Last time that happened, I found Doom was a good outlet for it...
No, it's not that it's been 15 years since I was last murderously pissed off, I just found a Flash version of it
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/470460
and it's still the best way to a/ kill lots of stuff and achieve catharsis without also unlocking achievement: prison rape victim, b/ get REALLY motion-sick.
Plus its a very quick in-out. You can have it loaded and be killing stuff in 30 seconds, and be through a couple of levels in another 5 minutes. Job done. Quit. No need for any fancy stuff, no crouching for cover, no online play, hardly even any power-ups. Grab shotgun, grab shells, hit "run", blow off a few demons' heads.
(so it's official: a web browser + flash on a Core 2 Duo has at LEAST as much processing power as a 486 DX2/66...)
Back in the day, on the train home after a shit day in a previous job, I found GTA 1 (the 2D-ish one) was a similarly good way to do similar on my ancient, breezeblock-like laptop. Forget the missions (you won't get far on a 30-minute ride or a 60-minute battery anyway), just ride around, create a few roadblocks, then burn up a car, hijack a fire engine, and break out the bazooka... DIE! DIE! DIIEEEEE.... huhuhuh fire is cool.
The ultimate aim is to make the map run out of fire engines, pretty much. Then you hijack some tankers (fastest vehicle in the game: fact ... but also very slow to accelerate) and see how many police cars you can detonate just by driving really fast and having them crash into you. Once you're moving fast enough the blast wave of the explosion doesn't actually reach you in order to cause damage, so you can take out 20 or more before the minor contact damage kills the truck.
By which point you're a lot more chilled and ready to give up anyway.
Somehow the 3D ones don't really give me that kind of satisfaction. They're a lot harder to cause serious carnage with.
