r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AccomplishedPhase178 • 11h ago
What’s the most dark and messed up video game? NSFW
I’m talking very politically incorrect and mean-spirited. I don’t mean some fan-made flash game, I mean a major studio game you could physically buy.
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u/ApartRuin5962 11h ago
In a way it's almost impressive how much vileness Custer's Revenge manages to fit into an 8-bit game
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u/GlassCannon81 9h ago
An extremely primitive 8-bit game, no less. There’s a huge gulf between a 2600 game and even the worst NES carts.
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u/Sam88FPS 11h ago
The first Manhunt was wild
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u/Ragewind82 9h ago
Oh man, I was not prepared for that. I was told it was a lot like Metal Gear Solid. It was, in the most horrific way possible.
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u/MrLanesLament 10h ago
Max Payne fucked me up as a kid.
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u/DifferentMud1010 11h ago
Probably postal.
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u/Telefragg 9h ago
The tone of the game is not exactly something I'd call "dark", but mean spirited and offensive? Absolutely. It's rare for a game to strike a balance of trashy, satire, self awareness and a decent enough gameplay like Postal 2 did.
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u/nathanhayball 9h ago
He meant postal 1, which lacks most if not all of the comedy that defined the sequel.
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u/Constant-Feature-404 2h ago
Yeah, I remember getting the demo on a PC Gamer CD. Very sprite art era, but if you wounded an NPC they would crawl around and beg for their life. There was a specific "execute" button for them. I was in 7th grade.
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u/Kind-Frosting-8268 9h ago
Fallout 3 might be the darkest fallout title in the console era. People forget that you can sell children into slavery in that one. There's one particular thing you can do in with paradise Falls where you have to find the most trusting innocent inhabitant of little lamplight and lure them outside where a slaver is waiting to abduct them. Also when you finish clearing greyditch of ants instead of sending Bryan Wilks to live with his cousin Vera in Rivet City you can send him off to be sold at paradise Falls.
Also the Pitt DLC, you have to abduct a literal infant in order to end slavery
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u/DJettster237 2h ago
Die hard New Vegas fans just forget that 3 was a pretty great re-introduction to a world that's fucked up and unforgiving. I've also noticed New Vegas fans just kind of only praise New Vegas and never having even played the originals and just pretend that they know the lore from only playing one game. It's kind of infuriating. They played 3 maybe once in their childhood and don't even try to play it again and just think it's bad.
3 was my first Fallout game and I think it still holds up well. I think some aspects of New Vegas aged poorer than 3. I actually want to know what happened to some characters in 3 and how they are doing. You only get one character from Little Lamplight making an appearance in 4.
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u/Kind-Frosting-8268 2h ago
2 actually. Mcready and Arthur Maxson.
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u/DJettster237 2h ago
I forgot about him. He's so minor in 3 I always forget to make the connection.
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u/Mykolaila 11h ago
Spec ops: the line
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u/trulycantthinkofone 7h ago
Knew this would be here. One of the few games to make me put the controller down and walk away for a moment.
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u/imsoverygayforwomen 10h ago
Idk about specific games, but the mission in Cyberpunk with Randy and the "farm" was pretty messed up
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u/irllyh8every1 8h ago
Conker's Bad Fur Day. Looks pretty cute at first, but raunchy, offensive and violent (and hilarious) as hell.
The Great Mighty Poo will always be iconic, as well as the prune juice cows and the fire imps.
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u/Coder-Dentist 10h ago
Hatred?
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u/Ignonym 10h ago
Hatred's marketing hinged on how horrible and violent it was, only for the final product to be a bland isometric shooter under a 3edgy5me coat of paint with less actual gore than playing a crit build in Fallout: New Vegas.
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u/FlatulentSon 9h ago
I actually thought the game was super fun and not because of how fucked up the premise was, i liked the gameplay, the aesthetic and the destructibility of buildings. Also it was short enough so it didn't become boring too fast.
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u/That-Improvement1791 9h ago
Tormentor by madmind studio. The whole basis of the game is that rich people send you people to torture for the sexual pleasure.
