@Left_Empty suggested I make a new post for this subject based on this thread Naval Sims where we got a little side-tracked.
As mentioned there, Prison Architect is an amazing sim I can’t play without the Star Wars mod. If you’ve watched any documentaries or news about the American prison system it’s just horrible what is done to people here, especially for non-violent crimes, the number of innocent people incarcerated, coupled with a for-profit system. The campaign story is pretty rough too so you feel it emotionally. With an evil group running our country, and so many sociopaths in positions of influence, Tyranny seemed like it would just remind me about what’s going on so I never even considered buying it.
Anything where a little kid gets hurt, abused or abandoned. Basically I can’t watch any movies like this or play games like this. Just too powerful, it’s like they are are cheating with emotional resonance.
I heard The Binding of Issac was good but I’ll never know.
I was thinking maybe there aren’t any but then Guap’s post reminded me that I skipped out on that game where you play a character whose child is dying of cancer. I guess I respect that the industry allows for this kind of game to get made, and I understand it was cathartic for the creator, who went through the experience in real life. But I’ll never play it.
I can’t play stuff like FTL or XCOM, with named characters you’re fully in control of. I get a super amount of anxiety whenever any one of them is close to death, and just feel terrible if they’re killed.
That Dragon Cancer? Yeah. I respect the guy for making it, but I could never play that personally. As a father, and one with mutlutple family members who have died of cancer, I simply would be unable to play it.
I had a little trouble with the Yakuza 0 mafia torture scenes until I realized these things happen on an hourly basis in this world and everyone is cool with it afterwards.
Ah, your affinity for space makes complete sense now! Nameless space scrub #4375 is a lot less damaging to lose than Rich.
Never bothered me personally, but every now and again I get that one soldier whom I will rescue at any cost. Like Husker himself, I get too close sometimes.
I haven’t played Brother’s, just read about it. Looks interesting. Not sure it would fit in my category, the older brother is not a little kid, but the ending does look rough.
This is exactly why I love Prison Architect so much. I want my prison to be one of the good ones. I want to make sure my guys get their visits and don’t have to sit in holding cells for 4 hours. I want them to leave sober and prepared to turn their lives around. The goal is to do as much good as you can despite all the challenges of running a prison.
There is one genre that really turns me off. Personally, I’ve dealt with more than enough Depressed Northwest Teen Girl problems in real life to last me a lifetime. Trust me. They’re really not very interesting. I don’t understand why people want to play those games any more than I understand why they fly out here to eat Voodoo Donuts.
If a game makes me play as the Axis, that’s two strike against it already. If it has a bunch of wehraboo nonsense about how German technology is so much better, that’s when I flip my monitor. When I started poking around in the scenario editor of Airborne Assault: Highway to the Reich and found that the 101st Airborne didn’t have a particularly high “determination” stat compared to German units, I just hit alt-F4 and never looked back.
It’s not even that. If I lose a wingman in Wing Commander, for example, it’s an emotional gut punch, but since their death was THEIR fate under THEIR control, it doesn’t give me that anxiety.
Yeah, I couldn’t play games where kids were in danger when my son was little. (It was all I could do to make it through reading The Road, and I skipped the movie.)
I’ve flown lots of German WW2 planes in games, but always just to try out the planes – I realize I’ve never played a flight sim campaign as the Germans. My grandmother left London for Canada after her neighborhood started getting V-1 buzz bombs dropped on it, and coming over by ship her convoy had to go silent because they were being stalked by a U-Boat. So really no desired to play WW2 games as Nazis. (This discussion topic first came up when I was revolted by the idea of playing as the Germans attacking civilian ships in Atlantic Fleet.)
I’m the opposite of Brian when it come to naming teammates, though. In the early flight sims that supported that, I was usually flying with a combination of friends and USS Enterprise crew members. :) Having those names gave me more incentive to keep them alive. It’s one thing to lose Ensign Generic NPC, it feels like more is at stake when you’re flying wingman for Lt. Montgomery Scott.
