Better Than It Sounds/Video Games N-Z

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Ah, video games. No other media allows Refuge in Audacity so often. And most of the time it works.

Please sort new titles alphabetically to avoid duplicate entries.

  • N: A pacifist stickman ninja runs and jumps across simplistic monochrome landscapes, dodging killer drones and collecting lots of gold.
  • Nancy Drew: A series of games based on classic books that have nothing to do with the books. The best part is repeatedly killing the protagonist, then taking the option of going back to kill them again.
  • Narcissu: A car thief and his depressed lady-friend wander around the countryside looking at flowers because they have nothing better to do.
    • Narcissu -Side 2nd-: The moody friend from the first game spends her summer vacation tagging along with a jaded ex-Catholic.
    • Narcissu 3rd: Die Dritte Welt: A collection of stories vaguely related to the first two, now with a bigger price tag and probably No Export for You.
  • Neo Geo Battle Coliseum: Mascot characters of varying obscurity have to fight each other for five minutes in teams of two. Then you have to fight a cloned nihilist, an alien with a god complex, a Blood Knight and a ripoff of a certain someone. Good Luck.
  • Nethack: A single link on NAO proves that there are over 5,000 ways to lose. And only one way to win.
  • Neutopia: A ROM hack of The Legend of Zelda, featuring no nonlinearity and 90% of the secret hidden passageways don't give you anything.
    • Neutopia II: A ROM hack of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, featuring no dark world and the secret passageways still don't give you anything. The hero from the first game dies and leaves his son some of his defective equipment as inheritance.
  • The Neverhood: A guy made of clay must fulfill a quest in a deserted world; however, he has no idea what it is he's supposed to do. It turns out he was created to fix his world's interrupted creation myth.
    • Skullmonkeys: The villain of the previous game (the original Adam of his world, corrupted through his own choice) isn't dead, but merely landed on another world. He enlists the natives to build a warship capable of obliterating his homeworld, so a tech-savvy local enlists the help of the first game's hero to save the day. The two games are of completely different genres.
  • Neverwinter Nights: Experienced, heroic champion of light hires a low-level adventurer and their henchmen to stop a plague.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer: Main character wakes up at the bottom of a ghost-infested cave as a punishment. He cannot decide if this is a good thing.
  • Nicktoons Unite!: Sentient cheese block, spandex ghost, guy with bizarre hairdo and non-manly guy wearing pink battle Tim Curry.
  • Nicktoons MLB: Sentient cheese block, spandex ghost, secret agent dog, bald kid, green omnicidal maniac, gross kitty and more face-off against real baseball players. No, you are not high.
  • Night Trap: The player helps a former child star fight vampires that are slightly less threatening than Count Chocula using tactics straight out of an episode of Scooby Doo. A very small number of the vampires can shoot lightning out of their hands for some inexplicable reason.
  • NiGHTS Into Dreams: An androgynous creature enters the minds of children and absorbs their spirits into itself. And he's the Good Guy.
    • Nights: Journey Of Dreams: Same androgynous creature does the same thing again, this time with different children, and also manages to confuse everyone by having a woman's voice. Also, an Owl constantly reminds them to collect DreamDrops, which if done, results in a cameo of the two children from the first game.
  • Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors: An eight year old uses time travel to solve a sudoku puzzle.
  • Ninja Gaiden (original): Everyone good and bad wants you dead, and all you want is your family heirloom, which inadvertently tries to destroy the world.
    • Ninja Gaiden (Xbox game): A Ninja finds much of his extended family dead after he returns from a visit to his uncle's and goes after The Empire responsible.
    • Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360 game): A Ninja travels the world to get back a statue. In the meantime he fights giant spiders, a big deathmachine with a sad face, dogs, a four-armed werewolf, ninjas with automatic rocket launchers, the devil who rephrases Shakespeare and Zombie Ninjas. Also, did I mention the one who took the statue is a butterfly?
  • The Ninja Warriors: Two robots kill a fat dictator.
  • Nintendo Puzzle Collection: An Italian man does double-duty as a medical doctor and baker along with his reptilian buddy. Meanwhile, a fairy reunites her friends after a devil's curse splits them apart by smashing everything with colorful blocks
  • Nintendo Wars: The four major nations of World War II, or at least two of them, have a friendly rivalry with each other but constantly end up warring due to a series of misunderstandings.
      • Alternatively: Go to war, and have fun with it! War in it's nicest, funniest way, rarely taking itself seriously.
    • Famicom Wars: In World War I, the two of those four nations battle each other on various territories. Samus Aran and a few other cameos are commanders around certain territories.
    • Super Famicom Wars: World War I is retold. This time, all 4 nations participate. Also, trains are involved.
    • Game Boy Wars 1/2/Turbo: In these 3 games for the price of 3, World War I takes place on various territories. The second of the two nations uses a different color.
    • Game Boy Wars 3: World War I takes place on various territories, with the second of the two nations again using the same different color. Military Madness occurs.
    • Advance Wars: World War II starts when Russia invades America, except it's all a Batman Gambit by an evil alien robot Snifit to take over the world. A key part of his plan is making robotic doubles of an American officer who is 15 and doesn't know what an airport is. When the plan falls apart, he drops meteors on the troops.
    • Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising: The evil alien robot (who is no longer a Snifit) decides to go with the direct approach, stealing military resources through a series of tubes. As subcommanders, he hires a man dumber than the Hulk, a 12 year old Perky Goth Mad Scientist, a possibly gay man who wears blush and has no useful abilities whatsoever, and a frighteningly competent and collected lieutenant. Hiring the last one was a mistake.
    • Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Military commanders discover that by taking turns leading a single army, they can rend the very fabric of time. The hero shoots an old man's wheelchair.
    • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Survivors of an apocalypse fight over what's left of Earth. This all falls away to focus on the most biology-failing clone family this side of Solid Snake.
  • Nintendogs: Take care of familiar creatures that never grow up, learn a limited number of tricks, and get freaked out by various things.
  • No More Heroes: A shameless Anime Otaku wins a Laser Blade in an online auction, and uses it to carve his way up the leaderboard of an assassins' guild.
    • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Shameless Anime Otaku, now hellbent for revenge, carves his way up another leaderboard of an assassins' guild. Along the way, he's helped by his Irish twin brother and a female Afro Samurai.
  • Noby Noby Boy: A giant snake eats people then takes a huge dump.
  • Noitu Love: A small child stops an elderly man from inaccurately reversing evolution by beating the hell out of everything that moves.
    • Noitu Love 2: Devolution: A young woman finds her city is turning into a historical tourist attraction and responds by beating the hell out of everything that moves.
  • Nostalgia: British swordsman inherits his father's sweet ride and travels the world (or something like it) to find him.
  • Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey: Slave frees his race from being turned into food.
    • Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus: Slave is told to free race from becoming beer by ghosts. Leeches hang from trees.
    • Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee: One legged wheelchair fish electrocutes doctors and Nurses, frees Hairy meatballs with teeth.
      • Alternatively, Slave and One-legged wheelchair fish work together to destroy the economy. This is a good thing.
    • Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath: Bounty hunting centaur attempts to bring down water bottling company by throwing animals at it.
  • Odin Sphere: Once upon a time, five strangers took up gardening. There were no survivors.
  • Okage: Shadow King: A family sells their son's soul to a demon in order to free their daughter from a curse causing her to speak Pig Latin.
  • Okami: A magical wolf paints her way to victory.
  • OMGWTFOTL: DON'T GENUFLECT. EVER. Other than that... good luck figuring this one out.
  • OneChanbara: Hot chicks with swords fight zombies while trying not to get their clothes dirty.
  • Oni Motoko Kusanagi ersatz fights terrorists and her former employers, mostly with her bare hands.
