Which games stress you out the most to play?

Oh, man. I deal with a lot of anxiety both online and offline so mostly it's multiplayer games for me.

League of Legends is something I was really into for a while (kind of getting back into it now) but I didn't actually play that much of it because I physically couldn't bring myself to queue up. I could sometimes do it when playing with some friends but to this day I've never solo queued.

Fighting games were another. Last generation I bought SSFIV, MK9, and Injustice but never played any online for similar reasons. Just way too nervous and never got any good at them.

Most recently is Destiny 2. With the original Destiny I managed to scrounge up enough friends at the time to do a run at the Vault of Glass (never beat it though) but with Destiny 2 I don't have enough friends to do that so I went with the Giant Bomb LFG group. I found some cool duders to raid with twice (still never beat it though) but my anxiety just gets to me and it becomes really hard to think about even attempting to do it.

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.

Games that don't let you skip tutorials, cut scenes, or allow you to mute the game (IOS issue mostly) so I can listen to a podcast/my own music in the background. When I want to play a game, I want to play a game and not watch a movie / read a book and it becomes frustrating and stressful whenever a game tries to do everything possible to prevent you from playing the game. Sure, I understand that there are some people who enjoy stories in their games, but do you have punish people who couldn't give a shit about your sub-The Room quality story or force me to go through twenty minutes of tutorials that block me from doing anything except for hitting the EXACT button you want me to hit and give me no choice but to do that specific action or quit the game entirely?

A good example of a game that frustrated me was Phoenix Wright. I heard Vinny talk about the game and, even though I normally hate text adventures, I decided to give this game a shot. Unfortunately the text crawl is so slow in that game I wonder what the developers were thinking? What makes it worse is that there is this typewriter effect with the text, so every letter goes up one by one and each time there is a sound indicating that a new letter (not even a whole word, every FUCKING letter this happens) and if you hit the button to speed up the text it doesn't automatically appear, it just makes the individual letters appear a bit faster. Even with the speed up text option I can read so much faster than what is being displayed that the game becomes a total chore to play and makes me wish there was a normal book version of the game that I can enjoy at my own pace. Ughhhh.... even just thinking about this game pisses me off.

The slow build up to a MOBA match stresses the shit outta me, at least until it's fully underway and I get into a rhythm.

It was competitive Starcraft 2.

Brood War, I was bad and ignorant enough to think I was good. Starcraft, I knew enough to know the many ways I'd inevitably die. So it was stressful as all hell.

I feel the same about Divinity Original Sin 2. I played 20+ hours worth and then stopped, because I feel like I stuffed it up. Yes, I know you can re-spec on the ship. I'm so far past it now that I'll re-start the game when I go back to it.

Lately, and really, more than any other game has, PUBG stresses me out, especially as I get closer to the top of the group, as I dread the idea that I'm probably going to stuff it all up, ruining my chance at #1 and also having lost all the work of the past 20 minutes of play.

Competitive multiplayer, which is one reason I hate those kinds of games. They are stressful in a very negative way.

Racing games, especially sim ones, ... but these are stressful in a positive, exciting and fun way. [Racing against the AI, not morons online].

Anything time-based, like the early Dead Rising games and the Walking Dead series.

Alien Isolation stands out, as a punishing and highly atmospheric horror game. It combines to make something very stressful.

Demon's/Dark Souls were more annoying and tedious to me than stressful.

Starcraft II ladder used to give me serious anxiety. Also Devil Daggers, that game is intense.

Honestly any game with poor level / encounter design. The most recent such case being the Wolfenstein games. Those had some of the most archaic level and enemy design I can remember. It was like playing a shooter from the late 90's / early 2000's before they figured out how to make properly functioning AI. Not to mention how wildly inconsistent the enemies could be at times. You could literally crouch right up to them and stealth kill them., but then you'd poke the corner of your head from around a box and they'd spot you from 50 meters out. The shooting was fun, but that "once 1 person sees you every enemy in the level knows where you are in a split second" mechanic worked so hard against it, I had to force myself to finish the game, just to see the narative through. Not to mention the HORRIBLE level design. I constantly found myself in areas i had cleared out of enemies just trying to figure out where the hell to go next. Not to mention that all the levels looked like the same generic nazi fortress / laboratory / underground missile silo look. Way too many circular arena levels where enemies would constantly pour in from what were essentially monster closets. Also it relied way too heavily on scripted event "set pieces" ala CoD. I found these gripes all the more stressful and frustrating due to how damn the story was. Story 8/10... gameplay 4/10... A truly horrible experience.

Games that have character creation regardless of if they let you edit the choices made down the road or not. I spent two hours messing around in Dragon's Dogma's editor last night making little ground on the look I want to go with.

