Better Than It Sounds/Video Games A-F

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Ah, video games. No other media allows Refuge in Audacity so often. And most of the time it works.

Please sort new titles alphabetically to avoid duplicate entries.

  • 1213: A clone busts out of a prison in a laboratory complex in space, finds out he shouldn't even have bothered.
  • 3D Dot Game Heroes: The Legend of Zelda ripoff In a World made of billions of tiny cubes.
  • 3 in Three: A personified number 3 has to fix the computer she lives in by solving puzzles.
  • 3-on-3 NHL Arcade: Bobbleheads play hockey.
  • 720°: A skateboarder tries to raise enough money to keep skateboarding. This annoys the local insects.
  • 8 Eyes: In a post-apocalyptic future, a falconer defeats and has tea with the world's royalty in a grand effort to solve a logic puzzle.
  • 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: The Pyro from Team Fortress 2 with an odd number fetish kidnaps a group of anime stereotypes to an ocean cruiser where they have to solve first grade math problems - or die a very gruesome death. A lot of debate is had over the solutions of said problems. This may eventually lead them to screw up the spacetime continuum with the dramatic use of pseudoscience. Or everyone dies. Also, mummies are involved.
  • AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity: You go BASE jumping. It's a very long way to the ground.
  • Abobo's Big Adventure: A bunch of NES characters has kidnapped your son. Are you a bad enough Abobo to rescue him?
  • Ace Attorney: A visual novel series set in a courtroom where you play as lawyers.
    • [[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]: A lawyer with spiky hair defends the innocent through courtroom antics and really dramatic pointing, beating down an old friend and said friend's mentor in the process. His old boss sticks around to help from beyond the grave.
    • Phoenix Wright: Justice for All: Said lawyer now has to beat down a girl nearly ten years younger than him and knows how to Whip It Good.
    • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations: Said lawyer now has to beat down a sick blind guy who Must Have Caffeine.
    • [[Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney]]: A different lawyer with slightly less spiky hair defends the innocent through courtroom antics and really dramatic pointing. The lawyer from the first game sticks around to help, to the outrage of many fans, mostly because the previous lawyer is now a cynical hobo, and his old friends are nowhere to be found.
    • ~Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth~: The aforementioned old friend of the first lawyer gets hysterically laughed at, mistaken for a drunk, tied up, repeatedly accused of murder, and even assaulted by a badger in the course of solving crimes though the use of logic and really dramatic pointing. Out of the advertised 15 hours of gameplay, the last ten are spent arguing with a human laugh track, a wolf and a tree.
    • Gyakuten Kenji 2: Aforementioned old friend takes on a series of new cases involving ice cream salesmen, clowns, chefs, old ladies, and Godzilla knockoffs. His middle-aged dad gets in on the action for the chefs. Meanwhile, a teenager with Idiot Hair and a complete and utter inability to solve crimes tries anyways and gathers an English fanbase that is suddenly stopped dead by No Export for You.
  • Ace Combat series: Shoot Em Ups for aircraft fetishists.
  • ActRaiser: God and his sycophantic sidekick lead the people to salvation. Or destruction.
  • Adventure Island: A fat, diabetic man wearing nothing but a grass skirt and a baseball cap kills animals and eats lots of fruit in order to rescue his girlfriend.
    • Adventure Island II: Same as above, except now he enlists dinosaurs to help carry him around.
    • Super Adventure Island II: Fat diabetic man suffers from amnesia. He forgets about his malady and starts wearing clothes.
  • Adventure Of Valkyrie: Some guy drops the keys to his house; you play an angel who is sent by God to help him pick them up. The entire population of the world conspires to stop you.
  • Adventures of Lolo: To save his girlfriend, a furball steals hearts from demons and traps them in eggs. When a more marketable puffball comes along, the couple make a Face Heel Turn.
  • Adventures to Go!: Freelance warriors become real heroes by going on simulated quests.
  • Aero Fighters: A dolphin, baby, mother and daughter, Steampunk-style cyborg, J-pop idol, ninja, viking, gender-confused punk rocker, among others are recruited to stop an alien menace.
  • Agarest Senki: A man dies in the first few minutes. He gets revived, ends a war, and bangs one of three chicks. Rinse and repeat four more times.
  • Age of Empires: Reenact historical battles with a mouse, three times over.
  • AI War Fleet Command: Wipe out a cheating AI who can stomp you flat at any point and often will.
  • Alan Wake: An author with writer's block fights off creatures from a book he wrote last week and tries to save his wife with a flashlight. A rock concert is a viable weapon.
    • Alan Wake's American Nightmare: An author in Arizona runs around a small-town rest stop, looks at the stars in an observatory, and tries to watch a movie. The movie doesn't work, so he does it all again. And again.
  • Alien Soldier: A tiger tries to kill a bird.
  • Alley Cat: A homeless tries to impress his love interest by engaging into acts of vandalism. Brooms try to prevent this.
  • All Points Bulletin: A massive group of Virtual Paper Dolls play cops and robbers.
  • Alone in the Dark: Guy or gal gets stuck in a house and cannot leave.
    • Alone in the Dark 2: Guy gets stuck in another house and cannot leave. Pirates.
    • Alone in the Dark 3: Guy goes looking for gal from first game, gets stuck in town and cannot leave. Cowboys.
  • Alpha Protocol: Secret agent has been sent to assassinate a terrorist. Turns out said terrorist has received assistance from said agent's own agency. Lots of people are going to die.
    • Alternately: A betrayed secret agent's mission of revenge leads him to shoot-outs with cape-wearing spies, crotchety old men, and a Russian gangster wearing a really tacky jacket. At the end of the story, he surrenders, has a long talk with a man with poor fashion taste, and hundreds of people get killed.
  • Altered Beast: Two guys come back from the dead as lycanthropes to rescue the daughter of a god who kinda sounds like Elmer Fudd.
    • Seven word summary: The Great Steroid Scandal of Ancient Greece.
  • American McGee's Alice: When returning to a place she visited, girl discovers it became Darker and Edgier. To fix it, the girl brutally murders playing cards and chess pieces with toys and commits regicide. This makes her more sane.
    • Alice: Madness Returns: Girl discovers that the fire that killed her family wasn't accidental and goes through her memories to see who started it.
  • American McGee's Grimm: A sarcastic, unhygienic, Sophisticated As Hell dwarf fouls up classic fairy tales wherever he goes.
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent: You walk around in the dark trying to remember why you're walking around in the dark.
  • Amorphous+: A guy goes around whacking Blob Monsters while getting killed a million times.
  • Angband: In order to become powerful enough to defeat the Big Bad, you must kill color-coded monsters and acquire items, most of which are named based on obscure passages in The Silmarillion.
  • Angry Birds: Some eggs get stolen, so the victims retaliate by going kamikaze on their houses.
  • Animal Crossing: You become the indentured servant of a raccoon. Your neighbors randomly hand out pianos, computers, and beds as rewards for completing minor chores.
    • Alternatively: You move into a town inhabited by talking animals who give you big screen TVs and works of art for asking another animal to return a mundane item they borrowed.
  • Ape Escape: Monkeys with magic helmets steal time machines, and you have to catch them.
    • Ape Escape 2: More monkeys try to Take Over the World. The first hero's cousin tries to catch them, aided by a Head Pet.
    • Ape Escape 3: This time the monkeys just want to make you watch crappy television. Their leader is aided by a man with a Funny Afro. Two kids try to catch them this time; one is an Idol Singer.
  • Aquaria: A young girl embarks on a voyage of self discovery, finds love and murders an entire pantheon. She also makes a hell of a pierogi.
  • Arcana Heart: High-School girls beat the crap out of each other with Elemental Powers for no apparent reason. Ma-Ti's equivalent of the game kills an evil angel.
    • Arcana Heart 2 More girls beat the crap out of each other. The evil angel's younger sister wants you dead.
      • Arcana Heart 3 Even more girls beat the crap out of each other. A Yandere tries to blow Japan sky high.
  • Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura: Magic and technology coexist by canceling each other out.
  • Arc the Lad: The Chosen One tries to stop The End of the World as We Know It by becoming the Magic Knight version of Bin Laden; three sequels deal with new heroes trying to clean up his mess.
  • Arkanoid: An evil facelike entity intercepts the escape pod of a doomed starship. To escape, the pilot allows the vessel to be struck repeatedly by a destructive projectile.
    • Break Quest: To foil an evil corporation's plan, you have to destroy a few thousand bricks.
    • Arkanoid DS: the Prince's cousins Alien Sentai must fight off a lawsuit from Namco invading hoard of blocks.
    • Block Breaker Deluxe: Breaking blocks is Serious Business
  • Armored Core: Two MegaCorps take the term "hostile takeover" a little too seriously.
    • Armored Core: Project Phantasma: A Battle Couple fight to stop a crazy man from hooking himself up to a computer.
    • Armored Core: Master of Arena: A young man takes time off from a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to compete in giant robot cage matches.
    • Armored Core 2: A retelling of the American Revolution on Mars only everyone is Benedict Arnold.