  • Onimusha: Warlords A samurai in a quest to rescue a princess gets chosen by some good monsters to fight against evil monster, collecting souls on his way to beat gigantic wasps and humongous snakes only to have another one take the snake's place as Evil Overlord.
    • Or: The princess has been kidnapped by demons. Are you a bad enough samurai to save the princess?
    • Onimusha 3: Samurai from medieval Japan ends up in today's Paris, a policeman from today ends up in medieval Japan. Timetravel extraordinaire to beat even more monsters and the Evil Overlord from the previous game. Again.
  • Operation Flashpoint: You're fighting to prevent World War Three and liberate Ruritanias at the ass end of nowhere. You can drive anything, including tractors. Oh, and you die in two shots.
  • Orbiter: The Free Spaceflight Simulator. First, you study loooong instruction manuals. Then, you finally fly various missions. Most of them are mundane hard work. Piloting a spacecraft is not an easy job.
  • Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan: The people are not motivated. A squad of manly cheerleaders tries to alleviate this.
    • Moero Nekketsu Rhythm Tamashii! Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2: Six years later, the people are still not motivated. The cheerleaders from across the river are not as manly.
  • Oregon Trail: Five men travel west. Everyone dies of dysentery or a broken leg, and the leader gets a silly epitaph.
  • Outpost: God drops an asteroid on the Earth. Your onboard Windows 95 computer won't let you take the off ramp to Mars so you spend about a hundred years flying to the next equally barren rock where you build an <ahem> outpost of civilization.
  • Outpost 2: God drops an asteroid on the Earth ... has a novella backstory.
  • Overlord: The world's most benevolent Evil Overlord and his goofy sidekicks seek revenge on a morbidly obese hobbit, a lecherous knight, a lazy elf, a gold-crazed dwarf, a self-hating thief, a possessed wizard, and a barbarian with anger management issues.
  • Pac-Man: All-consuming glutton shaped like pizza takes illicit substances to consume ghosts.
    • Ms. Pac-Man: Love interest does same does same.
    • Super Pac-Man: All-consuming glutton takes growth hormones.
    • Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures: All-consuming glutton settles down, becomes overemotional and can't do the simplest tasks unless you hit stuff with a slingshot.
  • Pac-Man World series: All-consuming glutton enters the third dimension.
    • Pac-Man World: All-consuming glutton's birthday is cancelled by a robot that sorta looks like said all-consuming glutton.
    • Pac-Man World 2: All-consuming glutton tries to bury a ghost under a tree.
    • Pac-Man World 3: Extraterrestrial being makes life for spirits miserable. All-consuming glutton and said spirits try to kill the extraterrestrial being.
  • Painkiller: Guy in Purgatory gets told he'll get to see his wife in Heaven again if he kills Satan. With a weaponized weed whacker and a whole lot of other weird-ass guns.
    • Alternatively: That game with SHURIKENS AND LIGHTNING!
  • Pajama Sam: There's No Need to Hide When it's Dark Outside: A kid who can't sleep with the lights off falls into his closet armed with a mask, lunchbox and flashlight. Everything talks. Everything.
    • Pajama Sam: Thunder and Lightening Aren't so Frightening: The same kid goes into the attic and gets involved in office politics.
    • Pajama Sam: You Are What You Eat From Your Head to Your Feet: The kid is kidnapped by a box of cookies and tasked with averting a war.
  • Panel de Pon: A fairy princess frees her friends from brainwashing by dropping blocks of garbage on them. Today, the game is best known for a flower that appeared in a more famous video game.
  • Pangya: Players celebrate the exploits of an island hero by playing a game most of us refer to as "golf".
  • Panzer Dragoon: The Precursors learned how to control evolution and the environment, but this ended up leading to a Crapsack World, so it's up to a failsafe program that randomly activates in some animals to save the day from their mistake.
    • Panzer Dragoon Saga: You fall in Love At First Sight, then you're murdered, and then everybody else spends the rest of the game using your reanimated corpse.
    • Panzer Dragoon Orta: Sega found a way to turn Kick the Dog into a rail shooter.
  • Paperboy: A boy bikes down the street and delivers the morning paper, dodging a small army of unlikely obstacles.
    • Paperboy 2: Same as above, but now girls can do it too.
  • Paper Mario: Everyman tries saving a land of sentient fungi from a dragon turtle. The characters are flat.
  • Para Para Paradise: Wave your hands to the tune of fast-paced eurobeat music.
  • Parappa the Rapper: A dog takes Karate lessons from an onion, takes his driver's license test with a moose, gains marketing charm from a frog and follows a chicken's instructions to make a cake out of shrimps. He does all this while rapping in order to court a flower.
    • Parappa the Rapper 2: A dog stops a brat with an afro from turning the universe into noodles using the power of cake.
    • Um Jammer Lammy: One of his friends from around town fronts an all-girl garage band.
  • Paradroid: The player uses the power of Mind Rape to clear a spaceship of cleaners, battle butlers and even daleks.
  • Parasite Eve: Genetic warfare breaks out at the opera. Your organelles hate you.
  • Patapon: As God, you command dancing eyeballs with weapons to war. You cannot control them directly so you have to use commands more complex than they need to be and be forced to wait after each command.
  • The Path: An adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood in which following the game's instructions means Game Over.
  • Pathways into Darkness: The talking corpses of your friends give you tips on helping an alien get back to sleep.
  • Peggle: Various creatures, including a unicorn, a dragon, a cat, and a flower have a school dedicated to teaching the player how to become a master at shooting balls at orange pegs.
    • Peggle Nights: The teachers of the above school have wish-fulfilling dreams.
  • Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game Of The Movie: A HUD-less first-person shooter based on a major film by a big-name director where the player uses guns and other environmental objects to kill dinosaurs while exploring a tropical island.
  • Phantasmagoria 2: Bisexual half-human hybrid cubicle dweller has both his prospective girlfriend and boyfriend stalked by an evil plant counterpart from another dimension.
  • Phantasy Star Online: You're hired to find out what happened to the daughter of the head of the spaceship you live on. You commit genocide on the planet you're trying to colonize only to discover the daughter's been absorbed by the Eldritch Abomination.
    • Phantasy Star Online: Episode 3: Later, you use trading cards to discover everything's a government conspiracy.
  • Phantom Brave: Incredibly cheery young necromancer raises the dead to fight and kill for money. Her clients are extremely stingy.
  • Pikmin: A cargo deliveryman escapes from being stranded on an alien world with a poisonous atmosphere with the help of an army of carrot-creatures.
    • Pikmin 2: The cargo deliveryman and a fellow employee return to the planet from the last game, and enslave the carrot-creatures to dig for "treasure" that is actually worthless junk.
  • Planescape: Torment: An amnesiac resolves to find out how to kill himself in a game based almost entirely on talking.
    • Alternatively: Update Your Journal: the Game
  • Plants vs. Zombies: Gardening is your only hope of surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Plaque Attack: The game of dental hygiene.
  • Pochi and Nyaa: Raining cats and dogs—literally.
  • Pocket God: Be a dick to some islanders.
  • Pocket Tanks: Tiny vehicles with guns destroy the world with ridiculous weapons yet always come out unharmed. Fireworks ensue.
  • Pokémon: The player takes on the role of a child in a world where kids are allowed to leave the house at 10 years of age and traverse the world, capture, befriend, and battle with special animals, causing them to metamorphose from adorable pets into grotesque oversized monsters, and beat up the local crime syndicate.
    • Alternatively: Step into a world where pets are Serious Business.
    • Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow: A young man who grows up to be a Pokémon master defeats a gang of ruthless criminals.
    • Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal: A young man or woman goes on a similar journey to the one above, over two regions and with 100 more Pokemon and supplies.
    • Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald: A young man or woman thwarts an environmental crisis caused by two teams of extremists by defeating or catching the Pokemon that one team uses to carry out its plans.
