Catharsis Factor: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

In other words, it's stuff you do to relieve tension or get stuff off your chest.

 

 

This trope is [[Subjective Trope|subjective]]. Stress relief for one gamer can be frustration for another, even on things that people agree are calming: A 6 on one scale (1 - 10, 10 being the highest) can rate 37 on someone else's. The cathartic experience can also backfire when using human opponents, such as in online-enabled fighting games or first-person shooters, where a string of victories can be ruined by an [[Curb Stomp Battle|upsetting loss]] from another player at the far end of the skill divide.

Related to [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]. Not to be confused with [[In-Universe Catharsis]], though overlap is certainly possible. Or the webcomic ''[[Catharsis]]'', for that matter.

 

{{examples}}

== Sports games ==

 

** In the NES game, sometimes it's more satisfying to spend all three rounds walloping on Glass Joe, countering his every attack and letting him hang on by a thread rather than just catch him in his titular glass jaw and knock him out in one shot.

** In ''Super Punch-Out!!'', Narcis Prince doesn't let anyone punch his face. Which makes getting in a face shot, then laying on the rapid fire jabs to the face so much more relaxing.

** Not to mention with the addition of "Create A Storyline" features, you can not only make the person who you hate, you can write a storyline featuring them and watch your favorite wrestlers insult them to their face, disparage them, and make them cry, ''then'' beat the crap out of them, maybe even alongside your own avatar. Juvenile, maybe, but giggle-inducing after even the worst day? Oh hell yeah.

* After your favorite sports team suffers a demoralizing loss, there's little better than to punish the victorious opponent by putting every last slider in your favor and defeating a simulated version of them 255+ to nothing.

* In early iterations of the FIFA soccer games (one example is the world cup '98 version) when the opposing goalkeeper was holding onto the ball you could scythe him down without the fear of receiving a card. Makes it a little better when he gets booted in the air after saving every shot.

** Even better. When playing Street Fighter 4 online, breaking the countless hadouken/shoryuken-spamming cheap-ass players' pattern, and absolutely demolishing them... while [[Cherry Tapping|using]] [[Lethal Joke Character|Dan]].

** [http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=84 Kat shows us how it's done.]

** Hit them out of the ballpark with the Home Run Bat, perhaps? The resulting ''KREEEENG!!!'' is perhaps the most satisfying sound in ''Smash''.

* ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' has the appealing option of using your personal least-favorite character as a punching bag. ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/26/ shows us how its done.]

** In ''Dissidia 012'', expect a lot of people to use [[Assist Character|Aerith]] against [[Big Bad|Sephiroth]].

*** And once they're dead, they will remain there. Forever a testament to what happened.

*** This is why the Experimental MIRV is in the game because as we all know, [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]. Seriously, it only takes 2 mini-nukes to kill the most powerful enemies on normal and this fires 8.

**** Or, in Fallout 3, utterly exterminating all of Paraside Falls (the main Slaver base). Even moreso if you bring [[Infinity+1 Sword|Fawkes]] with you.

** ''Days'' also provides the incredible feeling of equipping Saïx with the Casual Gear, playing a mission with low-level enemies and then massacring absolutely everything with a ''giant banana''.

** Alternatively, a level 100 mon against the Elite Four. Enjoy as one all powerful creature beats the crap out of the five toughest opponents in the game and feel all your anger melt away. Nothing will make you feel more badass than that.

*** Heck, it doesn't need to be the Elite Four. In one of the games where you can rematch gym leaders, take them on with a high-leveled Pokemon that's insanely weak against their type. There's nothing quite like [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomping]] Gardenia with a Swampert or sweeping Pryce's team with a Dragonite. Bonus points if they gave you trouble before.

** Upgrading the ''Normandy's'' defenses and weapons systems, so that you can watch Joker one-shot a massive enemy warship.

** In ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'', you can [[Heartwarming Moments|hug a]] [[Woobie]].

** All of the Renegade Interrupts in the second and third games, although the third game subverts this by rewarding you with long-term rewards for ''not'' taking some of them.

* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', you can hit people in the face with a shield. Repeat, ''you can hit people in the face with a shield''. You can build an entire character around hitting people in the face with a shield; while you won't be nearly as powerful as a [[Game Breaker|mage]], it'll all be worthwhile for the sheer cathartic factor.

* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne]]'' and ''[[Digital Devil Saga]]'' use the Press Turn Icon System. Short version, the number of times the player gets to go per time the opponent does is entirely dependant on skill level: the player can go up to ten times (after a sidequest in Noctune) for every time the opponent tries to pull something and is denied by your party build. Obviously, a game with a mechanic designed to let smart players kick that much ass has to be [[Nintendo Hard]] to compensate, and they are. [[Up to Eleven|Oh, they are.]] Players who [[Too Dumb to Live|do something stupid]] will die: those who learn to work the system will [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomp]] their enemies. The feeling of godlike power smiting one's enemies is even better after [[Bonus Boss|fighting the]] [[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne|Demifiend]], and getting to experience what it was like to be one of the demons you utterly annihilated. The ''protagonist of Nocturne'', aka you, the player, is the hardest RPG [[Bonus Boss]] ''of all time.'' It makes the player feel [[Trope Pantheons/Philosophy|rather godlike.]]

 

== First-person Shooters ==

* ''[[Half Life]] 2''. Sure, you can blast your foes with grenades and rocket launchers, or pound them with a double shot from a shotgun, but the most fun thing everyone loves to do is using the Gravity Gun to pick up stuff and hurl crap at enemies, or pick up larger objects and ''people'' and fling those too once the gun is powered up. There is also always the option to smash faces or Headcrabs with the crowbar.

* Any of the ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' games. Start a round where you have a sniper rifle in the saferoom, but don't leave the saferoom. Just shoot off headshots from the safety of your safe house. The AI director even realizes that you're doing this and spawns more zombies for you to kill. Ahhhhhh... For those of you with the second game:[[Ludicrous Gibs|~ map c1m1_hotel mutation 14]]. Thank you, no applause.

* Similarly, [[Nazi Zombies]].

** Using the official chainsaw mutator and going melee-only against the lowest-difficulty bots to 100 kills

** Playing the beach Assault map and singlehandedly holding off the invasion with 15 minutes of sweet, sweet headshots.

* [[Alien vs. Predator]]. Skirmish. Marine-Smartgun. Don't even have to aim. Just press LMB and watch the limbs fly.

* ''[[Postal]] 2''. [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|So very much]]. Especially with the [[Ludicrous Gibs|AWP mod]]. And ''ESPECIALLY'' with [[Up to Eleven|AWP and the extra weapon mods]]

* ''[[Modern Warfare]]'': Few things in life beat flipping that switch or popping open a laptop to unleash a world of hurt on the unwitting fools facing you.

** And of course the '''shuriken launcher/electrodriver''' - turning mooks into pin cushions, frying them, or the combo mode - charge and shoot the whole disc with shurikens which will electrocute everything around it.

** Then there's [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|Demon Morph]] mode.

** Or, in the same vein, playing the same Demo, going against the last point of any attack/defend map that just happens to have a TON of enemy engineers. Generally, friendly medics are often LOOKING for a Demoman in these situations, so you're effectively guaranteed to get an [[God Mode|Ubercharge]]. Watlz into the last point, and start laying stickybombs. You have eight seconds of Uber, and eight bombs. Detonate them just as the Uber ends, and watch as the entire enemy sentry-nest goes up in smoke. Then enjoy the worship from your team, because you just won the round in a single motion.

** Featured in the two secret levels of [[Doom|Doom II]], where the SS Troopers are deliberately placed on the map in groups of four. Perfect for shooting with a [[Ludicrous Gibs|Rocket Launcher]]...

* And then there's ''DOOM''. After nearly 20 years, the sound of the shotgun pumping is ''still'' the most satisfying thing you will ever hear.

* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'': Go into multiplayer, set the number of sims to 8, disable shields, and add the [[Game Breaker|FarSight]]. Now see how many you can pick off in the course of ten minutes. (Over 100 is a good goal.)

 

* ''[[Dawn of War]] Dark Crusade''. Load up the Abandon All Hope map as Tau and ruthlessly crush your enemy...with your own casualties measured in ''single figures''.

** ''Dawn Of War 2''. The remote-controlled bombs used by Sgt. Cyrus. They are horrendously powerful and you get to set them ''right the noses of your unsuspecting enemies'' and then detonate them at your own discretion which is guaranteed to give you a majestic feeling of power over death each time. It's like nukes only you get to use them A LOT.

* Pick a game in the ''[[Total War]]'' series. Any game. Now load up a custom battle. Give yourself as many units of elite cavalry as you possibly can and the enemy only masses of peasants. Then turn your horsemen loose and watch them cut through the unwashed rabble like scythes through a field of ripe grain. Wasn't that fun?

** Gunpowder siege weapons + a cowardly enemy hiding in the city center = bowling for peasants. There's just something so cheering about seeing a line of enemy infantry launched into the air as a cannonball skips down the main avenue. Especially if your opponent has been rude on the world map, or put up especially annoying resistance on the city walls.

