Image via Complex Original
Free will has been granted to us for some time in gaming. The freedom to go wherever we want and do whatever we please adds an extra element to our adventures. With free will however comes the occasional mischief. Non playable characters act as targets for nefarious activities like hit-and-runs and target practice. Actions like these would never take us away from playing hero, depending on the game, which is much different about gaming today.
More and more titles give you, the player, the opportunity to align yourselves with the dark side giving you more of a motive to terrorize those around you. It's the things we do for achievements. Regardless of if you're playing like a knight in shining armor or a demon seed, there are some things that we felt absolutely guilty doing in video games. Murdering harmless people, ditching our allies, making children cry, we feel guilty just talking about it. Here's our list of 25 Things That Make You Feel Guilty in Video Games.
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25. H Rank
It feels pretty crummy to not receive an A ranking house in Luigi's Mansion after capturing 50 Boos, 23 portrait ghosts, and saving Mario. At the end of the game, Professor E. Gadd builds a mansion for Luigi from the money that you collect throughout the game, and of course, the more money you collect the larger the mansion will be. But what if you weren't thorough enough with collecting money because you decided to rush through the game? Well that'll earn you a piss-poor house for Luigi. We felt bad for the guy when we scored an H Ranking. Here was our one opportunity to give Luigi something nice for spending decades in Mario’s shadow, and we gave him a tiny shack…
24. Cow Slaughter
We don't expect you to remember the livestock in Resident Evil 4. Their purpose is to blend in with the area and add dimension to the interactive environment. Interactive in this case means that you can destroy things and attack animals at will. You can kill chickens for eggs and you can kill cows just for the hell of it. Watching a cow crumble after a headshot was enough to make us eat kale for a year.
23. Companion Cube Euthanization
How can we pity an inanimate object you might ask? Throw a few hearts on it, call it your companion, and suddenly it'll feel like your new best friend. The Weighted Companion Cube Euthanizing Process in Portal raised our eyebrows mainly because of the name of the process. We didn't think much of it until we were congratulated for discarding the cube without hesitation. Incinerating our buddies made us hang our heads low.
22. Spamming
A win is a win in competitive gaming, but spamming to victory is a rather dishonorable win. Spamming requires very little skill, and when you spam to victory, you hinder your progress as a player. But once again, a win is a win, and that’s why we feel bad about spamming. Spamming projectiles for chip damage or to set up for anti-air maneuvers is not rocket science. Repeating the same game plan on an unsuspecting noob trying to learn the game mechanics is a sure way get a win streak going. It makes us feel like a cheaters...
21. The Unwelcome Guest
There are merits to properly saving and quitting a game. No game gives you more grief for resetting or abruptly quitting a game other than Animal Crossing. Quitting prematurely will result in a visit from Mr. Resetti, and he will be pissed. He talks for an exaggerated amount of time, and though certain things he says are funny, it’s a total waste of time. After being talked down by Resetti, we usually save and quit the game immediately after so we won’t have to deal with that headache again. Wish he wouldn’t make us feel so bad.
20. Skipping the Emeralds
Foiling Dr. Eggman’s plot feels sweet in Sonic the Hedgehog. We can’t help but forget one thing after rushing to complete the game and that's the emeralds. Seeing Eggman juggling every single one of the emeralds at the end of the game makes us feel like we screwed up in the long run. All of our heroism goes right down the drain and we're forced to start anew. Great...
19. Lemming Martyrs
Leading the little guys to safety at the end of every stage in Lemmings is very gratifying. Sometimes we feel terrible when we make one out of the troop do all of the hard work. Digging, building, bombing, one thing after another just to clear a path for his crew. We tend to lose our minds if we lose one lemming after all of that work in a stage, but we really feel guilty if the lemming that did all of the work loses his life. If only we didn’t push him so hard!
18. Ditching Crono
The epic Chrono Trigger is chock full of side quests and endings. One ending of the game can be seen if you complete the game without reviving the star character, Crono, after his untimely death. If you decide to finish the game without Crono the clan will hop into the gate at 1000 A.D. to go searching for Crono in order to revive him. And yet, this could have been avoided if we revived Crono with the doll that was made in his likeness. Whoopsie!
