Once upon a time, videogames were pretty simple. They existed as distractions from everyday life, an interactive form of entertainment big on thrills and low on questions. Earlier games, from Pong to the arcades to the earliest console generations, tended to focus on the gameplay itself, delivering fun one coin/life at a time. But over recent years, gaming has become smarter and able to get away with a lot more. As we've stepped further toward excellent graphical fidelity, great gameplay mechanics and compelling storylines, developers have become smarter and more inventive. Yet for the most part, the simple philosophy of games being there to entertain still hasn't changed. Yet there are notable exceptions of developers thinking outside the box and break the conventional rules of entertainment, that the bottom line was to please the gamer. Some developers decided that entertainment and happiness were not the same thing, and that a game console could bring you entertainment in other darker ways. Occasionally, this came from the game actually saying f**k you to the player, spinning conventional rules on their head and letting the player fathom the results or be left reeling by them. Any way you look at it, there have been games that have bucked the trend and decided to go after the player instead, and I hope I've catalogued a few here. Be aware that right from the get-go, a
SPOILER WARNING is in effect. Don't say I didn't warn you.