    • Armored Core 2: Another Age: A mercenary travels the world doing odd-jobs for various employers. He accidentally allows a terrorist to gain access to a space elevator. It's really quite boring.
    • Armored Core 3: A conspiracy nut makes REALLY good case for destroying society.
    • Silent Line: Armored Core: Three MegaCorps blatantly ignore the world's most obvious KEEP OUT sign.
    • Armored Core: Nexus: A corporation wants to make the world a better place, yet ends up destroying it.
    • Armored Core: Nine Breaker: Learn how to play the last eight games you just finished playing.
    • Armored Core: Last Raven: An endangered social class exterminates itself.
    • Armored Core 4: A young idealist and her boyfriend inadvertently tear a free market capitalist dystopia a new asshole. Their elderly mentor may or may have wanted this happen.
    • Armored Core for Answer: A faceless, voiceless, personality-less character somehow manages to come across as a complete asshole.
  • Army of Two: A bickering couple of Heterosexual Life Partners run around in painted ski masks, complain about the military, and blow all their money on shiny guns.
  • Art of Fighting: Martial artists seek to pimp-slap a pimp for kidnapping a ho one of the martial artist's sister.
    • Art Of Fighting 2 Martial artists and the one martial artist's sister and father seek to pimp-slap a pimp in a tournament run by a familiar sponsor
    • Art Of Fighting 3 The other martial artist's friend is kidnapped by a rich guy who wants to be The Hulk. A young girl who tells people to "grow up" is the only memorable and most successful new character.
  • Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia: The stupidest psychologist who ever lived fights computer viruses on the magical island of Shining Sky.
    • Alternatively: Sealed Evil in a Can causes computer problems. Among the people trying to stop this are a moron, a teenager with self-esteem issues, and the world's oldest woman.
    • Ar Tonelico II: A more competent psychologist and a mage who can't use magic escort a bitchy priestess around a different magical island while two factions try to either save or destroy it.
      • Alternatively: Girl throws tantrum upon being separated from BFF. The entire world is dragged into it.
    • Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel: Hot female singers with multiple personalities strip down to their underwear during combat. A thirteen year-old does a favor for the first game's Big Bad.
  • Assassin's Creed: A bartender pretends to be the world's greatest assassin on a quest to steal the power of God, who was an alien from Earth.
  • Asteroids: Break rocks into smaller rocks. Try to shoot anyone else who enters this field of rocks.
  • Asura's Wrath: Unstoppable Rage: The Game.
    • Alternate: A Hindu cyborg is framed for treason, his wife is killed, his daughter kidnapped, and then he's thrown from orbit to Earth. He comes back pissed. And every time they kill him, it just makes him angrier.
    • Alternate: A man with breathtaking anger-management issues punches a large man in the finger until he dies from it. He then punches a masked guy in the face, then an old man in the face, then another old man, then an entire fleet. It culminates in him punching a third old man in the face, followed by the planet. Then, after some impromptu heart surgery, he punches God in the face. Then he finally calms down.
  • Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana: A male White Mage and his fairy companion attempt to explain video game mechanics. The world is threatened by evil balloons and a guy with a ponytail.
    • Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny: Excalibur can talk. Turns out to be a total Jerkass. Also turns out to have an Evil Counterpart.
    • Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm: A madman tricks three innocent teenagers into almost nullifying the world's most powerful defense so that an immortal serpent could destroy everything, but this is all secondary to inventing a new dessert, taking orders from a lecherous fairy and fixing a clock.
    • Atelier Annie: In order for a lazy young girl to fulfill her dream of living in paradise, she has to help build one.
    • Atelier Rorona: Snarky and lazy alchemist leaves her shop in the charge of her bumbling apprentice.
    • Atelier Totori: Bumbling apprentice from the previous game adopts bumbling apprentice of her own, who wants to be an adventurer.
  • Athena: The Goddess of War gets bored and takes a walk. There are no survivors.
    • Psycho Soldier: A young girl who looks just like the heroine of the first game gets psychic powers, teams up with a kid who looks like Rambo, and goes out to kill things. Several years later the Rambo look-alike changes his look and they join a major fighting tournament.
    • Crystalis: The girl and kid pose as shapeshifting sages, one more effectively than the other, in a post-apocalyptic world. They help an amnesiac find his friend and destroy The Empire. Then they die.
  • Audiosurf: Pilot a ship listening to music through an amazing Technicolor highway and grab the blocks.
  • Avalon Code: The world is going to end, and you're the one charged with writing the epilogue.
  • Azure Dreams: Your dad goes missing after climbing a very steep monster-infested tower. Naturally, the proper thing for you to do is go there yourself and rescue him.
  • Backyard Sports: 30+ neighborhood kids play sports in sand and mud.
  • Bad Dudes: Find Ronald Reagan so he'll buy you lunch.
  • Bad Mojo: A man embezzling funds from a government grant tries to get out of his apartment building. Household pests and an heirloom from his late mother complicate things.
  • Baldur's Gate: Siblings argue over how to inherit their father's legacy.
    • Baldur's Gate: Tales Of The Sword Coast: Filler.
    • Baldur's Gate II: Shadows Of Amn: An interloper who otherwise has nothing to do with the dispute tries to steal said legacy.
    • Baldur's Gate II: Throne Of Bhaal: Siblings argue over how to inherit their father's legacy.
  • Banjo-Kazooie: A redneck and a snarky girl team up to crush an old woman under a boulder and do jigsaw puzzles. Redneck's sister narrowly escapes transformation into an ogre. Lots of shameless dirty jokes. Rated E.
    • Banjo-Tooie: Redneck and snarky girl team up to blow up animated skeleton of old woman and do jigsaw puzzles. Redneck's sister mysteriously vanishes forever. Numerous direct references to porn, masturbation, and vag-hair; a gay bar with a tranny waitress; and you murder a loving husband and wife for the sake of collectibles. Rated E.
    • Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge: Redneck and snarky girl IN THE PAST! Bee lady gives you an extension. Rated E.
    • Banjo-Pilot: Redneck and snarky girl team up to play Diddy Kong Racing, but find their copy is defective, only having airplanes available to race.
    • Banjo-Kazooie Nuts And Bolts: Redneck and snarky girl team up to play Grand Theft Auto, but find their copy is defective, being rated E and having some assembly required.
    • Alternatively, a bear comes out of retirement to stop his home being redeveloped into tower blocks and malls. To end the struggle, a capricious higher power engineers a bear/witch showdown through worlds of the imagination...IN VEHICLES!
  • The Bard's Tale: Snarky musician seeks coin and cleavage, while maybe saving the world, and all the while bickering with the narrator.
  • Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden: In a post-apocalyptic world, a retired basketball player runs from the police on a quest to rescue his son and save the world.
  • Baten Kaitos: Winged Humanoids use cards to save a World in the Sky with no ocean.
    • Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean: Winged Humanoids with terrible voices search for shiny cards.
    • Baten Kaitos Origins: Two Winged Humanoids and a sarcastic puppet stop the Industrial Revolution.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: An animal-cosplayer spends a night visiting a hospital, beating up patients and the personnel currently in charge and hiding on statues.
    • Alternatively, billionaire dresses up and punches the criminally insane.
    • Batman: Arkham City: Several months later, the same animal-cosplayer is thrown into a ghetto prison and helps a clown with a terminal illness. Many accurate comparisons to Adolph Hitler were made.
  • Battle Chess: A popular board game with deaths thrown in.
  • Battle City: A tank has to protect a bird surrounded by bricks from enemy tanks. Was only popular in places it wasn't officially released.
    • Tank Force: An obscure sequel of the game above which only saw arcade release.
  • The Battle of Olympus: A musician brings his girlfriend back from the dead using brute force, taking credit for the actions of his contemporaries along the way.
  • Battlefield 1942: Fight over a bunch of meaningless flags with outdated weaponry.
  • Battletoads: Three anthropomorphic frogs must defeat a dominatrix by ramming their bikes into drywall. Nobody ever gets past the third stage.
  • Battle Tanx: Blow up a post-apocalyptic America with tanks while stealing women from other people with tanks.
    • Battletanx: Global Assault: Same as above, though add tanks that shoot lasers, tanks that hover, and most of northwest Europe to blow up with them.
  • Bayonetta: Witch with amnesia kills angels. Lots of Fan Service ensues.
    • Rather, a stripper wearing nothing but glasses and her own hair bumbles around a phantom dimension killing angels with guns on her feet and finding herself in impromptu photoshoots.
  • Beat Hazard: Shoot a bunch of random ships and asteroids until you have a seizure.
  • Beatmania: Make musical sound effects by pressing buttons and turning a plastic disc.
  • Berzerk: Green man kills robots and is stalked by bouncy smiley face in electric maze.
  • Betrayal at Krondor: A Well-Intentioned Extremist starts a war so that he can study a big gemstone in peace.
  • Beyond Good and Evil: A sassy photographer, a talking pig, and a rule-obsessed soldier save the world with propaganda.
  • Big Bang Mini: Kill It with Fire...works.