      • Alternatively: Defeat extremist ecological teams who hope to better the ecology of the region in convoluted ways.
    • Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum: Another young man or woman embarks on a journey to foil a terrorist organization and bend the ruler of time/space/antimatter to their will in the process.
    • Pokémon Black and White: A slightly older young man or woman embarks on a journey to foil an old man's plan to use his son's ability to talk to animals to take over the world.
    • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Teams: A human gets turned into a monster after a personality test and is roped into rescuing other monsters in randomly generated dungeons. Said human nearly distracts a giant sky dragon from saving the world.
      • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness: A different human in the body of a monster must help stop time from freezing by causing time to freeze. There's a scene where all of your closest companions try to kill you, and it manages to be laughable.
      • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky: Pay $30 extra just to see the fan-favorite character from the previous game live instead of die.
    • Pokémon Ranger: You befriend monsters by drawing circles around them.
      • Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia: You must prevent an oil company from finding a renewable energy source by drawing circles around monsters.
      • Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs: Bad guys go around waking up birds, and Evil Old Folks blow up an island using a giant pinecone. You stop them by drawing circles around monsters.
    • Pokémon Snap: In the same world of exotic animals, a boy takes photographs of them to give to an old man.
    • Pokémon Colosseum: In a desert wasteland, an older boy takes villains' monsters in order to perform therapy for them.
      • Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness: The same villains turn a seagull purple. Therapy is now done by a computer.
    • Pokémon Trading Card Game: The player takes on the role of a different child in a world where card games are Serious Business.
      • Pokémon Trading Card Game: Here comes Team Rocket! (2001 video game): The player takes on the role of a young man or woman in a world where card games are Serious Business. Now you have to do a Pokémon-themed rendition of the entire plot of Yu-Gi-Oh's second season. Now with more cards, more duelists, and no port to America.
    • Hey You, Pikachu!: In this same world, a child must befriend a baby mouse with the help of buggy voice-recognition technology.
  • Pop'n Music: Press big colorful buttons to create musical effects.
  • Pong: Two numbers, three lines, and a dot.
  • Portal: Break the laws of physics repeatedly while being carted around a desolate laboratory by an insane computer.
    • Portal 2: Hundreds of years later, you team up with a potato to stop an idiot.
      • Alt: Solve puzzles by shooting at walls while your former friend struggles with addiction and withdrawal.
      • I prefer "give a childish asshole a piggyback ride while she argues with another childish asshole."
    • Keep in mind, this is a first person shooter, but has only one weapon that can't kill anyone.
      • Alt: Team Fortress 2, except with only one class and only one weapon, and no one else is playing.
      • Alt: Ellen McLain and Stephen Merchant take turns trying to get you to kill one another.
  • Power Instinct: A family feud is settled in the fastest possible way.
    • Power Instinct Matrimelee: The family beats the hell out of each other for the right to break age-of-consent laws.
  • Power Pete: As Orson Welles said of his role in Transformers: The Movie, you "play a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys." In a toystore.
  • Prey: Cherokee Guy makes the Doom Guy proud. Now with more Gravity Screw (and sphincters!)
  • Primal: A girl searches for her lost boyfriend while a gargoyle tries to convince her to save the world.
  • Primal Rage: Mortal Kombat WITH DINOSAURS AND GORILLAS!
  • Prince of Persia (1989 game): You are a beggar who is in love with a princess and cannot survive a twenty-foot drop. Except the one that threw you in jail. You must fight through a crumbling, trap-filled palace brimming with guards and fight the evil vizier. In an hour.
    • Prince of Persia 2: Similar concept as above, only now you have to die to solve some of the puzzles and it takes two hours.
    • Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Much like the earlier games, only now there's no time limit and you're armed with a VCR. Or TiVo/Sky+ to younger tropers.
      • Alternatively, a man who can't decide what sword he likes best and likes ripping up his shirt joins forces with the woman he kidnapped to save the world from a tuberculosis-suffering politician (who has recently changed political parties) after the man breaks a clock. All this is a story told by someone with an incredibly bad memory.
    • Prince of Persia: Warrior Within: Much like the previous game, only now your main character reached puberty.
      • Alternatively, a sleep-deprived man armed with a VCR fights empresses in metal swimsuits.
    • Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones: Like the last two games, but the main character now has multiple-personality disorder.
      • Alternatively, a no-longer-dead politician (who doesn't have tuberculosis and never changed parties) kills an ex-empress who used to wear metal swimsuits to create lots of sand. To set things right, the man from the previous two games joins forces with the princess he had kidnapped, who no longer remembers him. They have conversations in elevators about the man's favorite color and he finds his old VCR.
      • The main character learns that there's no point trying to correct your mistakes.
    • Prince of Persia (2008): An environmentalist and a guy with a Freddy Kreuger glove run around trying to save a tree for someone who's been gone for a thousand years.
  • Princess Debut: You have thirty days to learn to dance from a furry. Bishounen princes want to screw you, but won't, because the game is rated E. There's a flying hamster.
  • Princess Maker 2: As a reward for saving a kingdom from the armies of Satan, God gives you a ten-year-old girl.
    • You can then have said 10 year old girl kill the god of war and become the new satan.
    • Alternatively: Make your underage daughter work at a sleazy bar to pay for her breast enlargement.
  • Princess Waltz A bunch of princesses compete in a royal battle royale where cardgames are Serious Business. The prize is a prince who secretly turns into a princess through a DBZ fusion-move to compete in the tournament as well, because he doesn't want to marry any of the competitors since he prefers men. Besides, he really was a princess all along, anyway.
  • Professor Layton: Barraged by puzzles, two Brits, a professor and his apprentice, solve mysteries. Plot twists ensue.
    • Professor Layton and the Curious Village: Two Brits are trapped in a town where puzzles are Serious Business.
    • Alternatively: The consequences for not being able to arrest for Obstruction of Justice.
    • Professor Layton And The Diabolical Box: Two Brits take a train ride, and spend the second half of the game wandering an old mining town completely stoned. Puzzles are still Serious Business. Then they get caught up in a sort of vampire love story.
    • Professor Layton And The Unwound Future: Two Brits wind up in the future where fighting against the Mafia is done by solving their puzzles, which, by the way, are still Serious Business.
    • Professor Layton And The Last Specter: Three Brits go to a small country village to stop a Frenchman from opening a garden. Unsurprisingly, puzzles are deathly Serious Business.
    • Professor Layton And The Mask Of Miracle: Three Brits go to a carnival to keep people from getting stoned. Puzzles enter a new dimension of Serious Business.
  • Professor Layton VS Ace Attorney: Top-hat Brit professor and spiky-haired attorney match wits. Finger Pointing ensues.
  • Prototype: A man in a hoodie has lunch in New York despite the army's best attempts to stop him.
    • Prototype 2: The man in the hoodie welcomes a very upset man into his family. The angry man shows his appreciation by waging war on everyone.
  • Psychonauts: A kid runs away from the circus, learns Psychic Powers by collecting random junk to earn merit badges, and must save the world from an angry midget and a mad dentist.
    • Alt: Circus Brat runs away from home in hopes of becoming a pre-teen superspy. As he works his way to the top of an asylum, he is mistaken for a lake monster, eaten by a fish and sneezes out his brain. His dad is not balding and doesn't hate him.
  • Punch-Out!!: Scrawny kid works his way to the top of the boxing circuit. Many of his opponents are blatant cheaters.
    • Punch-Out!! Wii - Title Defense Mode: Scrawny kid defends his title from his previous opponents, who are now even worse and even more blatant cheaters, even the ones who weren't.
    • Super Punch Out: Scrawny kid with no name works his way to the top of the boxing circuit. Many of his opponents are blatant cheaters, some aren't even boxers.
  • Pursuit Force: You fight crime by hijacking vehicles while someone else is driving them.
