9 Video Games That Are Absolutely Perfect Stress-Relievers

6. Gears Of War

Though some will find argument with Epic's seminal third-person shooter Gears of War being a stress reliever, there are an equal number who love nothing more than loading up the multiplayer and taking a chainsaw to some dude's neck. First debuting on the Xbox 360 in 2006 it spawned three sequels, with Microsoft most recently taking the license from Epic and moving it to their own development teams. Whilst the single player was a relatively straightforward science-fiction action romp, the first game was defined by its multiplayer component, being it was the first big multiplayer experience for the Xbox 360 until Halo 3 was released the following year. What could have been a fairly straight forward third-person multiplayer experience full of bog-standard modes such as deathmatch and capture the flag instead became something else, something much more special. Gears of War was a violent tour de force with some absolutely brutal animations, effects and weapons. No one will forget the first time they executed a curb stomp on another player, or the first time they manage to get that under-mounted chainsaw to rip someone clear in half. This brutality lends itself well to pure escapism and stress relief, much more than any game like Call of Duty can ever manage. There's an argument to say that no multiplayer game has managed to recreate this pure, visceral fun since Gears of War made its debut.