10 Gruesome Video Game Moments That Were Genuinely Hard To Watch

Not only the most gruesome scene on this list, but also the most thought-provoking and heartbreaking. The entirety of Spec Ops: The Line is filled with moments to make players stop and think about the brutal realities of war, but the 'White Phosphorous' scene has gone down in history as one of the most violent sequences ever seen in a video game.

The story follows Captain Martin Walker, a member of a small team of soldiers sent into war-torn Dubai on a recon mission. At one point, Walker and his squadmates are pinned down by enemy fire and decide to make use of white phosphorous, a highly incendiary material capable of decimating entire areas in an instant. The player controls this sequence, firing onto the enemies from above.

In the aftermath, however, Walker and the others discover that they've inadvertently killed dozens of civilians, who were simply taking shelter nearby. In one of the game's most harrowing scenes, Walker sees the charred remains of all of those innocent people, including a mother cradling her daughter, an image that scars the soldier for the remainder of the game.