  • Push-Over: An anthropomorphic dog trips while dancing and simultaneously drops ten bags of potato chips from his pocket down an anthole. A friendly ant goes to look for them but instead gets distracted playing with his toy dominoes. His journey takes him to many places including Ancient Greece, Japan, a medieval dungeon, a tower of tinker-toys, and outer space.
  • Puyo Puyo: Stacking and killing cute little blobs is a sport.
  • Puzzle Quest: Warriors fight for the fate of the world with Match-Three Puzzle battles.
  • Q*bert: Jump on blocks in order to change their color while avoiding anything purple.
  • Qix: Draw lots of quadrilaterals while sparkly things chase you around. Avoid the color-changing lines.
  • Quake: A single Space Marine must traverse numerous monotonously decorated Gothic buildings in order to reach a boss who doesn't move or attack at all.
    • Quake II: A single soldier fights a bunch of guys who all have prosthetic limbs.
    • Quake III Arena: A bunch of people kill each other over and over again.
    • Quake IV: A bunch of soldiers invade the home of the aforementioned prosthetic limb users.
    • Enemy Territory Quake Wars: A bunch of soldiers and a bunch of prosthetic limb users wage war in the soldiers' home planet.
  • The Queen of Heart '99: The result of dipping To Heart into massive (fan-made) Character Derailment.
  • Quest for Glory: A guy wants to be a hero.
  • Radiata Stories: You and everyone you've ever met including your bumbling mentor and quiet girlfriend wage war against whoever's side you don't take.
  • Radiant Silvergun: An arcade shmup, only port was on a failed console and released in only one country, contains tons of Engrish but no powerups.
  • Rally Trophy: You struggle with the steering wheel of your old 60s car. You start your racing career in the middle of nowhere in northwest Russia. Your co-driver is a bossy Jerkass and panics when seeing cows.
  • Rama: Arthur C. Clarke teaches an astronaut octal and hexadecimal math.
  • Rampage: You punch buildings until either they collapse or you fall and turn into a naked person.
  • Raptor: Call of the Shadows: An extremely durable plane shoots down enemies.
  • Ratchet and Clank 2002: Vaguely catlike repairman acquires factory-rejected robot and saves the galaxy from people who are just trying to make a new home for themselves.
    • Ratchet and Clank Going Commando: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot travel to another galaxy and save it from an adorable fuzzy monster.
    • Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot return to the first galaxy and save it from a mad scientist and his sarcastic butler. But they need the help of one of their old enemies to do so.
    • Ratchet: Deadlocked: Vaguely catlike repairman must win a game show or die trying.
    • Ratchet and Clank Size Matters: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot get interviewed by a young girl working on her school project and end up finding tiny aliens.
    • Secret Agent Clank: Vaguely catlike repairman gets sent to prison, while factory-rejected robot tries on various costumes, sends the repairman cakes, and plays poker for an empty crate. Meanwhile, stupid green-wearing superhero tells a bunch of far-fetched tales, and tiny robots help defeat cheating robots.
    • Ratchet and Clank Future Tools of Destruction: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot save a different galaxy from a pipsqueak emperor and his army of goldfish. They also find the ultimate weapon of a lost civilization: a hat.
    • Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty: Vaguely catlike repairman faces two pirates with the intent of finding where his factory-rejected robot friend is working.
    • Ratchet and Clank Future A Crack In Time: Vaguely catlike repairman finds out he isn't the only one. In the meantime, factory-rejected robot is now employed in the exact center of the universe, give or take fifty feet.
    • Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One: Vaguely catlike repairman, his factory-rejected robot friend, stupid green-wearing president, and mad scientist work together to stop a man in search of his lost pet.
  • Rayman series: Limbless man fights evil despite disability.
    • Rayman (1995 game): Limbless man must rescue dozens of his fangirls before he can confront the villain, who lives in a fortress made of candy and cake. There, he defeats the reassembled body parts of all the game's bosses, then lets the villain go free.
    • Rayman 2: The Great Escape: Limbless man must eat a lot of yellow flies on a quest to awaken an omnipotent voodoo doll.
    • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: Limbless man has trouble getting his shoes to stay on. He saves the world by making a googly face at a wise-cracking black fly.
    • Rayman Raving Rabbids: Limbless man is forced to play bizarre sports with screaming bunnies.
    • Rayman Raving Rabbids 2: Shrieking rabbits divert the attention away from limbless man and play more bizarre games. Everyone rages at the attention-diverting.
    • Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party: Noisy lapines get stuck in the limbless man's television set and annoy him by playing yet more bizarre games.
    • Rabbids Go Home: Cacophonous lagomorphs decide to finally go home. Except that they've forgotten where home is, and decide it's the moon, and build a tower consisting of random junk on the streets and clothing stolen directly off people in order to get there. The limbless man is now apparently absent, considering the rabbits are doing his job for him.
    • Rayman Origins: Limbless man, blue frog, and fancily-dressed blue people have a nap that drives a grandma to send the legions of Hell upon them. They all set out to find some pink people so their god doesn't have nightmares.
  • The Rance Series: A Heroic Sociopath mercenary wanders the Medieval European Fantasy Crap Saccharine World with his loyal slave doing what he does best.
    • Rance: Quest for Hikari: The mercenary searches for a missing girl, who turns out to have been the victim of a perverted lesbian queen. He saves her by doing what he does best.
    • Rance II: The Rebellious Maidens: Said mercenary finds a town sunk by Virgin Power. He solves the problem by doing what he does best.
    • Rance III: The Fall of Leazas: A country ruled by a former perverted lesbian queen is under attack. They hire the mercenary, whose slave was kidnapped by the attacking country. He also gets to do what he does best.
    • Kichikuou Rance: The mercenary and the former perverted lesbian queen get married so the mercenary's slave can be rescued. He ends up ruling the world all while doing what he does best. Of course, this game never happened.
    • Rance 5D: The Lonely Girl: The mercenary and his slave are trapped in an Eldritch Location. This doesn't stop him from doing what he does best.
    • Rance VI: The Fall of Zeth: The mercenary's slave is kidnapped by fantastic racists and treated nicely. He doesn't like this, so he intends to overthrow the government while doing what he does best.
    • Sengoku Rance: This time, the aforementioned mercenary escapes to another country for a vacation. He rules the country while still doing what he does best.
    • Rance Quest: The mercenary is saving his frozen slave. He decides to take a detour so he can do what he does best.
      • Alternatively, one man's continuing struggle against impotence, so he can do what he does best.
  • RapeLay: Serial rape, and not the fun kind.
  • Razing Storm: Two commandos and their squad kill an evil dictator. And lots of Humongous Mecha.
  • Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale: In a world full of adventurers, you play as the shopkeeper.
  • Red Dead Redemption: Grand Theft Auto...IN THE WILD WEST!
  • Resident Evil 1: Cops break into a house and kill everyone inside.
    • Resident Evil 2: A policeman arrives in a town and starts shooting its residents. Meanwhile, an evil corporation conspires to invent skin cream.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: A gal in a miniskirt spends the entire game running away from a tentacle monster.
    • Resident Evil Code: Veronica: A girl protects a boy only slightly younger than she is because her older brother isn't around to protect her until the very end.
    • Resident Evil 4: The President's daughter has been kidnapped by Spaniards! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President's daughter?
      • Or: An American goes to Spain to rescue the president's daughter and meets a man who is eventually killed by a cult leader and his demon penis.
      • Or: The policeman from the second game arrives in a village in Europe and starts shooting its residents. Meanwhile, Napoleon is digging for ancient parasites under his house.
      • Or: Big Bad explains plan to protagonist and spends several days trying to kill him, when unlocking all the doors and taking a nap would have assured him world domination.
      • Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways: A woman uses a Grappling Hook Pistol to help out the above American behind the scenes while working for the villain behind the first three games, but in reality is a Chessmaster who is doing it all for own nefarious schemes.
    • Resident Evil 5: A very stylish and clever villain who speaks in a huge, bombastic tone plots to control the world while wearing Sunglasses at Night. He is stopped by a heavily-muscled international police officer and his small, slender female partner.
      • Alternatively, the first recipient of a gorilla-human arm transplant punches his way through Africa with the support of a local in order to stop Neo from controlling worms. In the end, he fistfights a boulder in a volcano.
    • Resident Evil Outbreak: A group of people completely unrelated to all of the above have to put up with the aftermath.
  • Resistance: You must stop a bunch of aliens that are digging up funny looking towers and trying to destroy humanity for some reason.
  • Retro Game Challenge: Game show host has become a disembodied evil head and sends you back in time to play Nintendo, so his 10-year old self can help you defeat himself.
  • Revengers of Vengeance: Record of Lodoss War-expies fight each other and a great evil.
  • Revolution X: Rescue Aerosmith from an evil government by shooting CDs at its troops.
  • Rez: You have to fix an AI that's not working well by shooting stuff to techno music.
    • Alternatively, an AI gets depressed, and you shoot stuff to make it feel better.
  • Rift: Six large reptilian things decide to cause trouble. Either Mad Scientists or the gods themselves are to blame.
  • Ring of Red: What if the Korean War was fought with Humongous Mecha?
  • Rise of the Triad: Five special forces agents must stop a cult whose ranks include the former head of a movie studio. Among your weapons are a magical baseball bat and the ability to turn into a dog.
  • Ristar: A star defeats invading aliens by grabbing them.
  • Rival Schools: United By Fate: High school kids are disappearing and coming back Brainwashed and Crazy. The only obvious solution is to beat the crap out of one another to find the culprit.
    • Project Justice: A lunatic in tight clothing and extendable claws sets out to take over all the schools. The obvious solution from the last game is again the only option.
  • River City Ransom: Two high school Delinquents beat up an entire city worth of gangsters for the sake of one guy's girlfriend.
    • Or: Beat up people to hear them barf.
  • Riviera: The Promised Land: A fallen angel and his harem attempt to stop his old companions from bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
    • Yggdra Union: Princess with a big sword and a deck of cards has to reclaim her kingdom from an empire with larger numbers (and, obviously, more cards).
      • Yggdra Unison: Empire captures fortress; very cutesy world war between twelve countries, each armed with a deck of cards, ensues.
      • Blaze Union: Demonic Christ figure gathers many allies and a large deck of cards in order to save the Empire.
      • Gloria Union: Wannabe pirate and a robot who fell from the sky look for treasure, armed with a deck of cards. Also, political intrigue!
    • Knights in The Nightmare: Ghost calls on the spirits of the dead to protect him from monsters, even though it can't be killed.
    • Gungnir: Boy with the ability to summon (but not control) powerful demons VS mundane racism.
  • Robot Alchemic Drive: Super robots save the world while you stand around and watch. And try to avoid collateral damage from their battles.
  • Robot Unicorn Attack: Horse collects fairies and makes friends with dolphins on a journey amongst the stars. Men love it.
  • Robo Warrior: Saving the world from an alien-engineered ecological disaster by blowing up trees on your way.
  • Rock Band: Tapping buttons on what looks like a plastic toy guitar/bass, hitting plastic drums, making an arrow follow a line with your voice. Making an ass of yourself in the process, of course, but at least you can do it with more friends.
    • Rock Band Unplugged: Tapping buttons while potentially making an ass of yourself in the process. Unfortunately, you can't do it with friends.
  • Rocket Knight Adventures: Rescue a princess from pig men with a sword that undresses its victims.
    • Sparkster (Genesis): Rescue a princess's daughter from lizard men with a sword that no longer undresses its victims and is not fireproof while looking for seven other swords that glow.
    • Sparkster (SNES): Rescue a princess from wolf men with a sword that can undress its victims again.
    • Rocket Knight (2010): Save your village from wolf men and the same pig-men from the first game with a sword that sometimes undresses its victims and occasionally shoots larger bolts.
  • Rogue: A Big Eater fights uppercase letters. Popular enough to spawn a game genre named after it.
  • Rogue Galaxy: After being abandoned by a bunch of space pirates and then rescued by the captain's pretty daughter, a young man finds his true heritage while traveling across the universe.
  • Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012: A demonic gangster takes over most of America's tourist spots, while an underground organization fights back by offering discount vacations, breaking into said tourist spots with heavily-armed vehicles, and battling each other over the tourist.
  • ROM CHECK FAIL: Your favorite arcade machine is busted, and you have to shoot/stomp on things to (attempt to) fix it.
  • Rondo of Swords: Incongruous ninjas pay a visit. Unemployed ninjas show up, too, for some reason.
  • The Room: The Game: Based on one of the worst movies of all time, wherein you re-enact scenes from said movie, and need to collect spoons to unlock an alternate ending.
  • Rose and Camellia: A young widow fights (quite literally) to claim her stake in the family estate.
  • Rosenkreuzstilette: A church maiden and army official fights her friends who have sided with a vampire. All for said vampire's daughter's entertainment.
  • Rule of Rose: Little lesbian girls proceed to torture, humiliate and beat each other. The happy ending is where everybody dies.
  • RuneScape: A fresh-faced adventurer seeks to make his place in the world by spending hours and hours training his skills and fighting the evil forces of an undead creature with the power of a god, an island of monkeys, a mage that uses food as his power source, and Communist penguins. Whilst tons of 12-year old boys pester him, and/or beg him for items.
  • SOS: Prince of Persia ON A SINKING SHIP! WITH MODE 7 GRAFIX!
  • Sacrifice: Gods have a petty argument. Some guy appears and leads one of them to dominate using an army of monsters.
  • Sakura Taisen: Japanese performers with mecha fight demons.
  • Sam and Max Freelance Police Hit the Road: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes rescue a sasquatch and his girlfriend from a midget country singer, then help a bunch of eco-terrorists re-forest the Pacific Northwest.
    • Sam and Max- Culture Shock: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes beat up a bunch of former child stars.
    • Sam and Max- Situation: Comedy: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes trick a chicken into eating cow poop, cheat at game shows, and electrocute a talk-show hostess.
    • Sam and Max- The Mole, The Mob, and the Meatball: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes join a team of adorable, thinly-disguised mobsters.
    • Sam and Max- Abe Lincoln Must Die!: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes decapitate the President of the United States, start a civil war, and blow up the Lincoln Memorial. One of them becomes the new president.
    • Sam and Max- Reality 2.0: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes destroy the Internet.
    • Sam and Max- Bright Side of the Moon: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes kill a cult leader who wants to make everyone in the world happy.
    • Sam and Max- Ice Station Santa: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes alternately save and ruin Christmas.
    • Sam and Max- Moai Better Blues: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes defraud an underwater civilization in order to discover the secret of Easter Island.
    • Sam and Max- Night of the Raving Dead: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes pick on a club kid vampire.
    • Sam and Max- Chariots of the Dogs: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes thwart the machinations of time-traveling Mexican stereotypes.
    • Sam and Max- What's New, Beelzebub?: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes nearly cause the apocalypse after saving their friends and neighbors from eternal damnation.
    • Sam and Max- The Penal Zone: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes use toys to help them trap a gorilla in a pocket dimension.
    • Sam and Max- The Tomb of Sammun-Mak: Two sociopathic Funny Animal private eyes watch their great-grandfathers' home movies.
    • Sam and Max- They Stole Max's Brain!: A sociopathic Funny Animal private eye threatens a rat, a gorilla, a tourist, and an outdated fax machine because his partner lost a vital organ. Said partner then has to thwart a spoiled pre-teen's plans for world domination.
