10 Video Games You Can't Explain Without Sounding Like A Psychopath

4. Mortal Kombat

Good luck explaining: That Kung-Lao Fatality from MK 9. There's a storm coming when it comes to violent video games, and it relates entirely to how realistic the rendering of any act within them is going to be. As graphical fidelity continues to take off in leaps and bounds, all it took for even long-time supporters of the series to feel a bit queezy was Kung Lao's finishing move from 2011's part nine, where he'd sever his opponent's body directly in two from the crotch-up, before holding up the halves in a victory pose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnXEdw-THpc In short, as you can tell by what's been released from next year's MK X, we're very close to photo-realistic visuals, backed up by the processing power to render something like an entire stomach-ful of intestines in all their dangly spaghetti glory, meaning that when you rip a dude's spine out his eye sockets, all the mashed bits of sinew and wet sound effects combine to create something truly stomach-churning. Of course the flip-side to this is that we've seen horrific acts of violence perpetrated in film for decades with the only result being that fans of gore and horror have split off into their own fan bases, as will surely become the case with any mass-accepted medium. Still though, does the level of violence on display in the new MKs make you a little squeamish, or does it just not affect you?