  • Bikini Karate Babes: A large group of attractive women leave themselves abandoned on an uninhabited island, all but one wearing nothing but bikinis, and proceed to lightly tap the crap out of each other. The Sub-Boss has the amazing ability to remove bikini tops and likes it so much she uses it on everyone INCLUDING HERSELF.
  • Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg: A boy and his three friends get transported to a land of chickens, dress in chicken suits, then proceed to spend game rolling around eggs. Oh, and they make the eggs hatch into creatures/hats/items by feeding them fruit. Oh, and all the enemies in the game are lots of crows clumped together.
  • Billy vs. SNAKEMAN: You are a ninja. The god of luck hates ninjas.
    • Reaper plotline: Collect flower petals to lose strength.
    • The Trade plotline: Collect apples to lose stamina.
    • Monochrome plotline: You have pants. Mr. T hates pants.
    • Wasteland plotline: Lose stamina to collect junk.
    • Burger Ninja plotline: You flip burgers. Your boss hates ninjas.
    • r00t plotline: Collect time to lose rare equipment.
    • Pizza Witch plotline: You deliver pizza. The god of luck hates pizza.
    • Hero's Quest plotline: You are in the god of luck's hometown. Mr. T hates the god of luck.
  • The Binding of Isaac: There are lots of enemies. Cry on them to defeat them.
  • Bio-Hazard Battle: Giant organic creatures have taken over a planet. Exterminate them with...another giant organic creature!
  • Bio Menace: Guy with a mullet and mustache runs around shooting mutants. One level requires him to rescue someone from a completely different game.
  • BIOMETAL: The galaxy is under attack by metal aliens! Exterminate them!
  • Bionic Commando: One-armed soldier must defeat thousands of well-armed troops. Without the ability to jump.
  • BioShock (series): Ayn Rand fights The Mafia, twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Then you show up and resolve the situation. With a magical hand that shoots bees.
    • Or: A mysterious man investigates an underwater city and kills a man who resembles Walt Disney with a golf club, which was all part of The Mafia's plan.
    • BioShock (series) 2: About ten years later, a man in a diving suit stabs people with a drill in order to save a girl from an evil altruist.
      • Bioshock 2 Multiplayer: About eleven years earlier, a football player with an obsession with winning, a southern Corrupt Corporate Executive, a man wearing goggles named after a Memetic Badass, a deranged housewife, Amelia Earheart, a sociopathic psychic, Blance, Captain Ahab, an prison inmate who knew Knuckles the Echidna, and a black guy with a love of cats fight for either Ayn Rand or The Mafia, ultimately going insane in the process.
  • BIT.TRIP BEAT: Pong...AS A RHYTHM GAME! On drugs!
  • Black and White: It's you and your magical pet against God.
    • Alternatively: God's pet simulator.
  • Blast Chamber: Four suicide bombers fight for their lives.
  • Blast Corps: A group of demolition experts clear a path for an extremely volatile missile carrier by destroying buildings that are in its way.
  • Blaster Master: A boy commandeers a military vehicle while searching for his irradiated pet frog.
  • Blast Works (originally TUMIKI Fighters): Ships are made of building blocks.
  • BlazBlue: Three orphans do the same thing again and again whether they like it or not. The player will have a hankering for meat buns. Meanwhile, a snooty vampire lolita tries to stop a Villain Sue with both employing endless Xantatos Gambits.
  • Blazing Star: Will you destroy the evil organism that has taken over mankind, or will YOU FAIL IT?
  • Blood: Deadpan Snarker zombie from the Wild West runs around lighting hooded cultists on fire.
    • Blood II: Deadpan Snarker zombie from the Wild West runs around lighting executives in suits and leeches from the sixth dimension on fire Twenty Minutes Into the Future.
    • Blood II: The Nightmare Levels: Deadpan Snarker zombie from the Wild West dreams of the times he ran around lightning hooded cultists on fire.
  • Bloody Roar: Furries beat the crap out of each other; the boss is a little girl who turns first into an older floating woman and then into a really buff devil.
    • Bloody Roar 2: More furries beat the crap out of each other; the boss from the last game is now a cute Catgirl, and the new boss is a clone of a character from the last game.
    • Bloody Roar: Primal Fury: Even more furries beat the crap out of each other. The boss is a pint-sized effeminate penguin, unless he is on fire, or his mother.
  • Blue Dragon: A bunch of kids put the balls in their mouths, scare the crap out of monsters (literally), get excited over nothing, and try to stop a dude from killing people For the Evulz. There's also a giant robot ostrich. Just because.
  • Blueberry Garden: Run around a garden throwing seeds while the local wildlife overpopulates.
  • Bob Came In Pieces: Affix your ship with pipes and magnets to fly around unhindered in tunnels.
  • Bombastic: Five cousins attempt to stay alive in the deadliest game of Yahtzee ever created.
  • Boktai: The only game series able to actively cause cancer in its players.
    • Lunar Knights: The cancer part is now optional.
  • Bomberman: Robot whose only ability is blowing things up goes through mazes to stop mad scientists.
  • Boom Blox: Jenga with flying bowling balls and explosions.
  • Boppin: Angular figures throw objects around to clear the field in such locations as a sheet of paper and a Go board. When they lose all their lives, they commit suicide in an uncharacteristically graphic fashion.
  • Borderlands: Alien technology can be yours if you can survive a deserted planet. Be sure to bring plenty of ammo!
    • Alternately: Fight with your friends over who gets the best gun.
  • A Boy and His Blob: A kid tries to dethrone an evil emperor by going on a treasure hunt to purchase jelly beans and multivitamins for his friend.
    • A Boy and His Blob (Wii) Same thing, but the Anvilicious health message doesn't apply anymore because the kid is immortal and already has an infinite supply of jelly beans. Before the kid challenges the evil emperor, he takes a nap in his Evil Tower of Ominousness.
  • Braid: A guy does jigsaw puzzles in his efforts to track down his ex-girlfriend. When he finally touches her, she explodes.
  • Brain Age: High school SATs as a video game. May make you remember what you said you had for breakfast a few days ago.
  • Brain Lord: A dragon rider in a world with no dragons learns to loathe his enemies' big balls. Many puzzles get in the way, and tiny fairies don't help a lot.
  • Breath of Fire: Several identically named dragon boys and bird girls team up with various furries and attempt to kill God.
  • Brutal: Paws of Fury: Furries use martial arts to beat the crap out of a llama who pit them against each other.
  • Brutal Legend: An escapist Metalhead rounds up a bunch of friends to beat the bloody shit out of (mostly harmless) Hair Metal fans, goths, and BDSM addicts with an axe and an E-guitar.
  • Bubble Bobble: A curse transformed two human boys into into cute little dragons. They defeat enemies by blowing bubbles and jumping on them to rescue their girlfriends from a drunken giant.
    • Rainbow Islands: Two boys who die easily because they suffered under the curse throw rainbows and climb islands.
    • Bubble Bobble Part 2: A boy (or two boys) get cursed and must rescue his/their friend(s) from a skull by blowing bubbles and inflating himself/themselves.
    • Bubble Symphony aka Bubble Bobble II: Two boys and two girls get cursed by a relative of the aforementioned drunken giant, then get banished and must get back home by blowing bubbles.
      • Bubble Memories: Two boys get cursed and blow bubbles while climbing up a tower.
    • Bubble Bobble Plus: Four cute little dragons who die easily blow bubbles and jump on them.
    • Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure: Two boys race a Mad Scientist up a tower to meet a comet. Or rather, a comet girl.
    • Puzzle Bobble aka Bust-A-Move: Two duplicate boys cute little dragons must run a machine that shoots bubbles at bubbles to pop them and prevent them from building up too much. Letting that happen kills them like in the series this has spun off of.
      • Puzzle Bobble 2: The duplicate twins are no more, and a boy cute little dragon leaves the machine running to you and watches your progress. This time, letting bubbles build up too much makes him very panicky or really upset.
        • Bust-A-Move Again: Same as the above but two hands replace the cute little dragon. Since they are NOT Master Hand or Crazy Hand, failure ensues.
        • Puzzle Bobble 2, VS CPU mode: Go around the world picking shoot-bubble duels with random strangers, some of which cheat.
      • Puzzle Bobble 3 aka Bust-A-Move 3: Same as the above, but the boy cute little dragon looks more like he's from an anime, and the Descending Ceiling is replaced by hovering flashing dots.
        • Puzzle Bobble 3, VS CPU mode: Go inside a bunch of arcade machines to pick shoot-bubble duels with their characters. First you have to face yourself.
      • Puzzle Bobble 4 aka Bust-A-Move 4: Same as the above, but the boy cute little dragon looks normal again, and pulleys join the flashing dots. A bunch of random characters join in on the fun. This time, letting bubbles build up makes them very dizzy or something, and dropped bubbles automatically fly back up to pop other bubbles.
      • Puzzle Bobble 4, VS CPU mode: Go IN SPACE to pick shoot-bubble duels with others to get all of an implied Plot Coupon.
    • Puzzle Bobble DS: Same as the above but on a Nintendo DS and only Japan got this one.
    • Bust-A-Move DS / Hippatte Puzzle Bobble: Same as the above but the duplicate twins (of the cute little dragons and other random characters) are back with a huge ribbon slingshot.