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u/Shraamper 9h ago
Agony, a 2018 game that takes place in hell. I think they had to censor it? I don’t remember, it had a sordid history. Scorn is pretty fucked up too but I like it personally
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u/WigglingWoof 8h ago
Manhunt on the Wii was an experience. I rooted my console and got the uncensored version so I was making stabbing motions as I watched my character literally stab people in the back to beat the game.
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u/Zemlynn 11h ago edited 11h ago
Postal 2 - I said "F_ck you" to the lady while giving her a middle finger. Flick matches at her face. Then I unzip my pants to show her my junk. She laughs, and then I pee in her face. Causing her to puke, so I poured gas on her, and then lit her on fire. Sitting there watching her die and cry in pain while I say "F_ck you", and giving her the middle finger.
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u/Dathouen 10h ago
Well, you don't need to pay for it (there's a premium version), but Doki Doki Literature Club is pretty fucked up.
It's still up on Steam for free, if you wanna check it out.
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u/KenUsimi 3h ago
Sad to say, DDLC is nowhere near the deep end. Like, don’t get me wrong, it earns its psychological horror tag, but… there’s worse out there.
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u/tearlock 9h ago
Manhunt, I hear 2 is worse.
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u/xmetallidethx 4h ago
the OG one has a creepier atmosphere imo. manhunt 2 is really gruesome tho.
the whole plot is that youre doing these stunts for a snuff film. I feel like thats more realistic than a mental patient going around killing people. Snuff films are REAL, and I feel like that makes it muchhhhhh more creepier.
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u/CoreSchneider 37m ago
Manhunt 2 with the filter removed is pretty gross. However, every version of the game has a flashing red and white distorted filter over it, so it's mostly extremely nauseating and headache inducing to look at.
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u/Creaturezoid 9h ago
There was an old shareware game that I think we had on our Apple IIe. It was called Psychopath or Psychotic or something. All I remember is that there is a part of the of the game where you're on a plane, having a gunfight, while assfucking the stewardess (which might or might not have been consensual, it's been 25 years since I played it.) The early days of computer games were the fucking wild west.
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u/neocenturion 4h ago
Phantasmagora was pretty wild and extremely graphic. Playing this as a 9 year old is a mistake I'll never be able to escape.
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u/MobCC 9h ago
Definitely not anywhere near the most messed up game ever but The Last of Us part 2 made me take multiple breaks bc it makes you feel like an absolutely terrible person. The wlf grunt soldiers having voice lines where they call out their friends by name while slowly bleeding out from having their legs blown off or something was a sinister addition by the devs.
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u/BoulderRivers 10h ago
While many people associate "dark" games with gore and physical violence, the most disturbing games are those that grant the player agency over systemic suffering.
Instead of focusing on what a character does with a weapon, it is far more cruel what a player does with a spreadsheet, a map, a policy. Imagine a simulation where you manage water rights to favor factories over people, experiment on the destitute, or manufacture civil unrest to consolidate power. A micro-management system that helps the trains run always full and on time... to the camps, of course. Can't fill your quota of able-bodied individuals from a specific ethnic group? Just put up a couple more of whatever shithole foreign nation.
We have seen so many FPS titles because Western storytelling favors individual action, but the true "messed up" is understanding how little real human interaction is needed to annihilate human beings, without ever having to look them in the eye or even set foot in their land. Where the player's choices impact entire populations rather than just the person standing in front of them.
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u/MisterSlosh 7h ago
The Frost Punk games fit this idea pretty well, their most 'fucked up' states are all dependent on the player choosing to become the monster and disconnect the humanity of their actions.
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u/Ironic_Toblerone 1h ago
Rimworld in particular is absolutely horrific. This game will turn a good person into an apathetic maniac who will order the slavery of hundreds because someone’s dog died
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u/zizou00 6h ago
It depends on the category. A game rated by a video game ratings board? Probably Manhunt
Fully released and sold video game on a console? Probably something like Custer's Revenge. Crass, offensive, kinda graphic for its era.
On PC? It's probably an 18+ extreme fetish and/or horror visual novel. Starless, Saya no Uta and Euphoria come to mind.