    • Sam and Max- Beyond the Alley of the Dolls: A sociopathic Funny Animal private eye tries to find clones of himself, but finds a dispenser instead.
    • Sam and Max- The City That Dares Not Sleep: The other sociopathic Funny Animal private eye spontaneously gains psychic powers. And becomes a giant beast.
  • Samba de Amigo: Mexican and sister compete in dance contests.
  • Samorost: A gnome tries to save his home planet. This usually involves him standing motionlessly and waiting for his problems to solve themselves.
    • Samorost 2: A gnome tries to rescue his dog from fruit poachers. Again, this usually involves him standing around waiting for his problems to solve themselves.
  • Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked: A prototype for No More Heroes, based on an anime, doesn't affect the anime's canon in any way.
  • Samurai Shodown: An alcoholic guy with an outrageous hair style and an Ainu maiden thwart a jesuit's evil plan. They encounter 10 other weirdos in the way.
    • Samurai Shodown II: The guy and the girl from the previous game fix an evil god's evil doing.
    • Samurai Shodown III: The guy and the girl from the first game beat the crap out of an huge evil guy. We see an emo kid with a parasol instead.
    • Samurai Shodown IV: The boss of the first game is back doing evil stuff. Ninja siblings are involved.
    • Samurai Shodown V: A piece of armor wants everyone dead. Expies and/or alternate personalities of everyone are involved.
    • Samurai Shodown V Special: Almost identical to the previous game except with fatalities. Nevada-tan screws it all up.
    • Samurai Shodown Tenka: Everyone is back, the (future) 7th president of the United States wants to fight you for some reason.
    • Samurai Shodown 64: Some very evil dude wants everything dead. The guy and the (newly ascended) girl from the first game wants him down.
    • Samurai Shodown 64-2: The evil dude from the previous game is still alive, the guy and the girl from the first game + a (less) evil demon and some woman with odd eyes wants him down.
    • Samurai Shodown Warriors Rage: 20 years later, A tiny old man, a possessed half-demon girl with a large blade thing and some other dude screw around. The guy (Now an old man) from the first game go save the younger sister of the girl of you-know-what (Now a fairy) from these three guys. We see the other dude's brother instead.
    • Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny: A fictional kingdom is pissed up. A girl with a huge sword and a guy with a wooden sword tries to fix this. Weirdos of implausible origins are involved.
  • Sands of Destruction: Public enemy #1 wants to use an innocent Farm Boy to turn her planet into Tatooine.
  • Saya no Uta: A young man with a crippling disorder meets a lovely girl who makes him feel better. The End of the World as We Know It ensues.
  • Scaler: Young male animal activist is turned into a lizard by other exothermic creatures. In doing so, the boy reunites with his father (also a lizard).
  • Scarab of Ra: An archaeology geek, who moonlights as a sideshow geek, gets himself sealed inside a pyramid and must find nonviolent ways of dealing with kleptomaniacal monkeys.
  • Scribblenauts: A boy in a Nice Hat conjures a staggering number of items in order to gather stars. There is no plot.
    • Super Scribblenauts: Same boy learns what adjectives are. More stars are gathered. The fandom rejoices.
  • Second Life: Massively multiplayer online CAD (or so the joke goes).
  • The Secret Island of Doctor Quandary: You win a doll and a free trip to an island at a carnival shooting gallery. Unfortunately, if you want to go home you'll have to solve Stock Puzzles and make some really nasty soup.
  • Secret of Evermore: A boy and his dog try out virtual reality dating from the 1960s.
  • Secret of Mana: Boy is banished from his homeland and persecuted by the government for being the legendary hero.
    • Seiken Densetsu 3: Fairy picks the first person she sees to save the world. The game can't decide who the heroes and villains are.
  • Seiklus: It is your average Metroidvania platformer with a sole exception that you can't die.
  • Sengoku Basara series: Historical samurai do almost nothing they did in real history and fight obvious evil and each other with the power of Engrish, large hams and the Rule of Cool.
  • Serious Sam: Guy romps through ancient Egypt in search of spaceship, leaves no survivors. In the Expansion Pack, he loses the ship and must search South America, Babylon and Europe for a replacement. When he gets to his destination in the sequel, he finds he needs to collect stuff.
  • The 7th Guest: Walk around a house solving puzzles. While dead.
    • The Eleventh Hour: Do the same thing, but the house is a total fixer-upper now. And it had sex with a woman.
  • Shadow Hearts: A guy saves a girl in a short skirt from a man in a suit, then gets his friends to gang up on him. The bad ending is canon.
  • Shadow of Destiny: The main character dies during the first cutscene and is resurrected by an androgynous time traveller who may or may not be Satan. He tries to prevent his own death while avoiding accidentally causing it. This is repeated several times.
  • Shadow of the Colossus: An oddly named boy and his horse set upon destroying sixteen statues in order to revive his dead girlfriend.
    • Alternatively: One of the most epic boss rushes ever implemented.
  • Shadow Warrior: An old ninja who is named after a penis says dirty jokes in Engrish.
  • Shantae: Cute genie girl saves the world from the onset of Steampunk with magical hair and belly dancing.
  • Shatter: A dysfunctional power plant part goes on a rampage to destroy the evil orwellian space robot empire led by an equally evil robot pong paddle.
  • Shenmue: A guy's father is killed. He collects toys, plays arcade games, and adopts a kitten. He never avenges his father.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: A young male teen gains the ability to summon demons and uses it to fight demons. And possibly the forces of heaven. No wonder it got stuck in Japan.
    • Shin Megami Tensei 2: X Years Later, the world of balance that the hero of the previous game created has gotten worse. The powers that be create a Test Tube Messiah, who may or may not kill God, that is, if he decides not to run away from the planet first.
    • Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne: A different young male teen-turned-demon survives the world being turned into a giant space womb and gets to decide which one of his friends impregnates the baby universe. Or he can kill the fetus and join Lucifer (who's apparently a good guy) in fighting to kill God and stop the cycle. The Updated Rerelease features a certain White Haired Pretty Badass Longcoat.
    • Devil Survivor: Pokemon-like creatures appear in real life, most likely leading to one of several versions of the Apocalypse over the course of a week while you are stuck inside a part of Tokyo. Your main source of information as to what the hell is going on is an increasingly glitchy mail daemon.
    • Persona: A group of kids get struck by lightning and then go off on a Journey to the Center of the Mind.
    • Alternatively: A video game in which you can be killed by an evil, hula-dancing toilet.
    • Persona 2: Innocent Sin: The most... colorful interpretation of Adolf Hitler ever imagined...anywhere.
    • Persona 2: Eternal Punishment: A female journalist, her jealous best friend, a cop, a wire tapper, and a shell-shocked senior fight a serial killer. What happens next, well, your guess is as good as any.
      • Alternatively: The Rumor Mill is very, very brutal.
      • Alternatively: The greatest test of a person's Willing Suspension of Disbelief towards any given form of media.
    • Persona 3: Eight high school students (including one robot), a kid, and a dog try to prevent the end of the world by shooting themselves in the head over and over inside a school at midnight.
      • Or as summarized in the sequel: Blue-haired boy gets stuck in wall.
      • Alternatively: The greatest stair-climbing simulator in history.
      • Persona 3: FES: The same bunch (minus two students) are trapped in their dorm and try to break out by shooting themselves in the head in the basement. They are assisted by another robot who tries to actually kill them.
    • Persona 4: Seven different high school students (and a bear) solve local murders by watching TV all night long.
      • Alternative: A boy moves to a small town where he and his friends become obsessed with late-night TV. They Fight Crime.
      • Alternatively: A boy who shows next to no emotion somehow becomes a Marty Stu.
      • Alternatively for the above two entries: Persona 3 or Persona 4: Get people to become friends with you (and even date/sleep with you) by telling them what they want to hear, all for your selfish personal benefit.