  • Bubble Tanks: Everything is bubbles. Pop or be popped.
  • Bug!!: An insect is a movie star.
    • Bug Too!: Three insects play movie stars, and have to finish filming six movies in a day.
  • Bulletstorm: Two angry mercenaries end up on a vacation resort island. Many people die in incredibly horrible ways.
  • Bully: The good guy out-bullies those school bullies.
  • Bunny Must Die: A little girl really hates her ears.
  • Burger Time: Armed only with pepper shakers and his own ingredients, a chef who makes enormous sandwiches must ward off homicidal foodstuffs.
  • Burnout: Drivers use their cars as weapons and completely ignore the rules of the road.
  • Bushido Blade: Easily-killed assassins fight to keep one of their number from leaving. It's impossible to tell when exactly this is supposed to be taking place.
  • Call of Duty series: Yet another series of World War II simulations.
    • Call of Duty: World at War: You and your friends are trapped in a house surrounded by slow Nazi zombies. And other WWII events happen before that but no one cares about those.
    • Call of Duty: Black Ops: The same guys are fighting more zombies. Oh, there's also a side-game with Sgt Reznov and some other guys that aren't as awesome.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: An angry old Russian causes trouble in a sandbox.
    • Modern Warfare 2: One man singlehandedly saves Burger Town from Russian Commandos, while doing everything. Almost everyone else dies.
      • Or: A brave young man averts disaster by stabbing someone with a knife. He then calls the person a "noob" and teabags him.
    • Modern Warfare 3: World War III is fought. It's resolved without intervention from the man who does everything.
  • Call of Juarez: A young Delinquent runs away from home; an elderly preacher goes looking for him.
  • Captain Rainbow: A washed-up superhero from Eagleland heads to an island where he can beat people up to make kids watch a television show about him. Along the way, he must help a transgendered dinosaur pick-up some men, help a lazy army become volleyball superstars, and aid a samurai-in-training in controlling his urges around women.
  • Carmageddon: A racing game that puts the "laughter" back in "vehicular manslaughter".
    • Alternatively: demolition derby in population-dense area.
  • Carmen Sandiego: Fight a gang of thieves with silly names, lead by an Impossible Thief in highly visible clothing, with the power of social studies,literacy, or basic math.
  • Castle Crashers: The heroes actually get some. Then get rickrolled.
  • Castlevania: Family tradition dictates the murder of an old man in his own home. He gets better.
  • Catherine: An everyman cheats on his girlfriend. Puzzles ensues.
    • Or: Get drunk and push blocks.
  • Cat Planet: Girl with wings talks to disembodied cat heads who speak broken English.
  • Cave Story: Amnesiac soldier steals a sleeping old man's gun and blasts his way through a cave in the sky. His only friends are bunnies.
    • Or: Amnesiac soldier carries dogs and his girlfriend on his back. He saves the world by abandoning a mortally wounded old man, then euthanizing an even older man.
    • Or: Ten years ago, there was a war over a hat. This is the aftermath.
  • Cell Craft: Space platypi save their species from extinction with the help of molecular biology and an extremely bored robot.
  • Centipede: You kill centipedes.
  • Chaos;Head: An anime fan daydreams a lot.
  • Chimera Beast: A Horde of Alien Locusts destroy a planet. You are one of the locusts.
  • Chibi-Robo!: A sentient android who is also a Heroic Mime discovers alien life, travels through time, and saves the world from evil robot spiders. Does that sound a bit too normal for Better Than It Sounds? Highlight that spoiler tag.
  • Chrome Hounds: A mercenary pilots a Walking Tank across three fictional countries. Everyone he meets expresses their hope that war doesn't erupt. War erupts anyway.
  • Chrono Trigger: A teenage boy goes to a fair. Apocalypse ensues.
    • Chrono Cross: A teenage boy is made to fight a cat and the local gods in between two timelines in order to free a girl from an alien parasite monster. Beating the final boss triggers the bad ending.
  • Chu Chu Rocket: You place arrows on a flat surface, causing numbers to go up and down.
  • Chu♥Lip: Kiss everybody in town!
  • Chzo Mythos: A Gentleman Thief, a construction inspector and a fake psychiatrist fight against an insane murderer, a deranged cult and a Lovecraft reject, two centuries apart from one another.
    • Alternately: An adventure game series with a stealth platformer spin-off.
  • Civilization: The main character is the leader of a small band of primitive nomads. He is told that he must either conquer the world or take his people to another. He is given a very long lifespan in order to do so.
  • City of Heroes: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.
  • Clay Fighter: Circus freaks mutated by a meteor from space beat the crap out of each other.
  • The Cliffhanger Edward Randy: Shameless ripoff character misses a date with his girlfriend.
  • Clock Tower: Girl runs away from a midget who wields a pair of hedge-trimmers.
  • The Clue!: A young man wins a free taxi pass, and proceeds to pursue a life of crime.
  • Code Name: Viper: An agent is sent to destroy a South American drug cartel...by the guy who runs it.
  • Commander Keen 1-3: Boy genius fights aliens who intend to destroy the world. He uses stuff he made out of crap in his dad's garage and his mom's fridge. A classmate was behind it the whole time.
    • Keen Dreams: Boy genius refuses to eat his dinner and is transported to a land of evil talking vegetables. He fights them with flowers.
    • Commander Keen 4-5: Boy genius fights meaner aliens who intend to destroy the galaxy. He uses stuff he made out of crap in his dad's garage and his mom's fridge. A classmate was behind it the whole time.
    • Commander Keen 6: Boy genius fights meaner aliens who intend to eat his babysitter. He uses stuff he made out of crap in his dad's garage and his mom's fridge. A classmate was behind it the whole time.
  • Company of Heroes: A WWII game...if that doesn't worry you already, you're too idealistic.
    • Alternately: Get pinned down by MG fire, then blown to pieces by mortars.
  • Cooking Mama: You prepare various exotic dishes for your diminutive starry-eyed mother.
  • Combatribes: Remember: Cyborgs ain't ladies.
  • Comix Zone: A starving artist breaks the fourth wall.
  • Command & Conquer: The UN takes issue with a bald man who likes rocks.
    • Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun The bald guy's cult and the UN - led by Darth Vader and that guy from Aliens - fight over an alien floppy disc.
    • Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Firestorm The bald guy's computer goes crazy as hell when the UN tries to use it to read the alien floppy disk.
    • Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars: The bald guy's cult kicks the UN in the crotch so Lando Calrissian will shoot him with their space lasers. Alien crack addicts show up and are angry at the kids on their lawn.
    • Command and Conquer: Kane's Wrath: The bald guy and an artificial intelligence plot more Xanatos Gambits than you can shake a stick at. The chick from Species throws a wrench in the works.
    • Command and Conquer: Generals: The United States fights the War on Terror with space lasers. China butts in on the action.
    • Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Einstein causes World War II by trying to prevent it. Soviets show up with Tesla Coils, Americans - with teleporter.
    • Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2: World War III. Soviet Russia invades America with blimps, tank-eating spiderbots, psychics, and giant squid. America fights back with dolphins, teleporting time commandos, and weather control machines.
    • Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge Crazy psychic tries to take over the world. America and/or Soviet Russia create a time paradox to stop this.
    • Command and Conquer: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 World War III is temporal-retconned by Tim Curry and Peter Stormare into being fought with shrink/Freeze Ray-equipped helicopters and parachuting armored bears. Japan joins the fun with Transforming Mecha and scary psychic school girls.
    • Command and Conquer: Renegade: A muscley man must stop a creepy lady and a bald guy from creating a race of super muscley men.
  • Condemned: Criminal Origins Although he's chasing a serial killer AND on the run from a Crime He Didn't Commit, a Federal Agent spends most of his time beating homeless people to death with a lead pipe.
    • Condemned 2: Bloodshot: A Federal Agent turned hobo fights against the ancient conspiracy whose sonic devices cause crime and paranoia among men. Now Special Forces on top of the homeless face his lead pipe wrath. Later he beats them to death by yelling at them.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day: Lost squirrel tries to get home.
    • Or: A sociopathic rodent with an accent that likes to change regularly tries to find his way home after getting drunk and ends up becoming king.
  • Contact: A boy battles a band for Green Rocks before turning his sights on you.
  • Contra: Two supermuscled (but fragile) soldiers, equipped with nothing but a wimpy rifle and a pair of pants, shoot up alien baddies from an army base to the insides of some giant red alien.
    • Contra: Shattered Soldier: One of the soldiers is framed for global mass murder in an effort to cover up another soldier's death. Once the first soldier finds out, he decides to kill the other soldier again. By entering his body.
  • Cortex Command: Make a base, then defend it against hordes of idiots with heavy weaponry and the ability to headbutt through solid steel.
  • Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure: A naked green alien kid with chicken pox and plungers for hands wants to go to Disney World for his birthday. His ship crashes on a forbidden planet and, before he can find his missing parents, he gets eaten by a giant monster.
  • Costume Quest: Candy-stealing goblins and trolls are no match for a kid in his/her cardboard robot suit.
