse]

I downloaded the Postal 2 demo last night. Heh. My 50 year old stepfather almost pissed himself laughing! Unnecessary gore rocks!

[hijack] Is there a way to get past the pesky time limt of the demo level?[/hijack]

[Evil Death]

Originally posted by Harvey The Heavy
The granddaddy of them all is Chiller, an old arcade shooting game. The objective is to torture and kill helpless victims in a dungeon. They can't fight back, and they can't get away. You've got heads blowing apart, decapitations, rivers of blood, the rack, and rodents feeding on the leftovers. You have to give them credit for actually getting this released in 1986.

Shock horror, it's an Exidy game. Exidy were known for the infamous Death Race, the 1976 "racing" game in which you would drive over fleeing figures to score points. In design, it was called Pedestrian.

While we're on the subject of early arcade games, how about 1975's Shark Attack? (Hint: You're the shark.)

[Zebra]

Originally posted by bernse
[hijack] Is there a way to get past the pesky time limt of the demo level?[/hijack]

In another thread Badtz Maru said

Oh, and if you get the demo, bring up the console with the ` key, and type SET GAMESTATE DEMOTIME 9999. This will increase the time limit from 7 minutes to around 160, giving you plenty of time to explore the one area that comes with the demo.

[Zebra]

Originally posted by asterion
Forget that. Master of Orion/MOO2/MOO3. Wipe out entire galactic civilizations (especially in MOO2 with the stellar converter). Beat that.

Entire GALATIC CIVILIZATIONS?

That is so unrealistic.

[djxiii]

After a year or so of playing Unreal Tournament with my really lame video card, I finally upgraded to a Matrox that was happy to run the GL drivers and hardware accelleration. What a difference!

My kids and I were blown away by the massive increase in blood and guts when opponents were gibbed. More often than not my son will call me into the room to show off the latest abbatoir-like corridor that has bloody ruin sprayed across the floor, walls and ceiling with the sundry body parts scattered about. All from excessive use of the rocket launcher. He's good with that thing!

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally posted by Drastic
I second Carmageddon 1 (and 2--whose major distinction was now limbs could fly off separately).

The third one was my favorite simply because there was a point to going through all the checkpoints. Each checkpoint added about 10 seconds to the timer. I don't know if the first one did that because it didn't like my system for some reason.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally posted by green_bladder
Worms

That's extra funny if you're referring to the original 1983 connect-the-dots game.

[bernse]

Originally posted by Zebra
In another thread Badtz Maru said

Thanks muchly! I can now pee on people to my hearts content! <happy dance!>

[Kilt-wearin' man]

Lemmings. The carnage! Little green guys falling en masse to their deaths! Exploding green guys! My brain still reels from it!

Oh, and Carmageddon.

[Gozu Tashoya]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this game yet (I guess it helps that the game was never released), but Thrill Kill was pretty damn sick. Just something nasty about a midget in a satan suit wearing stilts jamming one of those stilts down your throat, you know?

[helenahandbasket]

i'm putting in another vote for blood and blood 2:the chosen. i remember tons of.... well blood... being spurted in those games.

another i remember fondly is nocturne. i used to use an ax on the zombies and it had this chu-wack sound to it when you hit them. and if you chopped off a limb they would pick it up and try to beat with you with it. and if you walked through an area where you had killed things you would leave little bloody footprints for a while. what fun.

[ElwoodCuse]

Who remembers Crusader: No Remorse and its sequel, No Regret? The damn games won't run in Windows (DOS only) so I can't make them run on my computer any more, but damn, was that a chilling game. You could set people on fire and they would run around screaming, melt the flesh off their bones, freeze and shatter them, make them evaporate into goo, it was freaking great.