** In ''Rome: Total War'', setting up a battle with maxed out Seleucid Armored Elephants, verses Roman Incendiary Pigs, on the Grassy Flatlands. Just send all your elephants right into the center of the Roman Swine, then sit back, relax, and watch flaming pigs fly.

** Or perhaps not rushing them, but waiting, teching up and steamrolling the crap out of them with some of the more epic units. (Carriers, Thors, Battlecruisers, etc.) Oh, and the occasional [[Nuke'Em|nuke]] of course.

*** Or even better than the ''occasional'' Nuke: build as many nuke silos/ghost academies as you can, fill them all with nukes, set them all to a control group so you can have them rebuilding and launching nonstop, send in a few dozen ghosts and turn the map into a nuclear wasteland.

== Hack-and-Slash Games ==

 

** Especially cathartic in the ''[[Gundam]]'' editions, due to robot limbs flying all over the place and lots of [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosions]]. There is nothing more cathartic than unleashing a [[Wave Motion Gun]] from on high and seeing several hundred [[Mooks]] explode in waves.

*** Even more so in 3 when taking over a field causes the mooks in that field to explode in a chain reaction upon the slightest hit.

* ''[[Drakengard]]'' is very much this; why not take a dragon and just rain hellfire against giant phalanxes of troops that are completely powerless to hurt you? Or if you so wish, hop down and singlehandedly slash through the innards of thousands.

* ''[[Ninja Gaiden|Ninja Gaiden 2]]'' for the Xbox 360 was almost entirely ''[[That One Level]]'' and ''[[That One Boss]]'', but if you managed to beat it you could restart from the beginning with all the upgrades you'd accumulated. Cue a 5-second slaughter of entire rooms of formerly-infuriating ninjas.

* ''The Mark of Kri'' has unlockable arenas, the first of which only sends basic, melee-attack-only enemies at you, all of whom die instantly and ''[[Made of Plasticine|spectacularly]]'' with the use of the game's ultimate weapon. Not only can you rack up over 50 kills per minute, but your acts of violence will leave the survivors of them to ''run from you in horror''.

* ''[[Condemned]]'' and its sequel ''Bloodshot''. Both games consist mostly of picking up pipes, nail bats, bottles and sporting equipment and beating the ever loving crap out of anything that looked at you funny. And even without weapons you had punches, kicks, headbutts and vicious environmental kills; including but not limited too: Curb stomps, slamming heads in doors, throwing people into TV sets, hurling them off the side of buildings, and best of all, curb stomping them into a filthy toilet.

* The [[Polished Port|PC version]] of ''[[Devil May Cry]] 4'' adds the unlockable "[[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|Legendary Dark Knight]]" difficulty, which can be described as "Normal with ''[[Zerg Rush|lots]]'' of enemies." Once you get a bit of practice, it becomes surprisingly cathartic to just carve a bloody swath through hordes of baddies.

 

== Platformers ==

 

* The latest ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' game is extremely soothing, thanks to its smooth, free-flowing parkour platforming and breathtakingly beautiful environments.

** Along with [[Rule of Funny]], this has ''got'' to be why you can use pyrokinesis on squirrels in the camp. Raz himself seemed to acknowledge this trope both in Sasha's Shooting Gallery ("Shooting things is fun and useful!") and Waterloo World ("I can set wood on fire with my mind, you know") to a wooden game piece). The second is kind of justified, given the day he'd been having...

* [[Star Wars]]: [[The Phantom Menace|Episode 1]] for the PSX gives you the ability to slice Jar Jar to ribbons with your lightsaber in the second level. You get a "game over" if you do though.

 

== Simulation Games ==

 

* The ''[[Sims]]''. [[Video Game Caring Potential|Seeing your Sims happy, or rehabilitating a tormented Sim]] can [[Good Feels Good|make you feel better]].

** Which can sometimes be necessary catharsis ''while you're playing the game'', given the [[Artificial Stupidity|infuriating AI]]...

** Deleting the fence around the lion exhibit in "[[Zoo Tycoon]]"

** Or ''dropping someone into the exhibit'' full of orca whales.

*** Or, even better, dropping someone into the Tyrannosaur and Velociraptor paddocks if you have the Prehistoric Creatures expansion pack. Jurassic Park recreation anyone?

* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]''. If you can stand losing, often, and learn to play the game well, rigging up horrible deaths for all involved can be quite calming. Had a bad day? It's remarkably easy to flood your entire fortress and sit there watching the buggers break down as they flee the ever-rising watery death.

** Alternatively, go to adventure mode, train up wrestling, find a humanoid enemy (giants are good) and systematically cripple every joint in their body before throttling them to death. Repeat until the stress has gone away...

* ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' is surely near the top of the list of games inducing catharsis through sheer calming energy. Living on a beautiful farm waking up each day to tend crops and feed animals and then leisurely walk around the town talking to people you are befriending? Could anything be better to wipe away the stress of a busy day?

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

 

== Puzzle Games ==

* ''[[DROD]]'', the most action packed puzzle game in existence. Slaughtering hordes of overgrown roaches, hunting down goblin after goblin, or meticulously cutting apart a gelatinous monster, all while outsmarting the room layout. Blood, guts, and the satisfaction of hard earned victory.

* ''[[Lemmings]]'' - There comes a time in which there's nothing more soothing than discovering the most fun and artistic ways to set them up for when you activate the [[Kill'Em All|Nuke button]]. Maybe you want 100 packed into a tiny area, so that you can make an explosion so powerful that you can cleave through [[Nigh Invulnerable|steel plates]]. Maybe you want to see the perfect timing for when explosions go off compared to when they start counting down. Maybe you want to see if you can properly time the explosions to make art out of the remaining parts of the level. Or maybe you just want a virtual storm of confetti to celebrate your birthday. Regardless of which it is, you know you're in for some fun when you hit the button and hear that pleasing [[Oh Crap|"Oh, no!"]]

 

== Wide-Open Sandbox ==

** One more word: Trainer. Although the games are fun to begin with, a whole new level of wanton destruction can be added by taking advantage of the numerous options game trainers provide.

** And the cheats! Hammer in a flying car cheat, switch to some epic music on the radio and take off into the air. [[Back to The Future|At 88 miles an hour.]]

** Try picking up a random human, jumping into the air and smashing them into the ground. Then press the grab button again. You can loop this ground smash forever, and the helpless squishy mortal won't ever die. Pick one that looks like your enemy of the week!

** Just swinging around the city is good for relaxation.

** The simplest and arguably most satisfying aspect of Bully is the ability to tackle boys and drive your knee into their junk. Their reactions are priceless.

* ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'' to a HILT. No matter how many replays, every time you face one, a small part of your brain tells you to run and never look back. [[Bigger Is Better|And they get bigger. And bigger. And bigger]]. And defeating them just gets ''all the more satisfying''.

* Minecraft. Play the regular mode and plant a ton of dynamite all over the place and make yourself a safe spot high up in the map, just floating there, with a block of dynamite ready to fall upon hitting it, and save the map. Load it in survival mode and wait for a few mobs to form, then hit the dynamite to turn on the timer and make it fall to the earth. The explosion can be so big that even maximum fog won't save you from the lag, but the resulting aftermath? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO-PB6zOgEo Worth it.]

* ''[[Red Faction]]'', but especially Guerilla. The feeling of [[Everything Breaks|breaking everything]] with your giant [[Drop the Hammer|sledgehammer]] makes you feel incredibly relaxed.

** There is a particular amount of entertainment to be had in the sequel, Warband, which allows you to still do things like chase after looters. The introduction of a weapon which can only be described as an extra-long baseball bat with nails in it lends newfound hilarity to the idea of chasing down peasants and clubbing them senseless with said weapon. Or [[Cherry Tapping|you can get a literal plain old stick and whack them about the head with that too.]]

 

== Other ==

 

* ''[[Katamari Damacy]]''. There's just something calming about pushing around an unstoppable ball of death.

* ''[[God Hand]]''. The credit song even lampshades this with the line "The Godhand helps me work out my stress!".

** Main game giving you fits? Go to the practice ring and beat on the dummy. You take no damage and can use all the Reel/Roulette/Wheel Moves you want.

* ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'', but [[Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal|Up Your Arsenal]] and the [[Ratchet and Clank Future Tools of Destruction|Tools of Destruction]] trilogy in particular. Especially with New Game Plus. You do not ''know'' catharsis until you've eradicated all life on some lonely little asteroid with the behemoth of a gun that is the [[Ratchet and Clank Future A Crack In Time|RYNO 5]]. This particular model is a multi-barrel rocket launching chain gun with a multi-barrel homing missle launcher wrapped around it that ''plays the [[Crowning Music of Awesome|1812 Overture]] during sustained fire.'' You ''' ''will'' ''' achieve nirvana using this gun.

* Basically the entire point of [http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/ant-city/ Ant City]

* ''[[Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar]]''. Not that hard, and you get to be a dinosaur that shoots beams when you roar.

* ''[[Total Annihilation]]'' has flying transport units that can "transport" enemy units, especially if they're AI...Oh, the possibilities!

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Wish Fulfillment]]

[[Category:Emotional Torque]]

[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]

[[Category:YMMV Trope]]

[[Category:Videogame Culture]]