17. Did I Forget Something?
Super Metroid is arguably the best Super NES game ever made. Samus returns to Zebes in this game in order to rid the universe of the last remaining Metroids. Along the way, she meets Etecoons and Dachoras that teach her abilities to help her on her mission and, in turn, she must rescue them before the planet is destroyed. Choosing not to save them is an awfully selfish idea even if you are pressed for time. They helped you the best way that they could have so the least you can do is offer help in return. If you don’t feel bad after completing Super Metroid, you’ll surely feel guilty if you complete Metroid Fusion.
16. Assassinating Civilians
Much like every war, there are casualties in this ongoing saga between assassins and templars. Civilians are meant to be unharmed and unaware of this secret war taking place right under their noses. Unfortunately, due to the gameplay mechanics some civilians may get shanked in the neck by Altair. In future installments of the series, the accidents occur much less, but in the first game it seems to be more common. It's such a headache too, because of the guards that will hound you afterwards and your target that will flee faster than you can run through a city. Worst of all is seeing the poor man or woman that got in the way just at the moment we pressed the square button. Can you find it in your heart to forgive us?
15. Yoshi Betrayal
So you hit the first question mark block in stage Yoshi Island 2 and hop aboard your first Yoshi. You eat baddies left and right and fly through stages, and just when you thought you two were invincible, you ditch him to make a mistimed jump in Donut Plains 3. Oops! Freeing the next Yoshi doesn’t feel quite the same after you sacrificed your first one to save yourself. The air in the room changes, even the music settles down and begins to sound dry without Yoshi’s added drum effect. After a long run with the green fella, we feel bad ditching him in order to save our sorry asses. From now on Yoshi, we ride together and we die together.
14. Playing God
If you think about it, in The Sims you're actually play God. You put the Sims in different situations, sit back, and watch the drama unfold. They can set their houses on fire, wind up homeless, or even be totally hopeless and naked curled up in a ball on the street. Yes these things can happen in game and yet, we sit idly by. The game makes us ponder how we would handle playing God in real life. Sitting and watching makes us feel terrible, but that's the price we pay for giving free will right?
13. Penguin Dropper
You had one job to do. You had one task, a noble one, where you're asked to reunite a mother with her only child. The only cruel thing you can do in Super Mario 64 is drop the penguin child off of the edge of the fourth available world, Cool, Cool Mountain. It’s one of the few menacing acts you can commit in SM64, and it feels downright awful after dropping the kid. We can’t enjoy the game the same way after that.
12. Torturing Riley
Few situations are stickier than the ones that mix business with family. We had a guilt trip thanks to Far Cry 3 after our run in with our Riley. In order to stay undercover we had to torture our own brother, our own flesh and blood, just to stay unsuspecting. Even though we brought Riley up to speed on our plan, we felt terrible after every right hook we landed. “Who have I become?” Jason asks, and we can ask ourselves the same thing.
11. Harvesting Little Sisters
Interacting with children in gaming always hits a soft spot. The Little Sisters in Bioshock 2 are no different. We have the option to adopt or harvest them for our health. We often choose to save them because it just doesn’t feel right to us harvesting these weird little children even when we desperately need ADAM. And then we meet Eleanor. At one point in the game you play as a Little Sister looking for Eleanor. If you have adopted more children than harvesting them, then Eleanor will do the same when she meets you, but if you’ve gone on a harvesting spree Eleanor will handle you the same you handled the Little Sisters you've encountered. You only have yourself to blame, jerk.
10. Big Bully
Sometimes we think that free will shouldn’t be allowed in gaming. Case in point is a scenario from Fable. In the beginning of the game, a little girl asks you to find her teddy bear, which will lead you to a confrontation between her older brother and a young, defenseless boy. You can side with the older brother by punching the little boy, just for laughs, but the crying that follows is so earth shattering that we couldn’t pull ourselves together to continue the game. We had to start the game all over again just to make things right.
9. No Person Left Behind
The first Resident Evil toyed with our emotions far more than we would have like it to. RE hid giant creepy crawlers and a horde of zombies at every corner just waiting to surprise us. At the beginning of the game, you get split up with whichever character you did not choose to play as. Towards the climax of the game, you run into your comrade jailed and waiting to be rescued by you. You can leave them there if you want to. That’s right, you can ditch your partner and leave them locked up like a prisoner of this war between S.T.A.R.S. and Umbrella. When the chopper takes off at the end of the game, we felt bad about not being a better team player for our first colleague. And then the mansion exploded… We've made a huge mistake.