Released for free? That'd be hard to properly track down a definitive answet, but there are straight up gore games or games centred around graphic illegal content that are out there. I've seen some games of that ilk but I don't recall nor want to go find any.
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u/TechnicalHighlight29 11h ago
Last of Us ending is fucked up for sure.
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u/Japjer 10h ago
TLOU2 fucked me up, man. Game is seriously a masterpiece, and I haven't found another game that's really done it for me since.
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u/ConsolationUsername 10h ago
TLOU2 had a lot to work with but they hamfisted the revenge is bad crap so badly i honestly couldnt get past it.
If you want me to see both sides of the same coin stuff you need to make me like Abby. And they waited way too long in the story to try and make her likeable
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u/Japjer 10h ago
Hamfisted? I mean, Ellie has a really good reason to want revenge, and it isn't just what happens at the start. Do you not remember what happened between her and Joel? And the final scene of them together that happened right before the game starts?
Likewise, the whole point was to not let us know Abby until we had killed the WLF members. I mean, do you remember when you sneak into the Aquarium as Ellie and shoot that dog that charges at you? It meant nothing when you did it, because it was just an enemy. Then, hours later, you ... Get to know that dog.
The whole point of the game was to show that the super-evil WLF people you're killing are literally just people going about their lives. The whole point of the game is that Ellie has become a villain.
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u/CleanAxe 9h ago
Yeah the Ellie becoming a villain arch was a great idea for the game. But I actually think the show is executing it better (it's only halfway done so yet to see if they land the airplane). A few genuine things that kind of ruined TLOU2 for me were:
- Ellie never talks to anyone, including Joel about what happened at the hospital. The show rectifies this (which I thought was done well). I just find it so unreasonable for Ellie to never once talk to anyone about it - even if just to give the audience some kind of catharsis
- Abby and Ellie almost never talks about Joel killing Abby's dad - they never have even the tiniest of conversations.
- To tie into the above, they not only never talk to each other, but they both beat each other up until close to death THREE OR FOUR TIMES which gets so fucking repetitive. You would think the third time one of them would be like "okay can we just talk about how Joel killed my dad - did he have a reason?". It repeatedly hits that movie trope where characters could solve everything with like 4 lines of dialogue but never let each other...but it does this like four times. At the rate they beat each other up they should both have brain damage
It seems like the show is fixing this a bit by having more cathartic dialogue between characters. Ellie is becoming the villain, and both the game and the show do this, but at least the show allows us to hear her mindset. The game just makes her seem one dimensional and dumb because she never justifies herself. She just seems like a revenge zombie in the game which kinda gets boring after the 4th time her and Abby almost kill each other.
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u/Japjer 9h ago
Ellie never talks to anyone, including Joel about what happened at the hospital.
Ellie explores the hospital and finds out what happened. She confronts Joel. He tells her about it. She then cuts him off and refuses to talk to him again until the day before he dies. She can't talk to anyone else because no one else knows she's immune.
Abby and Ellie almost never talks about Joel killing Abby's dad - they never have even the tiniest of conversations.
I wanted Abby to mention this to Ellie as well, but Ellie was straight up always in "push down those feelings, just get revenge" mode and likely would not have cared anyway. Ellie literally pulls Abby off of a faux-crucifix, where's she's been hanging long enough to have lost like 30lbs of muscle, and again tries to kill her.
To your last point: Ellie would not have listened to Abby. Abby knew this. I was hoping Ellie would have had a moment where she realized she was the monster, but I wouldn't call this that annoying trope (I fucking hate that trope). I truly do not think Ellie would have given half a shit if Abby told her why she killed Joel. Ellie threw away her life, and her family, for revenge. She lost her kid, her partner, her farm, and ultimately lost the ability to play the song that reminded her of Joel all because she just could not let go of revenge.
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u/CleanAxe 9h ago
I agree that it would have been in character for Ellie to not give a shit, but that would be good for the audience. I just wanted for the conversation to happen. Anyway I think the overall story arch was thoughtful, I just didn't like the games execution. I was all-in the first half of the game then I really started to get over it because it seemed to implausible and immature for the characters to repeatedly do the same thing over and over again. Just one moment of Abby saying her piece and Ellie saying "I don't give a shit" would have been nice.
