Catharsis is a purification or purging of the emotions (such as pity and fear) primarily through art — a factor first identified by Aristotle; it can bring about spiritual renewal, and it provides a release from tension.
In other words, it's stuff you do to relieve tension or get stuff off your chest.
Catharsis exists in all media—the term "catharsis" as applied to art comes from Aristotle's Poetics—but for most of history, most people had to watch others suffer and triumph, and they had to use empathy to connect the dots. Now, even the empathy-deprived can experience catharsis — you can suffer and triumph personally through your favorite videogame character. Since it's not in the real world, you will not be breaking any real-world laws, and your character will get extra lives if you mess up the drama. Everybody wins!
This trope is subjective. Stress relief for one gamer can be frustration for another, even on things that people agree are calming: A 6 on one scale (1 - 10, 10 being the highest) can rate 37 on someone else's. The cathartic experience can also backfire when using human opponents, such as in online-enabled fighting games or first-person shooters, where a string of victories can be ruined by an upsetting loss from another player at the far end of the skill divide.
It's not just violence, either. Many games are just as capable of making you feel warm and fuzzy when you take a constructive option and help the pile of pixels instead.
The existence of this effect, with both videogames and other media, is sometimes cited by opponents of banning pornography and violent video games.
Related to Videogame Cruelty Potential. Not to be confused with In-Universe Catharsis, though overlap is certainly possible. Or the webcomic Catharsis, for that matter.
See also: Percussive Therapy.
In the NES game, sometimes it's more satisfying to spend all three rounds walloping on Glass Joe, countering his every attack and letting him hang on by a thread rather than just catch him in his titular glass jaw and knock him out in one shot.
In Super Punch-Out!!, Narcis Prince doesn't let anyone punch his face. Which makes getting in a face shot, then laying on the rapid fire jabs to the face so much more relaxing.
Store up enough finishers in the latest WWE wrestling game and unload them one after another...especially if it's a wrestler whom you can't stand. Use the create-a-wrestler feature to make pretty much anyone you can't stand, give them a pathetically wimpy moveset, and go to town on them by unloading finisher after finisher, letting go of pinfalls just before the 3 count, repeatedly breaking weapons over their heads and releasing submission locks just before the tapout until you feel all better. Wrestling games can be teriffic stress relievers.
Not to mention with the addition of "Create A Storyline" features, you can not only make the person who you hate, you can write a storyline featuring them and watch your most favorite wrestlers insult them to their face, disparage them, and make them cry, then beat the crap out of them, maybe even with your own avatar. Juvenile, maybe, but giggle-inducing after even the worst day? Oh hell yeah.
You could also use traditionally silent or uncharismatic wrestlers to completely take the piss out of a wrestler you hate that has a fanbase. Seeing the normally immobile Great Khali beat the crap out of John Cena then twist the knife by performing Cena's old "Pump Up" taunt 4 times during the same match is absolutely lolworthy.
After your favorite sports team suffers a demoralizing loss, there's little better than to punish the victorious opponent by putting every last slider in your favor and defeating a simulated version of them 255+ to nothing.
In early iterations of the FIFA soccer games (one example is the world cup '98 version) when the opposing goalkeeper was holding onto the ball you could scythe him down without the fear of receiving a card. Makes it a little better when he gets booted in the air after saving every shot.
Fighting Games
Street Fighter: How many people have felt better after a bad day by putting in the latest game and demolishing whoever was in your way (computer AI, opponent through internet, etc)?
Even better. When playing Street Fighter 4 online, breaking the countless hadouken/shoryuken-spamming cheap-ass players' pattern, and absolutely demolishing them... while usingDan.
Ah, Super Smash Bros.. What can be more cathartic than using Training Mode to turn whichever Nintendo character has recently displeased you into your unmoving personal punching bag? How about spawning Smash Balls and mercilessly flattening them with Final Smash after Final Smash?
Hit them out of the ballpark with the Home Run Bat, perhaps? The resulting KREEEENG!!! is perhaps the most satisfying sound in Smash...
Mortal Kombat and its Fatalities. Reducing a particularly hatable character into small, bloody chunks can be quite cathartic after a long day.
Same sorta thing for Samurai Shodown and Guilty Gear with their finishers. Hell, the former has a Rage System, just perfect for letting off steam.
