10 Video Games That Mocked You For Winning

4. Spec-Ops: The Line

Spec-Ops: The Line is one of the most thought-provoking video games of the last decade, a riveting third-person shooter which asks deeply discomforting questions about both the nature of war and violence in gaming.

Though the first few hours suggest a standard issue war shooter, to the point that many dismissed it as soulless and generic, it eventually transpires that the game is a self-aware quasi-parody of flag-waving, jingoistic, fetishitic military shooters.

A harrowing, unforgettable early sequence tasks the player with deploying white phosphorus on a village, accidentally killing dozens of innocents in the process, the grisly results of which are sure to stick with players for a long, long time.

Suddenly, completing your checklist of objectives doesn't feel so rewarding - the dopamine rush you expect to receive from ticking off a task is replaced with soul-crushing dread as your own compliance with the game's objectives is paralleled with the reality of soldiers "just following orders."

This allegory is further cemented by the player's inability to affect the outcome, their only options being to act as instructed or turn the game off.

The story then culminates in a jaw-dropping finale where it's revealed that the Colonel Kurtz-like antagonist had actually died earlier in the game, and the PTSD-riddled protagonist was actually hallucinating his villainous presence in order to assuage his own guilt.

If you were lured into playing this game by its seemingly straight-forward action thrills, that ending sure did judge the hell out of you for viewing war as entertainment.