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Are there any games that have a sense of despair?

GHG

Gold Member
review-pathologic2-ps9zkmo.jpg


Despair from beginning to end.

The only correct answer in the whole thread.

Also darkwood:

 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
Every game / level where the main character can't fight back against attacking enemies, I guess?

That puts all those titles like Amnesia, Five Nights at Freddy's, first few zones of Resident Evil 7 and 8, etc. in that bag.
 

arvfab

Banned
Don't know if they were mentioned already, but I forgot

Shadow of the Colossus
This War of Mine

in my previous post.


Also the dispair I feel every time I see a Pikmin getting eaten, stamped, burned, spiked, poisoned etc. is immense.
 

ParaSeoul

Member
Every game / level where the main character can't fight back against attacking enemies, I guess?

That puts all those titles like Amnesia, Five Nights at Freddy's, first few zones of Resident Evil 7 and 8, etc. in that bag.
nah not being able to fight back makes it less scary
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Few games filled me with despair like the first Silent Hill. The game is a constant downward spiral into worse things and situations, with no release or good ending in sight. That feeling is still with me when I think about the game, more than 20 years later. I could never muster the strength to finish it a second time.

The 7th Guest/The 11th Hour duology gave me similar vibes, but the games weren’t as good. I guess the poor gameplay coupled with the gratuitously gory FMV contributes to the feeling, but it also left me feeling kinda dirty. Silent Hill is a much better experience in all aspects.

Xenosaga Episode 3 is another. After all your characters went through, after all the pain and betrayal, there’s no happy ending. A far cry from Xenogears and especially the Xenoblade games.

Oh, and if you think you won’t find despair in cutesy platformers, play Klonoa (the PS1 original or its excellent Wii remake).
 
I am Setsuna if you are a fan of old school turn based rpgs. The game has this feel throughout, in fact the whole major plot feeds further into this type of feeling.
 
Paper Mario Color splash. We all live in a world where the color can be sucked out of us and our only friend is a paint can that "Spoilers" is only with us until the end of the game.. then the despair kicks in .. "I spent 50 hours playing this.. most of that time was spent trying to find one of the generic purple toads.."
Enough despair for you OP?
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
Stay a while, stay FOREVER. Been a long time since I played that, did you choose this because of something specific to the C64? Does it never end or something? I remember playing gauntlet on the C64 and it asked to flip the tape at some point, then it asked to turn it over again and once me and my friend realised it was the same levels again we concluded it probably never ended curious if impossible mission did that aswell or something.
I chose it because every time you die you lose 10 minutes off the 6 hour game clock and those robots killed me so often it was hard to tell exactly when the game would end. It was anxiety inducing.
 

Laptop1991

Member
The ones that don't work or crash when i've just bought them lol, as for gameplay, i would say Fallout 3 of the games i play.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
Did someone say despair?

monokuma_illustration.png

If we're talking about Visual Novels, I would say The Nonary Games has Dangonronpa beat in this department, particularly Virtues Last Reward. That one is something else in terms of the feeling of "nothing can stop this from getting worse. . ."
 

wvnative

Member
Final Fantasy X

The Last of Us

Not really the entire game, but if you go around the world and talk to NPCs at the END of FF7 OG, most of them are
Literially just waiting to die and coping in various ways as Meteor approches, not to mention the forboding sky on the world map...
 
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jufonuk

not tag worthy
Any switch port game has an air of despair. You know PC owners gonna be all where is the 120fps. 900p ?!? No mods ?

while all you want to do is enjoy the game.

Did I do it right ?!?
 
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Valonquar

Member
Midway through the latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion Endwalker, and despair is a key element to the story.
 

CeeJay

Member
Frostpunk and the Long Dark. Both fantastic games but they're basically hypothermia simulators where you're always on the edge of survival.
Add the Flame And The Flood to those two. It's never a case of trying to win, more like putting the cold inevitable end off and holding on for as long as possible before it all just slips away quietly with a whimper.
 

Lunarorbit

Member
Chrono trigger. End of the world, some post apocalyptic scenes.

Oxenfree. I went into it blind and got pretty high before I started it. Won't spoil anything but it's on the smaller size and the art style is forbodding.
 
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