Especially great in MK: Armageddon in which the player gets to improvise a fatality, and is therefore allowed to commit all sorts of atrocities on their enemy before finishing them off. It allowed me to fulfill the very long fantasy of mine of ripping Goro's arms off and bludgeoning him to death with them.
Role-Playing Games
Ah, RPGS, where your party is all-powerful and can slaughter faceless mooks by the dozen. Alternatively, load up the save file you have in front of a particularly hated boss and beat the crap out of them for a while. For added fun, equip the weakest/strongest equipment you have, just because you're feeling vindictive and want to humiliate them.
This is why the Experimental MIRV is in the game because as we all know, There Is No Kill Like Overkill. Seriously it only takes 2 mini-nukes to kill the most powerful enemies on normal and this fires 8.
In Fallout3 and Fallout: New Vegas, the majority of your enemies are some combination of slavers, raiders, murderers, rapists, cannibals and drug dealers; but by far the most satisfying feeling is utterly annihilating Fiend or Legion encampments, who are mostly rapists, with a female main character.
Or, in Fallout 3, utterly exterminating all of Paraside Falls (the main Slaver base). Even moreso if you bring Fawkes with you.
The Valkyrie Profile series, with its ability to let you beat the enemies with a ridiculous amount of overkill. It is extremely satisfying to finish off a boss, or even a mook, with a chain of four Soul Crushes. Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume actually encourages you to beat already-dead enemies relentlessly to get better items.
There are few things quite as cruelly satisfying as playing a game with a New Game Plus system and the sort of setup where almost every boss is That One Boss. Just save before whatever boss made you bang your head against a wall the most the first time through and keep beating the crap out of them over and over in the mosthumiliating ways you can think of. Cue Last Scenario.
Remember all those Disney villains who gave you nightmares as a kid? The Kingdom Hearts games let you beat the stuffing out of them with a giant key. Yes.
Days also provides the incredible feeling of equipping Saïx with the Casual Gear, playing a mission with low-level enemies and then massacring absolutely everything with a giant banana.
Pokémon. Level 100 + Low level forest area = Ahh...
Alternatively, a level 100 mon against the Elite Four. Laugh and smirk vindictively as one all powerful creature beats the shit out of the five toughest opponents in the game and feel all your anger melt away. Nothing will make you feel more badass than that.
Hell, it doesn't need to be the Elite Four. In one of the games where you can rematch gym leaders, take them on with a high-leveled pokemon that's insanely weak against their type. There's nothing quite like curb stomping Gardenia with a Swampert or sweeping Pryce's team with a Dragonite. Bonus points if they gave you trouble before.
Mass Effect has catharsis in a lot of the usual ways - it's far more satisfying to incinerate weak enemies than is probably healthy, for example - but it also has emotional catharsis, where you can feel awesome for doing things ranging from shutting down a reporter with a heroic speech to just punching her in the face.
Sniping some poor schmuck between the eyes with a tank round. Makes the frustration of driving the damn thing worth it.
Slaughtering enemies with the Mako's cannon; seeing them fly while slowly disappearing is satisfying.
In Mass Effect 2 shooting some guy wearing armor in the head with a sniper round makes a plink sound and it is so satisfying. Really all of the combat in Mass Effect 2 fits this due to its improvement over the combat in Mass Effect 1.
There's also biotically lifting enemies, then pushing them off into bottomless pits.
In Dragon Age, you can hit people in the face with a shield. Repeat, you can hit people in the face with a shield. You can build an entire character around hitting people in the face with a shield; while you won't be nearly as powerful as a mage, it'll all be worthwhile for the sheer cathartic factor.
In Fable III, there is very little more satisfying than a fully charged fire + vortex weaved spell in a crowd of villagers.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga use the Press Turn Icon System. Short version, the number of times the player gets to go per time the opponent does is entirely dependant on skill level: the player can go up to ten times (after a sidequest in Noctune) for every time the opponent tries to pull something and is denied by your party build. Obviously, a game with a mechanic designed to let smart players kick that much ass has to be Nintendo Hard to compensate, and they are. Oh, they are. Players who do something stupid will die: those who learn to work the system will curb stomp their enemies (and, in Digital Devil Saga, eat the corpses). The feeling of godlike power smiting one's enemies is even better after fighting theDemifiend, and getting to experience what it was like to be one of the demons you utterly annihilated. The protagonist of Nocturne, aka you, the player, are the hardest RPG Bonus Bossof all time. It makes the player feel rather godlike.