  • Counter-Strike: Counter-terrorists attempt to thwart terrorists. That's about it.
    • Counter-Strike Source: Counter-terrorists attempt to thwart terrorists with physics and bloom effects.
  • Crash Bandicoot: An anthropomorphic marsupial exacts revenge on the balding scientist who granted him sentience.
    • Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back: The same marsupial collects purple crystals for said scientist as a ruse to collect gems to destroy his space station.
    • Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped: A giant mask escapes from a mountain to collect crystals through time with the help of a man holding a giant tuning fork.
    • Crash Team Racing: An alien challenges eight of Earth's defenders, including a cat from Ancient China and a polar bear to a race with go-karts with the fate of the world at stake. Racing is serious business!
  • Crazy Taxi: The world's worst drivers are hired as chauffeurs.
  • Creatures: Breed a bunch of complex aliens.
  • The Crimson Room: You have to break out of a suicidal man's bedroom. How you got in there is never addressed.
    • The Viridian Room: To escape the apartment, you have to appease the guy's ghost. Fortunately, his life was so dull that this is easy to do.
  • CROSS†CHANNEL: A group of cliche anime characters are deemed unable to adapt to society. Then they're forced to repeat the same things over again unless the pervert intervenes.
  • Cross Edge: A gun-wielding delinquent and his mellow childhood friend team up with characters from other Atelier parallel universes to find their way back to their respective home worlds.
  • Crusader: No Remorse: After he and two co-workers are terminated, a corporation's star employee sets about getting payback.
    • Crusader: No Regret: A mute conquers the moon in about a week.
  • Crusader Kings: Family deals with inheritance, marriage and trips to foreign parts.
    • Alternately: Many bad things happen to your kingdom. Then your 2-year old son inherits everything.
  • Crusader of Centy: Bright up-and-coming RPG hero is proven guilty of mass murder.
  • Crysis: A special forces soldier in a futuristic catsuit battles the Red Menace and robotic squids that spew ice.
  • Crystal Quest: A six-legged Space Cow in a flying saucer vacuums up some crystals, then moans erotically. In the sequel, she alternates crystal collecting with destroying fine art and doing four-piece jigsaw puzzles.
  • Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest: Blocks eat and mate with other blocks. Nobody Poops is averted.
  • Cursed Treasure: You are a villain trying to keep your stuff out of the heroes' hands.
  • Custom Robo: Children are encouraged to compete with each other using action figures modified to fight in warfare.
  • Cut the Rope: A monster wants candy.
  • D: A woman has two hours to kill her father before her pocketwatch eats her.
  • Dance Dance Revolution: You stomp in time to music and receive very corny compliments if you do well.
  • Dantes Inferno: The Love Interest has been kidnapped by Satan! Are you a bad enough Renaissance poet to rescue the Love Interest?
  • Darius: Mechanical marine life is attacking a planet.
  • Dark Cloud: An ancient evil is let out of its jar and is ending the world, and the only people who can stop it are a race of bunnies who live on the moon. A boy and his cat set out to find them, rearranging cities into more convenient configurations for the residents as they go.
    • Dark Cloud 2: Another ancient evil in the form of a cute fluffy bunny is tampering with the past to destroy the future, so a mama's boy whose never left his home town before and a princess from the future who both possess magic stones have to stop him.
  • Dark Forces: Some guy is responsible for letting Luke Skywalker blow up the Death Star. This guy also did a lot of other stuff you've never even heard of, most of which involved shooting tons of stupid people.
    • Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II: The guy in question, surprise surprise, turns out to be a Jedi, and has to kill the seven Dark Jedi that killed his father. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
      • Jedi Knight: Mysteries Of The Sith The guy gets himself in serious trouble, and Luke Skywalker's future wife has to bail him out. She brings her friend back from The Dark Side by not fighting him. How original.
    • Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast: The guy decides he wants to be a Jedi again, because hey, what better way to get revenge for a loved one's death than The Force? I wonder how that works out for him.
    • Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: The guy's apprentices squabble and go hunting for people worshipping a dead guy. In months they become more badass than he ever was.
  • Dark Sector: You throw a lethal piece of your body at your enemies. Like a boomerang.
  • Darksiders: A swordsman, framed for a crime he didn't commit, must battle waves of enemies and solve environmental puzzles to clear his name.
  • Darkstalkers: Public domain monster movie characters battle each other, a perpetually-burning alien, and a demon who attacks by cutting himself.
  • Darwinia: A computer scientist's games console is a huge flop, so he networks them all together to make a virtual world. When it gets a virus, you lead the inhabitants in war. They die in droves, but you collect their souls to resurrect them.
  • De Blob: A ball of paint must recolour an entire city in order to save it from a dictatorship and their army of ink blots and giant pens.
    • Better yet: The object of the game is pretty much just to touch everything.
  • Deadly Creatures: Two brothers bicker over a hidden treasure. Instead of playing as either of them, you follow the everyday lives of a tarantula and a scorpion living in an American desert.
  • Deadly Premonition: Weirdo who talks to an imaginary friend and sees things in his coffee goes to visit a town in the country. It was released with outdated graphics, was known for less-than-mediocre combat and other gameplay elements and many things in this game are unintentionally funny.
  • Dead or Alive: Bouncy females (and some guys, too) fight to stop a corporation from creating a Super Soldier.
    • Dead or Alive Xtreme: The girls go to an island, play games and give each other gifts.
  • Dead Rising: Journalist who likes to boast that he's covered wars gets locked in a shopping mall for 72 hours, and passes the time by killing angry people with nearly anything he can pick up and thwarting a government conspiracy.
    • Alternatively, wasps sting people and make them very hungry.
    • Or: A journalist spends 72 hours killing zombies with various items while wearing a dress. Rumor has it the game actually has a plot.
  • Dead Rising 2: A gameshow contestant takes the fall for a criminal, and works out his frustration by killing everyone around him and gambling to buy shots for his underage daughter.
  • Dead Space: A repairman is attacked when he comes to fix the interstellar phone.
  • Dead Space 2: A schizophrenic space janitor tries to cleanse himself and others around him of the next evolutionary step of thetans, using improvised means.
  • Dead to Rights: In one of the greatest Sin City stories Frank Miller never wrote, a loose cannon ex-cop and his dog look for the murderer of the ex-cop's father. Brings down international crime ring.
  • Death Smiles: Teenagers use artillery to stop the wrongdoings of a friend's abusive father.
  • Death Spank: Lantern-jawed Idiot Hero fights evil in his underwear.
  • De Blob: An anthropomorphic liquid creature fights bureaucracy by painting buildings.
  • Def Jam Vendetta: A wrestling game. With rappers.
  • DEFCON: You play your part in conducting an unhurried nuclear holocaust depicted in simple wireframe graphics. Try to lose least. Would you like to play a game?
  • Defender of the Crown: In an effort to recover a stolen artifact, you conquer England. And then it's revealed that a thief took it.
  • Deja Vu: You wake up in a bathroom and can't remember what happened last night.
  • Dementium the Ward: A man who's just had a successful session of psychotherapy has to find his own way out of a hospital because the staff are busy dealing with some newfangled-type disease.
  • Demon's Souls: You die, and then the game becomes harder.
  • Dengeki Gakuen RPG: Cross of Venus: You and your BFS join forces with Rie Kugimiya on fire, an emotionless girl, a travelling girl, a nun girl, an otaku girl, a psychotic angel girl, Rie Kugimiya beating up a non-delinquent, and a ghost girl to save Japanese literature.
  • Destiny of the Doctors: It's up to a kludged robot who Casts From Hit Points to save the Oncoming Storm.
  • Destroy All Humans!!: A little green gray man and Invader Zim Zim steal people's brains and generally cause trouble in The Fifties. The government tries to hush it up in increasingly desperate ways.
  • Deus Ex: A man wears sunglasses at night, so he can fight crime. Then the government. Then conspiracy nuts.
  • Devil May Cry: Son of a demon kicks Satan's ass with style and confesses a desire to fill a soul WITH LIGHT.
  • Diablo: Defeat the Sealed Evil in a Can so you can jam a sharp glass shard into your face.
    • Diablo II: Defeat the hero from the last game, who became the Sealed Evil in a Can by jamming the sharp glass shard into his face. This involves travelling all around the world and killing loads of stuff.
      • Diablo II: Lord of Destruction: Defeat the Sealed Evil in a Can's brother who you totally forgot about at the end of the last game.
    • Diablo III: Continue playing in the world of the last two games. The hero from the first game and all the interesting bosses are still dead.
  • Diddy Kong Racing: A tall punk, a peanut-lover, some guy in overalls, a goggle-lovin' Texan, a bird-lovin' Redneck, a drunken king, some guy with a shell, a Sailor Moon fanatic, a kid who inherited Hawaii, an over-sized Indian, and a sentient clock defend the world from a 50-foot tall alien and his brainwashed slaves...by RACING THEM! Lots and lots of balloons are required too.
    • Diddy Kong Racing DS: 14 years later, Hawaii is still being hollowed-out, the bird-lovin' Redneck and drunken king now work at Microsoft, the peanut-lover's fanservice-sisters take their places, said peanut-lover's island also becomes a racetrack, and all get to play with clouds and toys. Otherwise, it's still all about RACING and balloons.