8. Evil Omnipotence
Unlike in The Sims where you indirectly play God, Black & White actually lets you play as a god. You can choose the type of god you want to be too like a loving, caring god or even a vengeful, angry god. Either way, the people will suffer. Destroying villages to build our own makes us feel pretty guilty especially when there are people getting hurt. We've apologized extensively for the pain and suffering we caused. Forgive us for we know not what we do!
7. Oh Clementine
We cry for all of the troubled children in gaming. All of them! The Walking Dead pit us in a bit of a pickle with young Clementine. Clem’s parents are dead and how we handle passing the news along is entirely up to us. We decided to hold the secret close to ourselves to ensure that she remain hopeful. We lied to make her feel better. Then we kept lying, and kept lying, and kept lying. The poor girl had no clue and here we were building a lie. Breaking the news to the little one turned our stomach and made us shed a lone tear.
6. Backstabber
Playing as a dark sith can be pretty fun. Who never wanted to be like Darth Vader just one time? In Star Wars: KOTOR, you play as big bully sith, Revan, and threaten the lives of those beneath you. It feels good to be bad until one moment that made us feel terrible, which was forcing Zaalbar to kill Mission. Zaalbar and Mission are longtime friends yet we're able to convince Zaalbar to kill her in order to continue his oath to us. This ordeal is the kind of thing that makes you laugh in the moment and feel like a lowlife afterwards. We ought to feel ashamed of yourself for breaking friends up.
5. Murdering Narfi
Though Skyrim tries its best to be neutral morally, we can’t. We had a moment when we met Narfi, a mentally challenged beggar that misses his deceased sister, Reyda. His parents have also passed on so poor Narfi is all alone in the world. If that’s not bad enough, villagers pick on the poor guy and heckle him. You can argue that putting him out of his misery is a service to him, but that's just cruel. Everyone deserves to live, but it's anything for the Brotherhood we guess.
4. The Ballad of Zeke Dunbar
Sometimes we hate being forced to pick sides. Towards the end of inFamous 2, we have to make a difficult decision that involves sticking with our friends or allying ourselves with The Beast. When we chose the evil path, we sank into our seats a little bit. We didn’t expect the crew to split up because of the decision. Fighting against our ex-teammates was bittersweet, but the most difficult part of it all was killing Zeke. He knew this was the end for him. Just hearing him say, “I gotta try” truly broke us.
3. Can't Take The Torture
Very few games can compare to the first experience of playing Metal Gear Solid. From the moment we began playing as Solid Snake, we immersed ourselves into the gameplay and the storyline especially. Did we cry at all playing MGS? Almost, but we did embark on a long guilt trip after refusing to resist Ocelot’s torture. We thought he was bluffing about taking Meryl's life so we decided not to resist the voltage he used to torture us. So you can imagine how we felt after the long fight with Metal Gear and Liquid and watching Grey Fox die. As if we couldn't feel any lower, here's dead, lifeless Meryl atop Metal Gear. We let the Colonel down and we let Meryl down, how can we finish the game after that?
2. No Russians
You can say that the Call of Duty series’ was destined to stir up controversy. Modern Warfare 2 has an optional mission called 'No Russians' where you play as CIA op, Joseph Allen, working undercover with a Russian terrorist group that is carrying out an airport massacre. You can opt out of shooting any civilians during the mission. In fact, developers gave you the option to skip this level entirely without penalty as well as the option to skip ahead of this level at any point. Attacking civilians has been a part of several games before Modern Warfare 2, though that has been optional mischief, compared to in MW2 where it's part of the mission and rather gruesome. The MW2 Russian version scrapped this level entirely, and the Japan and Germany versions give you "game over" if you kill any civilians.
1. Everything in Heavy Rain
Very few video games can send you through a whirlwind of emotions quite like Heavy Rain. If you want to feel pain, anger, sadness, confusion, and all sorts of anxiety then play through a few chapters of the game. The mechanics are very unique in that you're granted complete control of every character you play as in the game and complete control of the direction of the story. With that in mind, think of all of things you can screw up in a single playthrough?
Think of all of the clues you can miss in the case, your inability to talk down and stop criminals, or opting out of challenges that'll get you closer to saving your son, the list is endless! Even little things make us feel bad, like accidentally slamming the door after tucking our son into bed or not setting the table for our son’s birthday party. We can’t reload our save data to fix things either. The game progresses seamlessly while saving automatically leaving us with barely a window of time to reset the game and fix our mistakes. So basically everything in Heavy Rain will make you guilt trip from the very first chapter to the end credits.