Poll: So do you actually like "violent video games"?

[remnant_phoenix]

While I don't at all mind violence or blood, I really dislike gore. It doesn't matter if it's in games or movies. In books it's sometimes okay, because I can control what I don't want my imagination to see.

As for violent games...

Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series ever. The violence and blood are realistic, but I feel it's handled tastefully.

I played and enjoyed the first God of War and Sega's Madworld. Despite the gratuitous amounts of violence and blood in the both of these games, the characters all stylized and I never saw any realistic/explicit gore, so the violence didn't bother me at all.

On the other hand, truly realistic/explicit depictions of innards or dismemberment just completely turn off my enjoyment. Like the scene in Watchmen when the prisoner gets cut through the forearms with a circular saw? I had to turn my head away from the screen...

My immediate thought when I see something like that is "Ugh... Was that really necessary?" I just don't find gore to be scary, or entertaining, or "awesome." I find it to be disgusting.

 

[DesiPrinceX09]

I play mostly action/adventure type games. My favorite games are the assassins creed games, uncharted series, inFamous 1 and 2, Batman:arkham asylum (cant wait for arkham city), god of war, etc. I don't care about the level of violence as long as it fits with the game. Gore and ripping things apart goes with god war very well in a way that would make assassins creed or uncharted look stupid.

 

[sumanoskae]

A few of my favorite games are pretty bloody.

Fallout 3, God of War, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Red Dead Redemption. But I think each one uses violence in an effective way, to convey the rage of a character or keep you immersed in an unforgiving world

 

[kyogen]

I like violence to admit that it's violence, but I don't find gore for its own sake especially interesting.

 

[martin's a madman]

The games I'm playing right now are Fallout: New Vegas, Starcraft 2, Team Frotress 2, and Assorted legend of zelda games. So... I guess if I'm just using these examples, they would average out to simplified or stylised.

 

[luckshotpro]

I love gory games. No More Heroes, Gears of War, F.E.A.R. Bioshock, Left 4 Dead 2, ect.

 

[Dane Tesston]

As it stands, I just like to shoot; violence is just a consequence of that. And by that, I mean real world weapons. Bullets and rockets, not lasers (though the Mass Effect games are pretty fun). That said, I could easily go without any violence in my games.

 

[Active Schizophrenic]

Well... I find this one difficult because I don't buy games based on "If it is gory or not" I buy games based on what It is about. but personally If I had a choice between to games that were exactly the same in terms of how good they were and one was violent and the other was not. I would take the non-violent option. but I usually do play violent games because the majority of games are combat-based and I do like the fighting but more so If it isn't gory one of the reasons I like Batman: Arkham Asylum Is because you don't kill the enemies. you only knock them out. so I picked no violence at all. This doesn't mean i hate gory games and games where you kill people (I love god of war) but i would rather not kill them. (I absolutely hate GTA though because when I hit everyday innocent people with my car and killed them. It actually made me feel bad.)I but i find this is all moot when playing multiplayer games. in which I honestly dont care if they die or not because they will just re-spawn anyways.

 

[sheic99]

One of my favorite movies is Tokyo Gore Police, I find insane levels of gore funny.

 

[DementedSheep]

I do have some violent and gory game that are among my faviroutes So I guess that means I'm the top option in the poll.
But it?s not a selling point for the game and I don't care when its absent from others. It depends on the game, the tone it?s going for, and how it?s implemented as to whether gore is good or not I suppose. Gore for gore sake can detract from a game IMO. I usually don?t like it when gore starts reaching stupid levels. When I shoot someone in the chest with a pistol I do not expect their limbs and head to go flying off like in fallout 3!

 

[Susan Arendt]

Sure, there are certain particularly violent games that I enjoy. And there are games that aren't overly graphic, but are violent that I play expressly to get my shoot on. (TimeSplitters 2, I'm looking at you. Ah, shooting people's heads off with a shotgun. So satisfying.) I also enjoy games that depict violence without asking me to take part - Silent Hill, Condemned, so forth. (Yes, you're committing acts of violence in those games, but nothing like what the NPCs are doing.)

There's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying a virtual act of violence, either passively or actively. Such tendencies are hardwired into our nature, and pretending they don't exist is just plain silly. So long as you separate fantasy from reality - something videogame opponents seem to believe we're collectively incapable of doing - you're fine.

 

[Stryc9]

The violence in games doesn't matter to me really. It's merely a byproduct of some of the games I play. I used to want the violent and bloody games when I was 12 but now that I'm older it doesn't really matter as much, I play all kinds of games and if there's blood and gore so be it, it's not likely to ruin the experience for me.