Wide-Open Sandboxes
Games like Grand Theft Auto (III and onward, at least). Two words: Pedestrian Bowling.
One more word: Trainer. Although the games are fun to begin with, a whole new level of wanton destruction can be added by taking advantage of the numerous options game trainers provide.
That bodycount? Civilians only. Fighting BlackWatch, the USMC, and the infected puts the overall death toll at something approaching the population of a small country. Consume the right person and you get treated to a cutscene projecting casualties for the USMC at one to twenty-five thousand. A day.
Seriously, Prototype is ridiculous for this. Feel like creating some mayhem? Transform on one end of a sidewalk. Watch the pedestrians run. Then, rush over to the other end of the sidewalk, watch the mass of a hundred civilians run into your direction, and fire up Street Sweeper or maxed-out Muscle Mass. The resulting cloud of blood will literally cover your whole screen, with so many body parts flying around that most of the corpses will have to be despawned by the game just to make sure the framerate doesn't drop to zero.
When the map starts to split up into areas that are either military controlled or plague-infected, there's an uncommon amount of fun to be had in stealing someone's identity (along withthe rest of them), proceeding to go into the red zones, and promptly playing what amounts to Double Dragon 3D: Zombie Edition.
This can also be used for Video Game Caring Potential, as you punch up zombies to save civilians. A good self-imposed challenge for a minute or two, but you'll get bored quickly unless you start inflicting collateral damage.
Try picking up a random soldier/civilian/zombie, jumping into the air and smashing them into the ground. Then press the grab button again. You can loop this ground smash forever, and the helpless squishy mortal won't ever die. Pick one that looks like your enemy of the week!
Occasionally, the game will throw moments at you that are funny, cathartic, and not actively your doing. The combination of freely moving NPC pedestrians with all the common sense of a barrel of bricks and an actual flow of traffic sometimes results in instances of genuine vehicle-pedestrian accidents, complete with the vehicle trying to slow down in a screech of tires (and very often, a just-barely-delayed thud). Incidentally, soldiers are also not immune to a rusty sedan hitting them as they rush across a crosswalk to investigate suspicious noises. Apparently the Army doesn't train its soldiers to look both ways before crossing the street.
The Spiderman 2 movie game. Half the game's fun is using Spidey's abilities to defeat mooks in the most painful ways you can come up with. Using webbing to continually pull an enemy into the air for flying punches, even after their health is gone. Webbing a crook to a lamp-post and beating the snot out of them for as long as you like. Doing the latter after slamming them into the ground with webbing about six times (an actual combo). Slinging them into the nearest body of water or off the nearest building. Punching them in the kidneys over and over before throwing them into another crook. Swinging them over and over around your head for use as a living projectile/shield. Shooting webbing into their eyes and watching them stumble around in a blind panic. And best of all: pile drivers off the Empire State Building.
Just swinging around the city is good for relaxation. In fact this is usually what is done instead of actually beating the story line.
Bully. Added catharsis for young players due to the school setting. Look, mom, I'm skipping school! Look, mom, I'm locking a man in a porta-potty and rolling him down a hill with the help of my delinquent girlfriend! I'm on a panty raid! I'm beating up everyone! And for those who were bullied by preppies, you can now shoot one with a potato gun and run like hell.
The simplest and arguably most satisfying aspect of Bully is the ability to tackle boys and drive your knee into their junk. Their reactions are priceless.
You tell me that using the Keys to the City pack in Crackdown, spawning thirty oil barrels, spawning cars, and then driving cars into the mountain doesn't make the adrenaline rush, especially as you toss a single Limpet Charge into it and walk away with the camera facing you.
Assassin's Creed II, especially during the Carneval in Venice. Randomly shoot your gun off in the middle of a crowded square, poison a passing soldier and toss coins at his feet and watch as the poisoned guard starts swinging his sword around tossing guards and civilians alike into the canal, use people as fall cushions after a nice session of Le Parkour and punch the shit out of those fucking bards. There's a lot to do in Renaissance Italy.
Alternatively, just barge your way through crowds of people, shoving people on their asses and smashing the valuable pottery/groceries out of their hands.
Minecraft. Play the regular mode and plant a ton of dynamite all over the place and make yourself a safe spot high up in the map, just floating there, with a block of dynamite ready to fall upon hitting it, and save the map. Load it in survival mode and wait for a few mobs to form, then hit the dynamite to turn on the timer and make it fall to the earth. The explosion can be so big that even maximum fog won't save you from the lag, but the resulting aftermath? Worth it.