  • Die Anstalt: Serve as a psychotherapist to stuffed toys.
    • Alternatively: A paranoid wanderer, a mute autistic, a hot-tempered schizophrenic, an easily-distracted Adult Child, a schedule-oriented pseudo-athlete and a psychologist are all in one room. You have to take each one and alternate between going into their dreams and watching them interact with objects for ten minutes.
  • Dig Dug: A fragile guy with an air pump digs tunnels and blows up local wildlife.
    • Dig-Dug II: The guy can also destroy islands.
  • Digimon World 3: Not being able to log out out from an MMORPG turns people into pigs.
  • Dino Crisis: A girl who believes dyeing her hair bright red to be proper spy attire acts incredibly bored around living proof of Time Travel, when she's not killing it.
    • Dino Crisis 2: The girl gets into a bunch of arguments with an unrelated man until he learns that he's fathered a child.
    • Dino Crisis 3: Forget what you read about the first two; also, Freddy Krueger has successfully cross-bred with dinosaurs.
  • Dino Run (Flash Game): Run away from impending doom, all while consuming smaller creatures on the food chain, stealing eggs and being a dick to everything you come across.
  • Disgaea: Hell-as-designed-by-Tim-Burton isn't so bad, but "quirky" does not even begin to describe the folks who live there. A series wherein the cast of characters tends to be as Genre Savvy and Medium Awareness as the player.
  • Dizzy: A sentient egg saves his friends from the big bad by carrying random objects from one side of the land to another.
  • Do Don Pachi: A nameless pilot with a Big F'ing Laser slaughters his own troops. Then he fights a bee.
    • Alternately: Kill thousands of innocent soldiers in a "training exercise". Then do it again, only harder.
    • Do Don Pachi dai-ou-jou: A lunar toy fight.
  • Dokapon Kingdom: Miserly king offers his daughter's hand in marriage to backstabbers, looters and kill-stealers.
  • Doki Doki Majo Shinpan: You must save the world from witches by feeling up underage girls.
    • Or: God tells you to touch teenaged girls.
  • Donkey Kong: A carpenter climbs an unfinished tower in pursuit of a giant beast who has kidnapped his lover. Background music loops once to four times per second.
    • Donkey Kong Junior: A young lad must rescue his father from a carpenter.
    • Donkey Kong 3: A man must stop a giant animal from destroying his greenhouse, armed with nothing but a can of bug spray. He is never seen again.
    • Donkey Kong Country: Apes go jump on banana-stealing crocodiles.
      • Donkey Kong Country 2: The crocodiles kidnap the big ape, so his little buddy, along with his girlfriend, goes to rescue him.
      • Donkey Kong Country 3: The big ape and his little buddy are missing, so the little buddy's girlfriend and her infant cousin go looking for them.
      • Donkey Kong 64: The crocodiles prepare to blow up the gorillas' island and steal their bananas again to keep them distracted.
      • Donkey Kong Country Returns: Musical instruments steal the apes' bananas.
    • Donkey Konga: Big monkeys play little drums along to popular music.
    • Donkey Kong Jungle Beat: You control a gorilla using bongos.
  • Doom: A military-industrial conglomerate's experiments with teleportation go wrong and pave the way for an invasion by The Legions of Hell. They are soundly defeated by a berserker-packing MAN-AND-A-HALF lowly grunt.
  • .hack//GU: Player Killing in an MMORPG is Serious Business.
  • Double Dragon: Two brothers must rescue a damsel from the bad guys so that they can properly kung-fu fight each other for the right to date her.
  • Double Dungeons: Knights quest to defeat a lot of random baddies to collect alphabet tiles, presumably to play Scrabble with the biggest baddie. Also they zip around and make car noises and explode just as spectacularly specifically, the knights in the game would be clocked at over 230MPH based upon how fast they move through the dungeons' tiles and you gain about 2 HP each level but a LOT of attack.
  • Dragon Age: Origins A hero's attempts to slay a dragon are delayed when everyone makes him/her solve their problems first.
    • Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening A hero's attempts to govern his/her lands are impeded by a surprisingly civilized Mad Scientist and a madwoman with way too many nipples.
    • Dragon Age: Origins - Darkspawn Chronicles DLC After the hero bites the big one his/her friend/boyfriend (respectively) has to be the new hero. He fails... HARD.
    • Dragon Age: Origins - Golems of Amgarrak DLC The hero works with two brothers to find out how to make magical piles of rocks and scrap metal.
    • Dragon Age: Origins - Which Hunt DLC Two years after your girlfriend runs off with your future child she returns. Decide if you want to stab her or not.
    • Dragon Age: Origins - Leiliana's Song DLC A young french thief's idol doesn't turn out to be everything she is cracked up to be.
    • Dragon Age II: An Unreliable Narrator pisses off an inquisitor during his interrogation.
  • Dragon Quest I: A random soldier searches for Ancestral Weaponry in order to fight a wizard who ran off with the king's daughter. Against his will.
    • Dragon Quest II: Three random royal cousins run around gaining EXP and Phat Lewt in order to fight an exceptionally bored evil wizard.
    • Dragon Quest III: Son of a hero sallies forth to kill the evil villain. He kills the wrong guy.
    • Dragon Quest IV: Random henchmen all have various quests that are immediately forgotten once the hero decides to stop hiding in a basement.
    • Dragon Quest V: Random guy runs around having adventures and gets married. He would kill the villain, but he can't -- he's not the hero, his son is.
    • Dragon Quest VI: The hero dies in the opening. His (not so) Evil Twin from an alternate reality takes up the quest.
    • Dragon Quest VII: Random fisherman's son discovers the entire world has been turned into Sealed Good in a Can. Then he opens one too many cans.
    • Dragon Quest VIII: Random troll and his daughter, the horse, chase after an evil clown with a magic stick.
    • Dragon Quest IX: Random angel tries to get back into Heaven by collecting glowing fruit.
    • Dragon Quest Monsters: A furby kidnaps a young boy to make him fight in glorified dog fights to find his sister, who was kidnapped by an evil furby.
      • Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Two bored kids cause their island to start sinking, so they grab their father's monstrous monster-farm farm hand and go participate in glorified dog fights to find a cork.
      • Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart: Creepy old man teleports spoiled rich kid to an oddly familiar alternate universe to be a bureaucrat.
      • Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker: Random punk is forced to enter a glorified dog fight because his dad wants him to, only to gain a random animal buddy and discover that dog fights are Serious Business.
    • [[Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime]]: A village of the weakest monster type in the game is attacked by platypi. The one escapee sets out to get revenge. With a tomb.
    • Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors: Son of a legendary swordsman performs amazing feats for a queen who doesn't want to talk to anyone.
  • Dragon's Dogma: A heartless hero must go on a quest to slay a dragon. It is accomplished by climbing and killing monsters. They are also helped by online avatars of sidekicks by other heartless heroes.
  • Dragon's Lair: You follow flashes of light in order to watch an animated fantasy movie. Press the button at exactly the right moment or you can't watch the next bit.
  • Drakengard: A mute soldier and his dragon go on a Nightmare Fueled quest to exact revenge upon a vicious Empire with the "aid" of several cursed people.
  • Drawn to Life: Save the world from encroaching darkness by making it your personal sketchbook.
    • Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (Wii): Fetch quests, and the villain can't remember what her husband looked like.
    • Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (DS): God hides his true motive from himself, and fans wish they'd never asked about the Ensemble Darkhorses' origins.
      • Alternately, The villain darns color just for there to be a world for him to rule. The ending proves a lot of people do not understand magic dreams.
  • Drill Dozer: A little girl in a tank spends her time stealing rocks.
  • Dr. Mario: A blue-collar repairman can cure any disease, but only if he administers the medications in exactly the right order.
    • Dr. Mario 64: Fat guy steals his pills.
  • Dubloon: A crew of pirates search for a specific treasure chest.
  • Duck Hunt: You are a weekend warrior. Your dog indulges in schadenfreude.
  • Duke Nukem I: Man in a pink vest goes after aspiring world conqueror for interrupting his favorite talk show.
  • Dungeon Keeper: Being evil means maintaining an underground dungeon and defending it from daring heroes or other evil people with their own dungeon.
  • Dungeon Maker: To bring prosperity back to a dying town, an intrepid warrior must provide shelter for new inhabitants...and kill them in droves.
  • Dungeons: A lover's quarrel leads a man to take his frustration out on random warriors totally unrelated to the conflict.
  • Dungeons of Dredmor: Some shmuck with Big Ol' Eyebrows tries to keep an old man from escaping from prison. He (or she) gets repeatedly killed by burrowing penguins in the process.
  • Dustforce, you have tools for sweeping dust. You need to clean the floors, walls, ceilings and other objects.
  • Dwarf Fortress: A game with way outdated graphics for its time, yet with absurdly high system requirements. It has been released way before it's fully developed and can crash without warning. Gameplay has absurd physics, AI is stupid, and is virtually actually Unwinnable.