  • Shoot Many Robots: Those robot bastards are gonna pay for shooting up your ride!
  • Shufflepuck Café: In the farthest reaches of the galaxy, surrounded by exotic alien beings, you play air hockey.
  • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: A sleeping alien god gets a skin disease. It takes decades for it to start scratching and centuries to actually wake up. Meanwhile, tree-hugging hippies discover that the local fungus is the path to apotheosis, man; Chairman Mao's reincarnation is worse than ever; ancient Greeks are apparently lead by a hot Latina; a scientist goes mad; Gordon Gekko is alive and well in the late 21st century; and American Bible-thumpers annoy everybody (just like today, har har har).
  • Sid Meier's Pirates: Do what you want 'cause a pirate lives free, you are a pirate!
  • Silent Hill: Your daughter gets lost in a foggy resort town, and an antiques dealer tries to convince you that she's actually her daughter. The cop and the doctor don't clarify things.
    • Alternatively: A man keeps finding ways into parallel versions of buildings in which floors are a luxury, everything's rusty, and important things are marked by blood.
    • Alternatively: You get to witness an abuse victim act out a revenge fantasy.
    • Silent Hill 2: You receive a letter from your dead wife. It all goes downhill from there.
    • Silent Hill 3: A creepy blond woman wants to talk to you about birth. You end up killing God.
      • Alternatively: A young teenage girl avenges her father's murder by aborting her child.
    • Silent Hill 4: You're trapped in the Big Bad's mother. Is home to the High Octane Nightmare Fuel poster pic (Yikes!)
      • Alternatively: A man looks for a way to unlock the front door of his apartment. To accomplish this, he peeks on his female neighbor, and crawls through holes to watch people get killed by an immortal serial killer.
      • Alternatively: A man cannot find a way to get out of his room because his front door is locked from the inside. To get out, he must crawl through a plot hole.
    • Silent Hill Homecoming: You come home from a war to find your town overrun with more crazy cultists and, also, vaginal imagery. You shoot your mother to get the good ending.
    • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: You go on a hunt for your daughter in freak weather conditions. The town locals make every effort to Mind Screw you into submission.
      • Alternatively: You play through a metaphor for a therapy session.
  • The Silver Case: Almost everyone dies trying to figure out why there are killers in town.
    • Flower, Sun, and Rain: A man never gets his breakfast, therefore airplanes explode.
    • The Silver Case: Ward 25: Correctness, Match Maker, Placebo, Transmitter. These words have something in common, but darned if I know what they are.
  • SimCity: Put yourself in power; receive many complaints about traffic.
    • SimCity 2000: Put yourself in power; cut back on funding. YOU WILL REGRET THIS!
    • SimCity 3000: Put yourself in power; rule over the big-headed mutants of the Uncanny Valley.
    • SimCity 4: Put yourself in power; receive many complaints about traffic, sanitation, and striking employees. But nicer graphics. In the expansion pack you get stuck in rush hour traffic.
      • Or: You're the immortal mayor of a town who has immortal advisors who you will wish weren't immortal.
  • Sim Copter: This is an alert from central dispatch: Give helicopter rides to people who forgot where they put their car keys. Transport heavily-injured people to the hospital when ambulances are unable or just too lazy to do it themselves. End traffic jams by calling the drivers involved stupid idiots.
  • Sim Earth: You have to maintain nearly every aspect of a planet's geology, weather, and ecosystem, in the hopes that some creatures will evolve to sentience and leave.
  • The Sims: A group of people are at the complete, utter mercy of a whimsical and cruel god who alternates between deleting their toilets and trapping them inside the very walls of their own homes.
    • Or: You are god and are given complete control over people who are unable to exit a pool if the ladder should mysteriously vanish.
    • Or: Humanoids who speak gibberish and can't feed themselves without your help or exit the pool without a ladder constantly die, complain, neglect their children, catch things on fire and stick potato chip bags in the microwave.
    • The Sims 2: The same group of people's descendants are placed into the hands of the same god, who now can bring fates worse than the plagues of Egypt upon them. Death itself occasionally ignores their corpses and watches their telly.
    • The Sims 3: An indescribable force of darkness has forced itself onto the world, making the little people capable of exiting the pool without a ladder. This same force makes killing them slightly less desirable for the god.
  • The Simpsons Arcade Game: The Yes-Man of the richest man in the city unintentionally kidnaps a baby during a botched robbery. Her family comes to her rescue.
  • Sin: An angry police officer battles a beautician with a lot of money, a lot of chest, and no ethics.
  • Sin and Punishment: Genetically-enhanced humans kill an onslaught of monsters, followed by killing the army responsible for defending against them. Then they betray the one who helped them do so, turn into a giant monster and destroy the Earth by reflecting its attacks. Delivered entirely in Surprisingly Good English.
  • Sinistar: A guy in a spaceship gathers shiny rocks to keep a giant roaring head from eating him.
  • Skies of Arcadia: Two pirates and a Waif go on an epic adventure to collect moon rocks. In the sky.
  • Skullgirls: Eight ladies fight each other to gain an artifact who will grant them a wish but also turning them into an Eldritch Abomination.
  • Sky Blazer: A grumpy old man yells at a gay cousin of Mega Man to go beat up an indian deity. He concedes.
  • Sly Cooper and the Thievious Racoonus: A career criminal beats up other career criminals to recover a family heirloom.
    • Sly 2: Band of Theves: The career criminal steals the parts to a robot from other career criminals.
    • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: While about to be eaten by a dinosaur, the career criminal remembers how he talked other career criminals into helping him break into his own vault.
  • Smash TV: Two shirtless guys compete in a game show to win fabulous prizes.
  • Snow Brothers: Nick and Tom Save The Princesses by covering the bad guys with snow.
  • Solatorobo: A dog on a robot does odd jobs while trying to Save the World.
  • Solitaire: Winning just means you beat the odds against being screwed over from the beginning.
  • Sonic Blast Man: A superhero saves the day by punching people and things really, really hard. Which is apparently his only super-power.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: A small blue mammal steals batteries from a fat man. The blue mammal does this because the fat man is using cute little animals as batteries to power killer robots.
  • Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke wo: Two schoolgirls fall in love with each other. They have sex. A lot.
  • Soul Blazer: God sends you to save the world so he can take all the credit.
    • Illusion of Gaia/Time: Due to the presence of an evil force, modern day Earth turned out much more interesting. The powers that be order you to correct this.
    • Terranigma: The powers that be are total jackasses. That seems to be the theme in this series.
  • Soul Nomad and The World Eaters: A red-haired mute with voices in his/her head must save the world. S/he is joined by his/her brain-damaged childhood friend.
  • Soul Series: A big (and powerful) sword enslaves and maddens its users (naturally). Fight against an opponent over Bottomless Pits to obtain, destroy, or help it. Maybe you'll get its good twin to help. It's hard to tell if anyone dies.
  • Space Channel 5: A newscaster enlists the aid of Michael Jackson in out-dancing rubber aliens.
    • Space Channel 5 Part 2: The President has been kidnapped by robots. Are you a good enough dancer to rescue the President?
      • Or: Robots and an albino mad scientist with a purple disco suit. Who loves to airhump.
  • Space Invaders: Aliens attack Earth with poor but well-regimented strategy.
  • Space Quest: A janitor tries to fight bad guys... IN SPACE!
    • Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter: A janitor gets lost in the desert on his quest to destroy a device that makes stars... IN SPACE!
    • Space Quest 2: Vohaul's Revenge: A janitor gets kidnapped, ends up in an exotic jungle and has to stop an evil plot involving flooding the world with insurance salesmen... IN SPACE!
    • Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon: A janitor has to save two video game developers by beating up an overweight bespectacled nerd in a giant robot duel... IN SPACE!