Red Faction, but especially Guerilla. The feeling of breaking everything with your big-ass sledgehammer makes you feel incredibly relaxed.
If you get frustrated while playing Just Cause 2, no worries! Travel to the right military base and steal an armored car or a heavily-armed helicopter! Hook mooks to cars and drag them along! Flip cars over during high-speed chases! Hook mooks to a jumbo jet or a military fighter! And so on.
Mount & Blade, from firing a hail of arrows with your troops while defending a castle to riding down infantry while heavily armored shrugging off blows, provides a lot of this.
There is a particular amount of entertainment to be had in the sequel, Warband, which allows you to still do things like chase after looters. The introduction of a weapon which can only be described as an extra-long baseball bat with nails in it lends newfound hilarity to the idea of chasing down peasants and clubbing them senseless with said weapon. Or you can get a literal plain old stick and whack them about the head with that too.
Saints Row plain and simple, for added fun, create a character to use cheats, and abuse them. The Third is even better with this- want to utterly annihilate your foes with an airstrike, or a tank, or a VTOL equipped with lasers and missiles? It's got you covered.
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is sometimes called Prototype's predecessor. There is nothing quite as satisfying as cruising around the city on a skateboard you made out of a bus, or the fact you can use a lamppost to work on your golf swing, using people as the balls! Sadly, if you advance the story enough, the game starts to punish you with Demonic Spiders for your wanton destruction.
Bitches ain't got shit on the Hulk!
First-person Shooters
Half-Life 2. Sure, you can blast your foes with grenades and rocket launchers, or pound them with a double shot from a shotgun, but the most fun thing everyone loves to do is using the Gravity Gun to pick up stuff and hurl crap at enemies, or pick up larger objects and people and fling those too once the gun is powered up. There is also always the option to smash faces or Headcrabs with the crowbar.
Any of the Left 4 Dead games. Start a round where you have a sniper rifle in the saferoom, but don't leave the saferoom. Just shoot off headshots from the safety of your safe house. The AI director even realizes that you're doing this and spawns more zombies for you to kill. Ahhhhhh... For those of you with the second game:~ map c1m1_hotel mutation 14. Thank you, no applause.
Alien vs. Predator. Skirmish. Marine-Smartgun. Don't even have to aim. Just press LMB and watch the limbs fly.
What's that? You've played through every Marathon game on each difficulty, and countless fan mods, and think the edge has gone out of the game? Now that you've gotten really good, go back and play through on "Kindergarten" or "Easy" and watch as you effortlessly slaughter Phfor and save the galaxy without breaking a sweat. It's so much fun.
Modern Warfare: Few things in life beat flipping that switch or popping open a laptop to unleash a world of hurt on the unwitting fools facing you.
Painkiller: You have hordes upon hordes of mooks and some of the most creative weapons ever to reduce them to Ludicrous Gibs with. Arsenal and enjoyment options include (but are not limited to):
The titular Painkiller - a staff with a crown of rotating blades at the end (jumping with that in a horde of zombies), which can be launched at enemies, either pulling them toward you or shredding them to pieces.
Shotgun/freezer - freezing an invincible monster rushing at you and then blasting it to pieces with the shotgun (or freezing a flying one and watch it drop like a stone and shatter on the ground)
The epic Stakegun - a pneumatic catapult that launches metre-long wooden stakes which can pin enemies to walls, floors, ceilings, support beams and other enemies, combined with a grenade launcher for dispersing that pesky crowd that gets in the way of the above activity (this is the weapon that will chew off a big chunk of your time and you'll love it), or you can impale a grenade on a stake effectively turning yourself into a fully mobile artillery gun which can blow up almost anything anywhere
The famous rocket launcher/chaingun combo, often praised as the most practical gun ever, with one of the hardest but most satisfying activities - propelling enemies into the air by shooting a rocket at their feet, then blowing them apart in mid-air with a perfectly timed second one (seriously, watch a video of this)
And of course the shuriken launcher/electrodriver - turning mooks into pin cushions, frying them, or the combo mode - charge and shoot the whole disc with shurikens which will electrocute everything around it.
Endless. Phun. And then there's Demon Morph mode...
Yes, there are days in Team Fortress 2 where things just won't go your way. And then there's the days when you're playing as a demoman and a friendly medic gives you a kritzkrieg, basically turning you into the anti-god allowing you to one hit kill every living thing that dared to spawn on the other team.