Pokémon Gold?

I'm far enough in that I really just need to finish the damn game, but I really don't want to play it anymore. Pokémon is just not my thing. Still, if I don't go back and finish it, I'm always going to be upset that I backed down when it was nearing the home stretch. It's maddening.

Actual gameplay? Horror games. I know what's coming, I know it's not real, and I usually love horror movies... but for some reason in gameplay it just gets under my skin. I think I played Resident Evil 7 VR for all of 15 minutes.

Anything cooperative that requires a certain level of execution to perform well, for instance when playing the destiny 2 raid and now with playing monster hunter with other people. I don’t wont to stuff something up and ruin everyone else’s fun. Even when I know that a mistake wouldn’t actually ruin anything.

Age of Empire II. So much stuff to manage, and before you know it, your kingdom is being attacked on multiple sides by huge armies.

Anything that requires juggling several things at once -- tenfold if there's a timer on said juggling. Overcooked, Diner Dash, etc.

Games like say Cuphead. I just do not feel the reward even when I succeed. It's more like 'what's next, will I succeed or say I've had it. Too tedious.

However, 2 evenings ago I was screaming at Alloy (therefore myself really) to get back off her ass and fight the Doombringer and pals in that final confrontation for Horizon; Zero Dawn. I was upset and swearing, and yet perversely having the time of my video game life.

Go figure, Great game though!

@cookedvermin said:

^

17 hours of palm sweating on my first playthrough. It's really cool though.

Daaaaaaaaaaamn

I found the most stressful part of the game to be the sound design and thus, I have spent most of my play time with the sound off. Still stressful though, just not as much.

Right now? Nioh. Digging the game and especially the combat. But dear god, those bossses are TOUGH! Took me 2 hours to beat the vampire lady D:

none lol

Outlast and Amnesia are incredibly stressful games to play.

StarCraft (1 or 2) multiplayer is very stressful for me. In most shooters if you die, oh well, you're quickly back. In StarCraft a loss is somehow humiliating. All that effort for nothing. Hence, why I just play the campaign over and over...

Cart Life seems so stressful from the quick look I can't touch it. Spent too much time trying to get a business license that you miss picking your child up from school and now she doesn't like you? asdflkdsfjsdf cant handle this.

It seems very contextual. If the starts align and I play a super effective horror game, that's pretty stressful. But 90% of the time I try one they tend to mostly just be boring.

It's probably still some competitive scenarios. I don't stress a lot in competitive games generally anymore (it was pretty bad 8-10 years ago). But if I get a match against someone who is noticeably better than me, and I'm fired up trying to take them down with all I got, then that can put a serious strain on me. Not in a bad way neccessarily, but in a super serious match I'll come out of it needing a break.

Persona 5 for sure. The fear I might "waste" a day really stripped a lot of the fun out of it for me. I was keeping multiple saves in dungeons to make sure that I could finish them (or do as much as possible) in one day. If I ran out of SP and it looked like I wouldn't be able to do so I'd start the dungeon over.

Right now the most stressful games I play are rainbow six siege and subnautica.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Fire Emblem games, especially the newer ones. Knowing that if a certain unit dies or if I don't spread the limited experience points optimally (like in Fates: Conquest), I can reach the endgame unable to beat it and have to start the whole game over again or go back to a very distant save kind of broke me. I'm looking forward to the next game, but I hope there are skirmishes so I can get more experience. In Fates: Conquest specifically, I found myself caring about the characters too much to where I was set on everyone surviving and too indecisive about who I wanted on my team. This cost me two whole playthroughs of the game, and although I want to finish it, I can't seem to muster up the energy to complete it (and yes, I know about the dlc where you can get unlimited experience, but it feel like cheating). I don't typically get stressed out because of games, but Fire Emblem can get brutal. I wish there were more alternatives that have Fire Emblem's specific style.

Persona 5 for sure, with all that pressure to not waste time doing non useful stuff.

I played EVE Online for about 9 months and oscillated between loving the microscopic slice of the universe I had carved out for myself and being completely terrified and stressed at all times. Took me awhile to learn the lesson "never fly a ship you can't afford to lose." My first PVP kill gave me an adrenaline rush that no other game has given me.

Racing sims can be very stressful. I have had moments of road rage were after an incident the red mist appeared. I like to tell myself it was justified but deep down I know this isn't true. Also splatformers and other skill focused games can push me to the edge so I tend to avoid the really hardcore stuff because of this.

But other then that games don't stress me out. If I make a bad choice then so be it. I somehow made some terrible decisions in my first play trough of The Witcher 3 for example. But other then my ego nobody was really hurt and I can pretend it never happened in my second attempt.