One of my favorite bits of blood and gore was from the first Serious Sam game where there were a bunch of different blood color settings.

 

[MeatsOfEvil]

For me blood and gore can add to an experience, but it's not a selling point or a detractor. I don't find plants vs zombies lacking in gore, yet I enjoy Dead Space 2's...let's call it immersion

 

[Active Schizophrenic]

I play mostly action/adventure type games. My favorite games are the assassins creed games, uncharted series, inFamous 1 and 2, Batman:arkham asylum (cant wait for arkham city), god of war, etc. I don't care about the level of violence as long as it fits with the game. Gore and ripping things apart goes with god war very well in a way that would make assassins creed or uncharted look stupid.

I agree With this sometimes the gore fits the game but if in the next legend of zelda link found a shotgun and blew ganons head off with it It would just be un-called for

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Unnecessary quantities of gore can destroy a game's mood and atmosphere.

Take Dragon Age, for example: In the first game, there was a lot of blood, sure, but only a FEW violent gory animations that played once in a while (when you killed something with a crit, i think). The amount of blood looked a bit silly, but it was quite excusable.

In DA2? Well, in their effort to make the game more....action'y; Bioware did this thing where, 1/3 times when you kill an enemy....they explode. I shit you not. They literally explode in a giant splotch of blood....and a few blank, untextured body parts (think dress dummy heads) fly apart from the point of death....

It is literally the most retarded thing I've seen in that game. It is comical.... but not in any way funny. It's disturbing shit, that instantly obliterates your sense of immersion (I didn't know my rogues dagger was made out of solid GUNPOWDER!?), and utterly ruins the plausibility of the world when all 500 of those untextured heads disappear after a second. That was HORRENDOUS application of gore, and I nearly stopped playing after I first saw that. Instead, (since I wanted to see the story through) I just dropped the difficulty to casual, and just spammed R for the rest of the game, because I JUST couldn't take the combat seriously anymore.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Depends. Is the gore part of the point and appeal of the game? Then sure. In games like Doom and Mortal Kombat that's part of the visceral appeal of the product. Otherwise I see no reason for Mario to splatter intestines all over everything if he stomps a Goomba.

That says, an "it depends" option would be nice.

 

[Evil Top Hat]

I can't play mortal kombat because of the gore. I'm not squeamish at all, I've dissected rats, eyeballs and hearts before (in biology classes... I don't get up to shifty business in my spare time) and been fine with it, but it's the amount of glee that the game seems to have in it's gore that just makes me feel uncomfortable. It's as if the game thinks I'm supposed to be finding the whole deal "cool", and I find that slightly sickening.

Yahtzee pretty much summed it up perfectly, he said that devs treat this sort of stuff like "finisher porn", always displayed in such a way that makes it seem as if we're supposed to be attracted to this sort of stuff.

Gore is fine at times, when it's called for. But overusing it for the sake of overusing it is just needless, childish and I would even go as far as to say pathetic.

 

[Sunrider]

I can dig gore, but only if there's a good story behind it.
for example, if I'm wandering through an abandoned facility/space station/whatever and I hear subtle weird noises and then I find a corpse that's been pasted all over the walls, I get the whole 'what the fuck happened here?' vibe. but the gore in say... quake isn't scary at all, cause you already know what happened and who's doing it. at that point it loses all the impact.

This, pretty much.
It reminded me of a section in Final Fantasy 7, a pretty violent game with almost no gore at all. While pursuing Sephiroth, when you acquire your first Chocobo at the farm past Kalm village, you use it to cross a sandy area inhabited by Midgar Zolom, huge snakes which you have no chance in defeating at this stage. When you have crossed this area, you come to a grassy area in front of a cave where you find one of these snakes impaled on a tree by Sephiroth.

Spoiler: A-like so...

This isn't particularly gory in itself, but it's probably the most gory part in FF7. It stands as a testament of what the enemy you are pursuing is capable of. It made me feel small, pitiful and weak.
This is the best way of using gore if you ask me.

 

[Suicida1 Midget]

When it comes to gore, i just dont care about it. I like gears, and the way they did was almost reasonable.(if a downed guy crawls, theres just a a bit more blood than his body oould possible hold.) But I didnt personally care for Mortal Kombat.(fightings ok, but the gameplay is just dry.)

 

[kidd25]

Well, it's not in ultrarealistic 3D graphics, but the death animations in Fallout 2 are about as gruesome as they get.

i love how a punch can take someone ribs out