Or, in the same vein, playing the same Demo, going against the last point of any attack/defend map that just happens to have a TON of enemy engineers. Generally, friendly medics are often LOOKING for a Demoman in these situations, so you're effectively guaranteed to get an Ubercharge. Watlz into the last point, and start laying stickybombs. You have eight seconds of Uber, and eight bombs. Detonate them just as the Uber ends, and watch as the entire enemy sentry-nest goes up in smoke. Then enjoy the worship from your team, because you just won the round in a single motion.
Featured in the two secret levels of Doom II, where the SS Troopers are deliberately placed on the map in groups of four. Perfect for shooting with a Rocket Launcher...
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 : Crouched beside a tree with a bead on a running enemy across the map, adjust for distance, lead the target, squeeze the trigger, and watch as the falling tracer round collides with the unsuspecting head. That's a very satisfying release.
And then there's DOOM. After nearly 20 years, the sound of the shotgun pumping is still the most satisfying thing you will ever hear.
Real-Time Strategies
Dawn of War Dark Crusade. Load up the Abandon All Hope map as Tau and ruthlessly crush your enemy...with your own casualties measured in single figures.
Dawn Of War 2. The remote-controlled bombs used by Sgt. Cyrus. They are horrendously powerful and you get to set them right the noses of your unsuspecting enemies and then detonate them at your own discretion which is guaranteed to give you a majestic feeling of power over death each time. It's like nukes only you get to use them A LOT.
Particularly in the Chaos Rising expansion to Dawn of War 2. Give Avitus the Signum, boost his skills until he unlocks the "Artillery Specialist" ability, and make it rain Death from Above once every sixty seconds. Enemy holed up in a heavily fortified position and armed with heavy weapons? Just have him call down strikes for a few minutes, then walk into the charred and cratered remains of the former enemy position. Try not to trip on any of the Ludicrous Gibs and smoking rubble left behind...
Pick a game in the Total War series. Any game. Now load up a custom battle. Give yourself as many units of elite cavalry as you possibly can and the enemy only masses of peasants. Then turn your horsemen loose and watch them cut through the unwashed rabble like scythes through a field of ripe grain. Wasn't that fun?
Gunpowder siege weapons + a cowardly enemy hiding in the city center = bowling for peasants. There's just something so cheering about seeing a line of enemy infantry launched into the air as a cannonball skips down the main avenue. Especially if your opponent has been rude on the world map, or put up especially annoying resistance on the city walls.
In Rome: Total War, setting up a battle with maxed out Seleucid Armored Elephants, verses Roman Incendiary Pigs, on the Grassy Flatlands. Just send all your elephants right into the center of the Roman Swine, then sit back, relax, and watch flaming pigs fly.
Supreme Commander. "Add unit" cheat. 1000 Mercy guided missiles right over an enemy base. I've never seen fireworks so pretty.
StarCraft, as well as its sequel. Loading up a game online against one of your noob friends or an easy computer and utterly demolishing them with a "Zerg Rush". Good times.
Or perhaps not rushing them, but waiting, teching up and steamrolling the crap out of them with some of the more epic units. (Carriers, Thors, Battlecruisers, etc.) Oh, and the occasional nuke of course.
Dominions 3. Effortlessly crushing AI enemies despite crippling cheater advantages because you know the magic system and they don't never gets old.
Dungeon Keeper II... HOO BOY where to begin? You can slap your minions around to make them work faster, or if you're feeling particularly vindictive slap them to DEATH, toss them into the dungeon and let them rot, hurl them into the arena to fight for your amusement (And of course, if they survive you get a more powerful creature out of the deal), and of course... The torture chamber. Then you have the heroes, which once incapacitated you can send to be tortured until they break and join your cause... And then slap them around like you do your minions. Then, for those with a less sadistic side, you can take control of one of your own minions and cruise around your mighty sprawling dungeon, viewing it from their perspective and marvel at all you have accomplished. There are a lot of ways to unwind while plaything this game.
Especially cathartic in the Gundam editions, due to robot limbs flying all over the place and lots of explosions. There is nothing more cathartic than unleashing a Wave Motion Gun from on high and seeing several hundred Mooks explode in waves.
And they're coming up with a Fist of the North Star edition. Do we even have to elaborate?
Drakengard is very much this; why not take a dragon and just rain hellfire against giant phalanxes of troops that are completely powerless to hurt you? Or if you so wish, hop down and singlehandedly slash through the innards of thousands.
Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360 was almost entirely That One Level and That One Boss, but if you managed to beat it you could restart from the beginning with all the upgrades you'd accumulated. Cue a 5-second slaughter of entire rooms of formerly-infurating ninjas with the scythes the kusari-gama.
The God of War series started that back in 2005. Along with costumes to allow extra health, or infinite magic, as well as looking silly (there is no way you cen feel stressed when you're watching a cow swing its milk jugs around to whack skeletons). With the second, however, the second playthrough gave you the Blade of Olympus. The weapon that shoots laser beams, can suck out the souls of enemies and is a massive game breaker in your hands as soon as you begin the game. Pure bliss.
The Mark of Kri has unlockable arenas, the first of which only sends basic, melee-attack-only enemies at you, all of whom die instantly and spectacularly with the use of the game's ultimate weapon. Not only can you rack up over 50 kills per minute, but your acts of violence will leave the survivors of them to run from you in horror.
Condemned and its sequel Bloodshot. Both games consist mostly of picking up pipes, nail bats, bottles and sporting equipment and beating the ever loving sh* t out of anything that looked at you funny. And even without weapons you had punches, kicks, headbutts and vicious environmental kills; including but not limited too: Curb stomps, slamming heads in doors, throwing people into TV sets, hurling them off the side of buildings, and best of all, curb stomping them into a filthy toilet.
The Force Unleashed is basically God of War with force powers, so yes, you can hit some poor sap with a lightsabre then set him on lightning and throw him into a bottomless pit.
Annoyed by all the cute critters that Lucas crammed into the series? Well you can finally take out your frustration in the most satisfying way possible
The PC version of Devil May Cry 4 adds the unlockable "Legendary Dark Knight" difficulty, which can be described as "Normal with lots of enemies." Once you get a bit of practice, it becomes surprisingly cathartic to just carve a bloody swath through hordes of badguys.
Platformers
The latest Prince of Persia game is extremely soothing, thanks to its smooth, free-flowing parkour platforming and breathtakingly beautiful environments.
A scene in Spaced features Tim, recently the recipient of a Dear John, working off steam by repeatedly drowning Lara Croft. Almost certainly Truth in Television.
Psychonauts. The kaiju parody Perspective Flip known as Lungfishopolis. You play the role of the monster, while in a crowded city that has perfectly breakable buildings. What's more, if you go in there again after the plot happens, said city is due to be demolished. You do the math.
Along with Ruleof Funny, this has got to be why you can use pyrokinesis on squirrels in the camp. Raz himself seemed to acknowledge this trope both in Sasha's Shooting Gallery ("Shooting things is fun and useful!") and Waterloo World ("I can set wood on fire with my mind, you know") to a wooden game piece). The second is kind of justified, given the day he'd been having...
Star Wars: Episode 1 for the PSX gives you the ability to slice Jar Jar to ribbons with your lightsaber in the second level. You get a "game over" if you do so, but it's still So Worth It.
Firing a salvo of missiles into a few cars in Streets of Simcity was pretty damn cathartic too.
Who hasn't unleashed every available disaster (repeatedly) on a sprawling SimCity scape in their time? For that matter, who doesn't keep a save file on hand for just such an occasion?
Likewise, who hasn't blown up buildings and machine-gunned crowds of people (or even police officers and doctors, who can't die) with the Apache in Sim Copter? Or "rescued" someone with the rescue harness while they already had a full load (or were also using the Apache, which can't carry passengers)?
Which can sometimes be necessary catharsis while you're playing the game, given the infuriating AI...
Deleting the fence around the lion exhibit in "Zoo Tycoon"
Or just picking up the lions and moving them out into the giant crowd of people watching the friendly cats play. The horrified screams as your poor guests futilely try to run in terror are as soothing ointment to a wound.
Or dropping someone into the exhibit full of orca whales.
Or, even better, dropping someone into the Tyrannosaur and Velociraptor paddocks if you have the Prehistoric Creatures expansion pack. Jurassic Park recreation anyone?
Skipping the expansion pack by playing Jurassic Park Operation Genesis and let a T. rex run through your five-star-park or delete the fence of the Raptor Pen.
Or creating a huge ocean on part of the map and then drowning people in it.