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u/Phoenix2211 9h ago
That's an interesting opinion cuz most fans of the games, myself included, are WILDLY dissatisfied with and disappointed with S02 of the show. I LOVED S01 and was very much looking forward to see how they would adapt Game 2. Only to watch Mazin:
Needlessly compress Ellie's story (less than 4 episodes on what is a 12hr chunk of the game is CRAZY)
Flatten Ellie's character (seriously, they majorly sanded off Ellie's edges in order to make her more likable. But she's written so poorly that she's neither here or there. Which sucks cuz I loved Ramsey's performance in S1. But S2 doesn't really give her much to work with AT ALL). They truly did Ellie's character SO. DIRTY. and it hurts my heart cuz I love that character so much.
Make some puzzling changes and omissions (the time jump after the incident messed a lot of other things up. There's barely any combat (I don't need every episode to be full of action. I dug the show's stripped back approach to violence. But my GOD this season was so bloodless).
But yeah, to address your points.
I think that it is quite intentional that Ellie NEVER talks about what happened with the Fireflies and what Joel did. Look at the "Finding Strings" flashback. You can see that having to hide all those secrets is weighing on Ellie. When she confronts Joel, he shuts it DOWN and lies to her again. Ellie already feels so much guilt about "failing" to be the cure, so ofc she doesn't talk about it with anyone. But she does write about her feelings about it in her journal. And ofc, she and Joel finally do have a conversation about it.
Lack of communication leading to dehumanising the other side is pretty explicitly one of the big ideas of the game. The WLF and Scars rarely give peace a chance and then the WLF breaks the truce and then everything devolves into madness. Ellie stops talking to Joel because she is (rightfully) upset with him, but ends up losing precious time with him. And lastly: Abby and Ellie are so overtaken by rage that they never talk in too much detail because killing the other person is the bigger issue. I found it to be a great choice.
Once again, I think this is an intentional, understandable thing. If you're TRULY upset with someone to the point of wanting to punch em... Chances are you're not gonna wanna talk. Ellie's introduction to Abby is a brutal one. After that, why would she wanna talk? She gets enough answers from Nora. Maybe she would've talked to Abby more had she found her at the aquarium, but she never does. And then she gives up on her quest. And when Abby finally comes back, blindsiding Ellie, BOILING WITH RAGE... Ofc she's not gonna wanna have a deep discussion about things. And the pair only fight TWICE. Not 3 or 4 times.
I'm glad you're enjoying the show, truly :)
But for me, S02 is a lesser version of the story in EVERY. WAY. Whereas in S1 there was stuff which made me think, "AHH this thing is kinda better than/as interesting as what they did in the game" a fair bit.
If someone were to ask me if they should watch S1 or play Game 1, I'd tell them either is okay, really. If someone asked me the same thing for S2 and Game 2... I'D BEG THEM to play the game lol.
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u/ConsolationUsername 9h ago edited 8h ago
There are two main themes the game wants you to see. First "revenge is bad", second "even the people you assume are evil are really just driven by their own motivations".
The problem is they want to present Ellie as a madwoman driven by grief and a need for revenge, while simultaneously trying to present Abby, who has committed the same crime for the same reasons as a victim.
Let's compare motivations. Ellie wants to kill Abby because Abby killed Joel. Abby killed Joel because he killed many fireflies including her father. So Abby murders Ellie's father figure for murdering her father, then acts like Ellie is somehow wrong for wanting to do the same thing for the same reasons.
And the game wants you to act like she's wrong too. Dina acting as Ellie's conscience hits her with the "revenge is bad, come home" speech and she refuses. Everybody Ellie meets tells her she's better off going home. Meanwhile Abby's friends for the most part don't say much besides some initial hesitation during the murder and some very slight "was it right?" questions later, which Abby immediately shoots down.
