Video Game Cruelty Potential/Video Games/Hack and Slash


 * Shadow of Rome actually rewards you for finding out just how many different ways you can kill someone in the arena. Force them to wet themselves by holding an arrow to their head and then shoot them while they pee themselves, hack off an enemy's arms and legs, then beat him to death with a limb, push enemies into fire traps and then throw the switch to incinerate them, push enemies into spike pits, duck underneath spinning blades and trick enemies into walking into them, smash their head with an iron ball and chain, kick a guy in the junk when their back is turned... There's well over 100 different Salvos for you to find, which means over 100 different ways to kill an enemy. Chop an enemy's head off and throw it into the crowd. They go absolutely nuts and cheer you on harder and give you health items and better weapons.
 * God of War is perhaps the king of this trope, as you can kill your enemies in ways that don't bear repeating; hell, one of the basic moves is to rip enemies to shreds with your bare hands. In fact, if you don't do horrible things voluntarily, the game will make you do them.
 * There's a very specific scene early on in Athens with Ares attacking the city proper and citizens fleeing around chaotically. The game rewards you with health for killing them.
 * In Pandora's Temple, one puzzle is solved by you lowering a suspended cage holding a soldier and, instead of freeing him, pushing him uphill to a machine that incinerates him. He pleads with you and shouts for help the whole trip, of course.
 * Whoever did the PAL localization for the game must have thought this to be too horrific even for this game, and thus the soldier was replaced by a regular zombie enemy.
 * There's also one section where you're on one side of a chasm, and the only way across is to pull the lever on the other side and activate a bridge. Naturally, there's a civilian who'd be all too happy to pull said lever, but he's too terrified of all the monsters on your side. Pop quiz: how do you get across? Answer:
 * And don't forget the sequel, where -- not once, but twice -- you must drag a helpless and protesting old scholar towards a book so that he can read it for you. Once you get him there, you brutalize him until he does what you want, then kill him. The real cruelty here lies in the fact that the game uses Quick Time Events (i.e., button-mashing) to literally force the player to put some real physical effort into this act of elder abuse.
 * Along with a scene where you have to kill an Argonaut by dropping him on a conveyor belt leading to a crushing wheel.
 * The third game ups the ante, by forcing you to drag a screaming and begging woman to be horribly crushed in a wheel... all so he can prop up a door. Why Kratos doesn't just use one of the very plentiful enemies in the area instead is completely unknown. What makes this better is that you brutally murdered her husband earlier in the game.
 * Brutally murdered in this case being poking his eyes out with your thumbs, snapping his neck, then throwing him off Mount Olympus.
 * At the very end of the third game,
 * Dantes Inferno has you punish or absolve the sins of the people and monsters you meet in hell. It is also, in some ways, a clone of God Of War, so similar examples to that game above abound.