Dwarf Fortress... If you can stand losing, often, and learn to play the game well, rigging up horrible deaths for all involved can be quite calming. Had a bad day? It's remarkably easy to flood your entire fortress and sit there watching the buggers break down as they flee the ever-rising liquid death.
Alternatively, go to adventure mode, train up wrestling, find a humanoid enemy (giants are good) and systematically cripple every joint in their body before throttling them to death. Repeat until the stress has gone away...
Tabletop Games
If your GM is aiming for this, you can make some hilarious memories of burning down a forest when you're supposed to be a protector of Nature, giving an enemy a death without a drop of dignity (using his head as a hat, for instance), and several more incidents of Crossing the Line than you can shake your finger at.
Puzzle Games
DROD, the most action packed puzzle game in existence. Slaughtering hordes of overgrown roaches, hunting down goblin after goblin, or meticulously cutting apart a gelatinous monster, all while outsmarting the room layout. Blood, guts, and the satisfaction of hard earned victory.
Lemmings - There comes a time in which there's nothing more soothing than discovering the most fun and artistic ways to set them up for when you activate the Nuke button. Maybe you want 100 packed into a tiny area, so that you can make an explosion so powerful that you can cleave through steel plates. Maybe you want to see the perfect timing for when explosions go off compared to when they start counting down. Maybe you want to see if you can properly time the explosions to make art out of the remaining parts of the level. Or maybe you just want a virtual storm of confetti to celebrate your birthday. Regardless of which it is, you know you're in for some fun when you hit the button and hear that pleasing "Oh, no!"
Portal certainly has a way of making the most frustrating puzzles awesome in retrospect. Even though all you technically did was put a cube on a button, you leave the test chamber singing "I am so smart! I am so smart! Oh, I am so smart!"
Portal 2 gives you a pure, concentrated dose of sweetness at the ending: show me one player who didn't fall to mush when they heard 'Cara Mia' as they ascended to the surface.
Other
Katamari Damacy. There's just something calming about pushing around an unstoppable ball of death.
Godhand. The credit song even lampshades this with the line "The Godhand helps me work out my stress!".
Main game giving you fits? Go to the practice ring and beat on the dummy. You take no damage and can use all the Reel/Roulette/Wheel Moves you want.
Ratchet & Clank, but Up Your Arsenal and the Tools of Destruction trilogy in particular. Especially with New Game Plus. You do not know catharsis until you've eradicated all life on some lonely little asteroid with the behemoth of a gun that is the RYNO 5. This particular model is a multi-barrel rocket launching chain gun with a multi-barrel homing missle launcher wrapped around it that plays the 1812 Overture during sustained fire. You will achieve nirvana using this gun.
The Torture Game 2. Person piss you off? Use the face creator feature and import their face onto the torture subject. Stringing their limbs to the corners of the screen and pulling as hard as you can seems to be fun for all.
Plants Vs Zombies: the Zen Garden, in which there are no zombies. The most unnerving moment in it is not having enough money for a record player. Also, the later stages of an easy-difficulty daytime survival game, as you watch zombies amble onto your spike rocks to melt away under a hail of burning gatling pea ammunition.
Flatout 2, Simcade (Sim-arcade?) which provides a number of highly satisfying ways to run into other cars (or make them run into pre-rendered or ungodly heavy scenery crap). Available modes are Race (heavily-themed courses with a large amount of scenery to demolish at very high speed), Event (smaller track, usually designed for extra speed or with a calculated chance for collisions), Demolition Derby ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, or Stunt (use a jetcar to get up to speed and then launch the driver through the windshield for things like High Jump, Darts, etc). When in a suitable mood for completely wanton devastation, the WreakingHavok that this game provides is highly enjoyable.
Total Annihilation has flying transport units that can "transport" enemy units, especially if they're AI...Oh, the possibilities!
It's more-or-less safe to say that part of the draw of the Super Robot Wars games is giving you the ability to blow up certainvillains that a lot of people don't really like. The visceral explosions when they go up certainly don't hurt, either. The effect is tripled if the villain in question is a Karma Houdini.
The Hitman series, especially Hitman Blood Money. Going back to earlier missions with fully upgraded weapons, you'll wish there were more people to kill. Also, notBowen's How Not To Play Hitman series just shows how much fun you can have not having to adhere to 47's professionalism.
Are you dissatisfied with Homestuck's recent turn of events? Are you tired of Vriska and wish she could get her comeuppance? We feel your pain.
Non game example. Bully Beatdown. Watching tormentors get their ass handed to them.