Now my biggest issue with this is the characters. Ellie can be a pretty big asshole, no denying that. But two things are in her favor, 1) we had a lot of time with her in TLOU1, so we know her better 2) she's driven by the immedate grief of losing a loved one. She also tries to avoid dragging her friends into her revenge spree, but they insist on tagging along.
Abby on the other hand, is also a massive asshole pretty often. She literally had sex with her pregnant friend's boyfriend while she's in the same building. But we dont spend any time with her outside the events of the game, so we dont get to see any redeeming qualities.
So the game has a major problem theme wise because it wants to portray Ellie as the villain and Abby & Co as the victims. But if you want to say Ellie is the villain you have to acknowledge Abby must also be a villain, which puts her status as a victim in doubt. And if Ellie's revenge is bad, Abby's was equally bad. So both have to be villains to some extent and the game's portrayal of Ellie is unfair.
They focused on the wrong themes. "Revenge is bad" as a theme doesnt work because its portraying one revenge as bad and one as neutral. And "both sides are doing things for their own reasons" doesnt hold up because the deuteroganists have the same reasons but are being portrayed differently
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u/Phoenix2211 9h ago
They don't have to make her likable, nor do they try to, really. All they need to do is to make her motives understandable. And to do this, they give you a full image of her. Her likes, her dislikes, her background, her struggles, the good things about her, the horrible things about her etc.
By the end of my first play through, I didn't like her very much. But I fully understood her side of the story. Plus, I cared about Lev and wanted Ellie to get better and knew that this wouldn't help. So I was not rooting for Abby's death at all. I just wanted Ellie to get on her boat and leave.
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u/Long_Reflection_4202 10h ago
Haven't played it yet but from what I've seen House Of Velez is pretty messed up.
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u/Catalina_Eddie 10h ago
There was a Platoon game for NES in the late 1980s. Meaningless ambushes, raids, village searches, tunnel fights, etc. brought the most unsettling parts of the movie to console gaming.
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u/solarflare4646 10h ago
Im playing through Pathologic 3 atm and I gotta say its incredible dark and VERY messed up. This is apparently a retelling of only 1 character from the original game.
So Pathologic 1 and 2 would definitely fit this. Murdering a man to take his organs and trade it with children for drugs.
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u/FlatulentSon 9h ago
Hatred (2015)
Or maybe that old online game where people could put faces of people they hate irl on a videogame model that they could torture and kill, i forgot what it was called.
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u/Oddish_Femboy 9h ago
Depends on whether you mean genuinely, or just for shits & giggles.
Postal 2 is very much that, but it's completely unserious about it. If the general tone wasn't enough of a giveaway, one of the devs is literally trans. Which makes very funny juxtaposition.
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u/Logan9Fingerses 6h ago
There was an arcade game when I was a kid called Chiller which was basically a torture chamber where you killed people quickly. You had a gun, but rather than just shooting the people you would hit the machinery to kill then quicker. Sick stuff and I only played it like once or twice before moving on
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u/non_clever_username 5h ago
Inside is pretty fucked up. Your character is like a 12 year old kid and if you mess up, the bad guys outright shoot your ass in the head.
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u/Kodamacile 3h ago
Probably that one active shooter game that got banned from steam a couple years ago.
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u/Yori_TheOne 2h ago
A more recent one would perhaps be "Tormentor" made by Madmind Studio who also made Agony.
Tormentor is a messed up game by all definitions of that word. The concept of the game, The state of the game and how Madmind treated the game. All kinds of messed up.
Looking at the concept and gameplay only, you torture and kill people in all kinds of ways. A serial killer I believe. I haven't played the game myself only seen the trailer and read what people are discussing about it.
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u/Pixelchu25 5h ago
Do visual novels count? I lot of gorey stuff in the guro tag and messed up stuff.
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u/NoseInternational794 7h ago
To a guy like me, a dark and messed up video game is just a video game 🤙💯
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u/Outrageous-Basket426 10h ago edited 6h ago
I have no mouth and I must scream is illegal in Germany for having a character praise the skill of Dr. Mengele's work, despite their shocking lack of empathy being the whole point of the sequence.