Pain Instead of Entertainment: The Most Painful, Heartbreaking Games

Table of Contents

• Pain Instead of Entertainment: The Most Painful, Heartbreaking Games
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• This War of Mine
• Pathologic 2
• That Dragon, Cancer
• Spec Ops: The Line
• The Walking Dead – Season One
• Dark Souls
• Silent Hill 2
• Shadow of the Colossus
• Papers, Please
• Valiant Hearts: The Great War
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Spec Ops: The Line

The beginning of Spec Ops: The Line is a bit deceptive as it foreshadows a garden-variety action shooter. But in fact, from the very first minutes, a gloomy play on our emotions begins. The main character is supposed to do a reconnaissance in the city after a sandstorm and return, without firing a single bullet. The mission, however, gets more and more complicated and brutal. Careless shooting at enemies turns into a genocide of innocent civilians inflicted by the brutal white phosphorus, with the following death of our teammates.

The game then breaks the fourth wall in successive stages, putting the blame for all this on the player. It brings about a sense of guilt, and over time, it turns out that the main character's motivations were based on hallucinations, and he himself was plunging into madness. At the end of this completely unnecessary mayhem, only pain and death remain. There are no winners, no "mission complete" screens. Inspired by the classic novel, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the creators of Spec Ops: The Line took a bit of an advantage of the naivety in our carefree approach to computer shooters, in an attempt to subvert our expectations and show the gruelling nature of armed conflicts.

1. More about Spec Ops: The Line