What are the most violent video games?

The thread on Manhunt 2 has me thinking about the topic. What are the most explicitly violent video games that have ever been made. They can be on any console and I’m including PC games as well. I remember that Postal 2 got a bad rap but the game itself was not that explicit or gorey.

Grand Theft Auto.
Mortal Kombat.

First you have to define what you mean by “violence”. If it’s just a question of body count, then something like Defcon or Civilization (where you can have nuclear wars) would win. For some people, the problem with violence in video games is graphic depiction of blood and gore, for some the problem is that the violence happens in a particularly objectionable context (the character is killing police officers or making a snuff film, for example). Some people have a problem with the violence being too immersive- such as in first-person shooters or in a game where you use a gun as a controller rather than a less gun-like game controller or the mouse and keyboard.

I have in mind more explicit violence than just a body count, but you can still throw those in if you want.

Well in Quake you were always able to blow someone up with a rocket launcher at close range watch their bits of gore fly in different directions and kick their bloody skull around the room.

I think at a certain point there isn’t really much more violent you can get in a world where being rewarded for head shots is a standard feature on most video games.

There was a lot of controversy about Night Trap when it first came out. I think it along with Mortal Kombat were the games that precipitated the creation of the video game rating system.

I think the Soldier of Fortune games can probably reach somewhere on that list. They had very detailed damage for when you shot people on different parts of the body, limb removal and the like.

There was also the fact that male soldiers responded appropriately when you shot them in the groin.

Hehe.

God of War is pretty extreme, particularly some of the boss fights.

The original Manhunt was the goriest I’ve seen. While Unreal and Quake have lots of blood and guts, it’s all very high speed. Manhunt actually stops the action to show you jamming a crowbar into someone’s head and cracking their skull open, choking someone with a baseball bat until they drop to their knees and then stepping back to line-drive their brains across the walls, or swinging a sickle up between someone’s legs and ripping them open from crotch to anus. Plus the continual gleeful commentary of the director who at one point has an orgasm as you cut someone’s throat.

Great game, and I’ll be waiting to pick up the sequel.

I always thought the original Postal (speak not of the 2nd) was quite violent in it’s tone, if not in explicit graphics. The civilians running for cover, the wounded screaming for help, executing said wounded… Always struck me as disturbing.

God of War - One of my favorites
Resident Evil - Another favorite
Grand Theft Auto

The Carmageddon series. What other games give you a “Pile Driver Bonus” for smashing a pedestrian against a wall?

The body count question is interesting. Masters of Orion allowed you to destroy a planet, I think. Are there games that allow you to destroy galaxies or the entire universe?

Daniel

There’s a game which allows the player to cause a sun to go supernova, wiping out everything in the immediate area; IIRC, up to about half the galaxy, depending on the placement of the other star systems.

Can’t edit when the link won’t respond.

I just remembered making stars go supernova in some old Star Trek text games, causing devestation on nearby planets. The Federation wasn’t too happy about that. :slight_smile:

The old PC game Harvester was pretty nasty. You wake up with amnesia in a small Wisconsin town in the 1950s. Everyone speaks to you in a cryptic way. Even though you remember nothing, the town seems a little off. The cowboys and Indians show on TV is graphically gory. The firehouse is populated by flaming homosexuals who drive a pink firetruck. Everyone in town drives a Tucker. The nuclear missile base is guarded by a staunch John Birch-er with no legs. The kids in town go to Gein High, who the principal says, “was named for a great man, whose first name escapes me.”

The object of the game seems to be to gain entrance to The Lodge, a secret Masonic kind of society in the center of town. But you will only be admitted entrace by completing a series of tasks that become increasingly more destructive and violent.

The first two levels of the game are pretty standard point and click, solve the puzzle fare. The third level, however, when you finally enter the Lodge is a non-stop bloodbath. Turns out that nothing in this town is real. You’re actually in a virtual reality matrix. The Lodge members, it is revealed, use this tool to groom future serial killers for their own unstated purposes. At the end of the game, you have two choices. Kill Stephanie, the only other “real” person in town who’s done nothing but help you and is also hooked up to the matrix, and continue your life as a serial killer. Or marry Stephanie in the matrix and have a happy virtual reality existence which will last for about five minutes before they induce a fatal heart attack on both of you.

Here’s a bunch of screenshots.

This seems like an extremely awesome game. I really wish they made more adventure-style games.

It really was. I think I’m the only person on the face of the earth who actually LIKED Harvester. Everyone else whined about how old and tired the interface was compared to new games. As this was the first PC game I ever played, I didn’t mind that setback.

Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.

Ha! You can’t stop me!

I could walk into someone’s home in Postal 2, wait till they got wound up, stun gun them so they fall to the ground and shake while piss in their pants. At this point I pour petrol on them, run a trail to the door and light the trail. The flames run across the room and engulf them. Sometimes they just lay there burning and sometimes they jumped up and started screaming and burning. Once they give up and die, I can pull out my fat-one and piss on their corpse.

Now that’s fun!