    • Micromanage a collection of absent-minded, depressed, alcoholic midgets with beards into building an underground house in the middle of a hostile wilderness. The official motto of the game is "Losing is fun!"
      • A fantasy world generator/simulator pairing worryingly accurate down-to-the-atom realistic game mechanics with outdated, 3-decades-ago, unrealistic ASCII graphics.
    • Fortress Mode: A bunch of midgets that often refuse to listen to you build a fortress. The fortress will crumble. Then, build some more fortress. Repeat.
    • Adventure Mode: You're a person in a giant world. There's no story, no direction whatsoever and you get brutally murdered by everything.
  • Dynamite Headdy: A puppet saves the world by headbutting everyone and everything he comes across.
  • Dynasty Warriors: The same story retold in slightly different ways six times.
  • EarthBound: Four kids face such horrific monsters as moving traffic signs, violent hippies, animate cups of coffee, and living fire hydrants in order to stop a time-traveling facelike entity.
    • MOTHER 1 (Mother): Three kids defeat the aforementioned time-traveling facelike entity ten years earlier (when he still had a body and wasn't a facelike entity) -- by singing to him.
    • Mother 3: An emotionally broken boy and his dog try to stop a fat old man who uses television and lightning to control an island, with the help of weird people (and their pets).
      • Or, as put on the series's fansite's forums: Transvestites defend the world by giving a giant dragon acupuncture.
  • Earth Defense Force 2017: Every '50s monster movie happens at once. Only you can save mankind.
  • Earthworm Jim: A space suit falls onto an ordinary earthworm, who then saves a space princess from a giant queen termite...then a cow falls on the princess.
  • Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard: The greatest video game hero you've never heard of tries to make his big comeback.
  • Ecco the Dolphin: Magic dolphin travels through time to heal an ancient being by going to the past and smacking it in the balls. eh also fights aliens and doesnt afraid of anything.
    • Tides of Time: Magic dolphin follows flying magic dolphin to a time that doesn't exist yet to get orders from slain ancient being to reconstruct it in the present from body parts that have been scattered to a different time that doesn't exist yet. Then a dolphin army fights aliens. And you vanish. Maybe.
    • Ecco Jr.: Magic dolphin takes time off from time travel and xenocide to play educational games with small children.
    • Defender of the Future: Aliens break time, magic dolphin makes it worse a few times before getting it right.
  • Eco Fighters: Save the world from pollution...by blowing stuff up, with help from Dr. Wily.
  • Einhander: The Moon hates the Earth, so a plane from the moon is sent down to wreak havoc on Earth. The plane fights a griffin, a dragon, a shrimp, a spider, a wall lizard, an amphibian, a thunderbird, a mad monkey, a vulture, a black ghost, and a couple of Humongous Mecha.
  • The Elder Scrolls: The monarchy solves problems cheaply by sending amnesiac convicts to tackle them.
    • The Elder Scrolls I: Arena: A convict must reconstruct a dismantled stick that the Emperor's advisor spitefully broke.
    • The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall: With no convicts on hand, the monarchy sends a rare non-convict to perform an exorcism and inspect the mail system.
    • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: Another convict must fend off a clingy former drinking buddy with a serious sleep disorder over who gets to keep a dead guy's heart.
      • The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal: That same convict reunites with his former girlfriend, and they have a disagreement.
      • The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon: The convict is then invited to a hunting trip, and ends up getting into fights with all the other hunters.
    • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Another convict delivers a necklace, then travels around the world closing doors whenever they find them.
      • The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine: That same convict takes a job guarding a church and beats up a very old man recently returned from retirement.
      • The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles: That same convict goes into politics and eventually goes crazy.
    • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: A border runner learns to read and speak a new language, one word at a time, and then solves the world's problems by yelling at them.
    • The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire: A school student uses his skills to clear unwanted critters from his training grounds.
    • The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard: A pirate looks for a lost sibling, damaging the growing hegemony in the process.
  • Elebits: A bitter young child neglected by his parents releases his anger by shooting ridiculously cute Pokemon-like creatures. This is rated E.
  • Electroplankton: Microscopic underwater creatures...make music.
  • Eliminate Down: Shoot aliens. Save Earth. One of those games that almost nobody knows.
  • Elite Beat Agents: Men in Black solve everyone's problems through spontaneous song and dance numbers.
  • Elvira II: Jaws of Cerberus: Your girlfriend gets kidnapped by a dog. On your way to save her, you are assisted by a janitor, a priest and Dr. Frankenstein.
  • EndWar: Terrorists cause World War III. You can optionally use your voice to win it.
  • Endless Ocean: Your employer doesn't care how much time you waste; just so long as you eventually touch as many fish as possible, you're on their payroll.
  • Escape Goat: A purple goat tries to escape from the dungeon with an orange rat while rescuing sheep.
  • Eternal Champions: People from various parts of time are wrongfully murdered and must fight in a tournament held by a fluorescent purple deity for one of them to regain their lives.
    • Eternal Champions: Challenge From The Dark Side: An evil fluorescent blue deity interferes and adds more competitors including wrongfully murdered animals and the Grim Reaper.
  • Eternal Darkness: Girl discovers a scary book in a big creepy mansion. Insanity ensues.
  • Eternal Fighter Zero: The result of dumping characters from Key Visual Arts works into massive (fan-made) Character Derailment.
  • Eternal Sonata: Fredric Chopin's life flashes before his eyes as an anime-styled JRPG right before he dies.
  • Etrian Odyssey: Explorers make maps of an underground forest.
    • Etrian Odyssey 2: Explorers make maps of the interior of a giant tree.
    • Etrian Odyssey 3: Explorers make maps of a basement beneath a giant tree and the ocean around it.
  • Europa Universalis Try to keep inflation down for 400 years.
  • EVE Online: The fanciest frontend to Microsoft Excel you'll ever see.
    • Alternately: Play as one of elite space ship captains, most of which spend maybe a couple hours in space every day.
      • Alternately: Hardcore Economics: The MMORPG
  • Ever 17: Bored sleep-deprived people contemplate time travel, parallel dimensions and love. To understand what's really going on you have to beat the game at least five times.
  • Eversion: A cute, primitive Mario clone that requires you to change the look of the environment to progress. To hell and beyond.
  • EVO: The Search For Eden: In his quest to meet a hot girl, a small fish learns to be a real boy.
  • Evil Genius: Build your own underground lair, populate it with booby traps, and interrogate enemy agents by sticking them in a mixing bowl.
    • Or, alternately, a James Bond villain's revenge fantasy.
  • Eye of the Beholder: A band of adventurers venture into the city sewers to fight an unknown evil. They forget to bring a map with them, and get lost.
    • Eye Of The Beholder II: The same band of adventurers visit the temple. They forget to bring a map with them, and get lost.
    • Dungeon Hack: A lone adventurer ventures into a castle to find a magic artifact. Unlike a certain band of adventurers, he brings a map with him, and doesn't get lost.
  • Fable: A boy grows up in a colourful fantasy world, and embarks on a quest for revenge against a man in a party mask.
    • Fable 2: A boy (or girl) and his dog grow up in a colourful fantasy world, and embark on a quest for revenge against a rich nobleman. He has the help of an inscrutable blind woman, a fat chick with a sledgehammer, a heavily-tattooed black guy, and a smug bisexual pirate.
    • Fable 3: A boy (or girl) decides he can do a better job than his brother at politics, so he and his dog embark on a quest to start a revolution.
  • Fallen London, née Echo Bazaar: Some time ago, a major European city was stolen by bats. Well, maybe not stolen. Now, Cthulhu's human (ish) cousins rub shoulders with devils, golems, and foreigners while the player character decides what to do with himself/herself/none-of-the-above.
  • Fallout: A youth is sent off to find replacement parts for the community's water purifier. The game starts with you walking out of a rat-infested cave with little idea of where to go or what to do.
    • Fallout 2: A youth goes looking for something to help the family farm. The game starts with you running through a cave for flimsy reasons.
    • Fallout 3: A youth goes looking for a missing parental unit. The game starts off with you shooting out of your mom's vagina into the waiting arms of Liam Neeson.
      • The Pitt: Youth liberates a town's populace by becoming a baby-snatcher.
      • Operation: Anchorage: Youth plays The Most Dangerous Video Game so a bunch of jerks can open a door.
      • Mothership Zeta: Youth is abducted by aliens who want to weaponize a children's toy.
      • Broken Steel: Youth is railroaded into blowing up a Base on Wheels.
      • Point Lookout: Youth is attacked by rednecks, drugged and lobotomized.
    • Fallout: New Vegas: A postal worker goes postal while looking for a missing package.
      • Dead Money: The postal worker teams up with a schizophrenic, a mute, and a lounge singer to get into a basement.
      • Honest Hearts: The postal worker goes hiking with the natives.
      • Old World Blues: The postal worker does science while a light switch, a robotic planter, and a scientist make sexual advances toward said worker.
      • Lonesome Road: The postal worker has a homecoming party with another coworker.
    • Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel: A youth joins a techno-religious organization and looks for an ancient bomb shelter. The game starts with you immediately shoved into a mission with two useless teamates who keep shooting you in the back.
