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

The Walking Dead – Season One

The peak of popularity of zombie movies and games a few years ago went some way to show that the real problem during a zombie apocalypse will not be hordes of the undead, but other people. In a world of lawlessness and in the face of disappearance of all moral standards, the dormant, lowest instincts and filthiest qualities of men prevail. This is what the adventure game The Walking Dead by Telltale Games is focused on. Instead of mowing down hundreds of zombies, the focus here is on human motives and interactions, noble and vile deeds, and the question of is worth trusting.

The game presents various decisions, and although their importance is not so great in the long run, each such choice carries a huge dose of emotions. Even if the effect is predictable or has no bearing on further events, it's all about the feelings we get at the time of making these decisions. The creators did a splendid job, because the choices in The Walking Dead really boil down to our own feelings towards a given person, and to what we'd like to achieve ourselves. And then we have the most painful, saddest ending in the history of games – a truly unforgettable moment.

1. The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series in our encyclopedia