    • Fallout Brotherhood of Steel: A youth joins a techno-religious organization and is sent to Texas to find some lost soldiers. After fighting a Stripperiffic woman and a 10-foot-tall ghoul priest, you confront a super mutant who turns into a giant biomass, who you proceed to nuke.
    • Fallout 4: A parent, after having been cryogenically frozen for 210 years, goes looking for their missing son.
      • Far Harbor: The parent searches for a missing girl and a colony of synthetic humans.
      • Automatron: The parent infiltrates a roboticist's lair and fights robots to get parts for building their own.
      • Wasteland Workshop: The parent is able to trap stuff in cages.
      • Contraptions Workshop: The parent is able to build their own factory.
      • Vault-Tec Workshop: The parent discovers an unfinished bunker and does experiments on people while trying to finish said bunker.
      • Nuka-World: Explore an abandoned amusement park overrun with raiders.
  • Fancy Pants Adventures: A man embarks on elaborate quests to wake up a penguin, get revenge on a rabbit for stealing his ice-cream, and save his sister from a band of pirates who want her as captain instead of their current wussy one. All of the above (except the sister) are better drawn than him.
  • Far Cry: Ex-Special Forces fellow needs to save reporter from mercenaries and mutants on a tropical island.
    • Far Cry: Instincts: A mad scientist and his triggery-happy mercenaries blow up a man's boat. The man gets a mean right hook.
    • Far Cry 2: Some other guy attempts to kick African warlord ass despite a malaria infection.
  • Farm Simulator:: You own a run down farm in Europe on some unnamed island and you need to modernize it, make it produce money, and work hard for it to work for you.
  • Fatal Frame: A teenaged girl screams at rope and takes pictures of dead people.
    • Fatal Frame 2: Twin lolis take pictures of dead people who make grabby hands at them.
    • Fatal Frame 3: A depressed photographer, alongside the depressed protagonist of the first game and a not-quite-as-depressed-as-everyone-else nonfiction writer wander around a dream manor and take pictures of dead people.
    • Fatal Frame 4: A teenaged girl goes to an abandoned sanatorium to try and remember things, and ends up taking pictures of dead people. Two other teenaged girls go there too, and one of them takes pictures of dead people like the other girl. There is also a detective, and he shines a flashlight at dead people.
  • Fatal Fury: Three men enter a city-wide fighting tournament. The last opponent is the sponsor. He can whup their asses.
    • Fatal Fury 2: The sponsor's half-brother foots the bill for the next tournament. Everyone plays the Updated Rerelease instead.
    • Fatal Fury 3: The sponsor of the first tournament steals a book from twins who have a psychopath on their payroll. Bad move.
    • Real Bout Fatal Fury: Several martial artists band together to break into corporate property and kill the CEO.
    • Garou: Mark of the Wolves: A young man has issues with his maternal uncle.
  • Fatal Hearts: A teenage girl has a nightmare and tries to get herself killed by acting too dumb to live. Also, there are vampires and werewolves involved. Wait, that sounds kind of familiar.
  • Fate/stay night: A bunch of dead guys fight over a cup.
    • Fate: An Ordinary High School Student falls in love with King Arthur and learns about mythology.
    • Unlimited Blade Works: Superhero from the future attempts to kill self, thwarted by self. Ancient king learns the value of fake weaponry.
    • Heaven's Feel: Nice girl goes insane and eats a town despite Medusa's best efforts. Ordinary High School Student decides that ethics suck and beats up a priest.
  • Fat Princess: Two teams of Super-Deformed fantasy heroes test the old adage "fat people are harder to kidnap".
  • F.E.A.R.: Mom tells her son to go eat people she doesn't like. Her other son gets in the way, and she tries to make them get along.
    • Project Origin: A Delta Force operative becomes the object of affection for a ghost. She does not take 'no' for an answer.
      • F.3.A.R: The bickering sons, one of whom is dead, work together to kill their mother and kidnap their sister. The fate of the world is at stake.
  • Feeding Frenzy: Fish (and eventually, a mammal) eat their way to the top of the food chain.
    • Feeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck Showdown: Fish save the sea from a strange fish, by eating each other.
  • Feel the Magic: XY/XX: Engage in bizarre, death-defying, or just plain stupid activities to try to impress a girl, with the help of performance artists in silly costumes. Also, there are villains, though their motives are unknown.
    • The Rub Rabbits!: Prequel to the above game, with similar storyline, though there are now other guys who are also in love with the girl that you're in love with, and the villain is female. At the end, you become the leader and founder of the eponymous troupe, and the other guys make up the rest of the troupe.
  • Fighters Megamix: A game with no story features characters from many different games including a giant fighting bean, a bomb-throwing duck named Bean, and a standing, fighting car.
  • Final Fantasy: Series of stories whose only common factors are a species of overgrown yellow birds, white teddy bears with wings, flying boats, and a bunch of guys with the same name...oh, and crystals. Lots of crystals.
  • Final Fight: City mayor and his buddies beat up mobsters.
  • Fire Emblem: Stories of incest and power plays where everyone only has one life.
    • Shadow Dragon: A blue-haired pants-less prince sets off to save the world from a evil priest who wants to resurrect a great dragon. Along the way, he'll meet a handful of princesses(only one of which he actually pursues), a shapeshifting dragon girl, and others who join up and kill the dragon.
    • Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem: The same blue-haired pants-less prince loses his kingdom again when an ally performs a Face Heel Turn. He joins up with old friends to get back his kingdom. Also, the dragon from Before is involved and the blue-haired wonder becomes king of the world.
    • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: A hero goes to rescue a captured princess and gets caught up in a plot that has his wife brainwashed and made to breed with her half brother to resurrect a dark god. Oh, and he gets killed as soon as he learns of this.
      • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: Two girls are kidnapped by a traitorous Duke. This all leads to a 15 year old boy and a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits killing a religious leader.
    • Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi: Red haired child Casanova needs to go stop a militant country from crushing the world, as well as its ruler, who made a souless dragon girl his bitch.
      • Fire Emblem (2004): The father of the hero of the prequel which is actually the sequel goes off on a journey to find his dad with the help of two musical dragons. Then he has to go stop a Gonk from destroying the world and sucking out everyone's soul in the universe.
    • [[Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones]]: A guy's dad dies. This results in global war and nearly ends the world. Comes with the usual side order of dragons.
    • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: A mercenary leads a war against the kingdom whose top general killed his father. He has the help of a race of people who can change into animals.
      • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: A holy goddess decides to punish her creations for going to war too much by killing them all. The mercenary in the previous game teams up with a side character from the previous game, his girlfriend and the goddess's "Evil" counterpart to kill the holy goddess first.
  • The Firemen: A Dynamic Duo of everyday heroes fight flamigerous demons in a world where thermodynamics have gone completely haywire and do as they please.
  • Fire Shark: A biplane burns everything to the ground.
  • Fish Fillets: Two fish push objects. In one year after the game was published, only six people finished it.
  • Flat Out: You race. Almost Everything breaks when you crash into them.
  • Flower: You mainly just open flowers. You can't lose. The environment is your only enemy but cannot beat you anyway.
  • Folklore: Amnesiac Irish girl and occult magazine reporter attempt to solve a murder mystery connected to her past.
  • Food Fight: Eat ice cream before it melts. If you fail, tons of food throws itself at you.
  • The Force Unleashed: Guy founds his master's future undoing. He performs many awesome feats on the way.
    • The Force Unleashed II: The guy from the first game dies. His masters clone him back and try to make him evil. It doesn't work and he kills himself multiple times to attempt to get revenge on them.
  • Forgotten Worlds: Two flying, shirtless guys armed with guns go on a quest to kill a deity.
  • Forum Warz: Lay waste to a copy of the Internet.
  • Fragile Dreams: A boy tries to find a girlfriend After the End.
  • Freelancer: Space Is an Ocean that appears to be approximately the size of Rhode Island. You fight evil blue aliens determined to wipe out humanity, and a bunch of German stereotypes.
  • Free Space: The Great War: Quasi-fascist human military state teams up with philosophy-spouting desert-dwelling aliens to drive off evil space bugs intent on killing anyone who is not an evil space bug and a doomsday cult with spaceships. Featureless Protagonist pilot single-handedly leads the quasi-fascists to victory in his Space Fighter.
    • FreeSpace 2: The humans and aliens have merged into the United Nations IN SPACE! They fight evil space racists and then the evil space bugs show up and start killing people again. Featureless Protagonist pilot amasses an enormous body count and the space bugs blow up a star and leave for no apparent reason.
  • Frogger: An amphibian tries to return to his home in the river. He can't swim.
  • Full Throttle: A Genius Bruiser Badass Biker wanders the desert and makes a Wrench Wench the president of a car company.
  • Fuzion Frenzy: Four people compete with each other in minigame competitions to dominate the universe. All to the tune of an ingratiating narrator.
  • F-Zero: Aliens and monsters race in cars that have no wheels. These cars will explode if they hit the sides of the tracks. And you listen to butt-rock.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Better_Than_It_Sounds/Video_Games_A-F?oldid=2053203"