    • Space Quest 4: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers: A janitor travels through time to stop a Master Computer virus, while armed with only his severely limited wits and a hint book... IN SPACE!
    • Space Quest 5: The Next Mutation: A janitor becomes captain of a garbage scow and saves civilization as we know it from projectile-vomiting mutants... IN SPACE! Oh, and if the love interest dies, our hero ceases to exist.
    • Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier: A spaceship captain goes back to being a janitor and thwarts the machinations of a bed-ridden old lady by going on a Fantastic Voyage... IN SPACE!
  • A Space Shooter for Two Bucks!: School bully grows up to become a galactic conqueror. He's the hero.
  • Space Station Silicon Valley: Man and his robot crash land on a long lost zoo/space station the man had created. He soon learns that the animals onboard have become cyborgs.
  • Spelunker: Little man with poor constitution has to find treasures in a cave.
    • Spelunker HD: Little man with poor constitution now can team up with more little men with the same poor constitution to find more treasure.
  • Spelunky: A tiny man dressed like Indiana Jones travels through a ridiculously dangerous cavern in search of treasure, populated by Goddamned Bats, spiders, snakes, yetis, and lots of spikes. The game is different every time, but 99% of your sessions will end in the tiny man's untimely death.
  • Spheres Of Chaos: An Asteroids clone where there's a high chance of getting epilepsy when playing it.
  • Spider Solitaire: Either the easiest or the hardest variant game in the history of ever.
  • Splinter Cell: A highly skilled former Navy SEAL fights terrorists in unsafe workplaces by hiding from them.
    • Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow: A veteran must pick up some notes, retrieve stolen refrigerators, and find out where five spray cans are and give the last one to some security guards.
    • Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: A veteran must kill his old friends and save the bad guys to save the world.
    • Splinter Cell: Double Agent: A veteran questions his morality as he inflitrates a terrorist organization named after a southerner who was hanged.
      • Or: A man is sent on a secret mission better suited for someone 30 years younger than him.
  • Spore: Everything. Including, but not limited to: evolving by dancing in public, getting more advanced by burning buildings, capturing cities by playing music, and lots and lots of genocide.
    • Cell Stage: Become the biggest, baddest piece of zooplankton in the tide pool. Your diet determines your destiny.
    • Creature Stage: Either fight wild animals to the death or give 'em the old song and dance.
    • Tribal Stage: Entertain enemy tribes or demolish their seats of government.
    • Civilization Stage: Easy Evangelism, Corrupt Corporate Executive syndrome, or genocide? Which will it be?
    • Space Stage: Build an empire with one measly ship.
    • Spore Creature Creator: As a preview of a game about everything, you stretch and squish various blobby shapes and add parts to them to make them look vaguely like some sort of animal. Or a penis.
    • Spore Creature Creator Parts: Creepy and Cute: The first of several efforts to make a game about everything about more everything.
  • Spy vs. Spy: Monochromatic Deformed Anthropomorphic Birds set traps for one another while searching a building for a variety of worthless junk.
    • Spy vs. Spy II: Monochromatic Deformed Anthropomorphic Birds set traps for one another using trees and coconuts while searching a tropical island for a buried missile.
      • Spy vs. Spy III: Monochromatic Deformed Anthropomorphic Birds set traps for one another using ice and snow while searching an arctic wasteland for a buried missile.
  • Spyro the Dragon (1998 game): A greedy young punk who has really bad halitosis frees his elders from being frozen and battles the unfortunately-titled "gnorc" who encased them because they called him simple and ugly. The punk's health bar is a dragonfly.
    • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage: Said punk is kidnapped while on a vacation due to a faun, a mole, and a two legged cat messing around with a Portal Network. The punk gets extorted by a greedy bear in order to progress.
      • Or: The mole accidentally opens the gates of hell to release... a short angry man and his two dinosaurs.
    • Spyro: Year of the Dragon: A rhino-like sorcerer and her furry second-in-command steals lots of eggs to draw power from them. The punk's health bar is controllable for part of the game.
    • The Legend of Spyro: An alternate universe version of said punk (who is more noble and has a few other new health issues) beats up his future love interest, an ape with a laser eye, and the only other of his kind. Big demon destroys the world by walking around in a circle. The dragonfly is now a cowardly Deadpan Snarker.
  • Stacking: A Russian nesting doll uses mind control to pull pranks and get child labor outlawed.
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl: Man wakes up on table, with a note telling him to kill himself.
    • Clear Sky: Man wakes up, is sent on a quest to stop the place from exploding every hour. Figures out the way to stop it is to kill the previously mentioned man. He fails at the killing part.
  • Star Control II: A young man solves his caterpillar problem through genocide. Sort of like Centipede... IN SPACE!
  • Star FOX (1993 game): Woodland animals fighting an evil brain in spaceships.
    • Star Fox 64: Another way the plot of the first game might have happened. You face the difficult moral decision of abandoning your target to save your teammates. Frequently.
    • Star Fox Adventures: Our hero saves a bunch of British lizards from a bunch of smaller lizards using a stick. For the money. And maybe a romantic interest/furry Fetish Fuel.
    • Star Fox: Assault: Furries set aside their differences to battle the real menace: parasitic insects.
    • Star Fox Command: Anthropomorphic animals follow various plotlines to fight evil fish. They almost always end up hating each other, so a a Japanese man decided it never happened.
  • Star Ocean: The Japanese version of Star Trek minus the science fiction.
  • Star Soldier R: A five-minute Shoot'Em Up that costs $8.
  • Star Wars Battlefront: Fight wars of attrition with large numbers of infantry in a setting that clearly makes the concept obsolete.
    • Alternately: Red Shirt: The Game.
    • As above, in Hunt mode: Fight off the most advanced armies in the galaxy using obsolete weapons, and sometimes claws.
  • Star Wars Shadows of the Empire: Play through never-before-seen areas because the game isn't about the original trilogy.
  • StarCraft: A giant evil brain turns a bitch into an even bigger bitch, convincing two warring empires to unite and try to kill her. They fail miserably. Korea loves it.
  • Starfleet Command: Space Is an Ocean—lucky for you, you can buy yourself a pretty kickass galleon. Unluckily, it's also Nintendo Hard, with a viewer-friendly, yet user-unfriendly interface. And it's based on a TV show that you've probably never heard of.
  • StarTropics: A boy goes on a tropical vacation. Halfway through the game he must solve a mysterious riddle.
  • Steambot Chronicles: Amnesiac kid walks around during the Industrial Revolution. Sometimes he plays harmonica. Pirates and terrorists show up.
  • Street Fighter: Kickboxing champ hosts secret fighting tournament in order to humiliate players around the world.
    • Street Fighter II: Stereotypes from around the world explore their grudges in a secret worldwide tournament hosted by a dictator.
    • Street Fighter Alpha: Stereotypes from around the world trek the globe to explore their grudges and randomly fight other stereotypes, while the dictator plays with dolls.
    • Street Fighter III: Stereotypes from around the world explore their grudges in a secret worldwide tournament hosted by a messianic corporate executive in a banana hammock.
    • Street Fighter IV: Stereotypes from around the world continue their grudges while dealing with Doctor Manhattan. The losers get assimilated.
    • Street Fighter EX: Stereotypes from around the world explore their grudges in a secret worldwide tournament hosted by a dictator...IN 3D!
  • Street Fighter X Tekken: A bunch of colorful stereotypes, including a psycho, a couple vagrants and a dysfunctional family fight over a box in the middle of a snowstorm. Most of whom are dressed as skimpily as possible.
  • Streets of Rage: Criminal organization takes control of a city. You beat the living crap out of them.
  • Stretch Panic: A girl uses her scarf to beat up women with grotesquely huge breasts and save her sisters from their own vanity.
  • Strider: A ninja fights the Soviet Union with his lavender outfit and technicolor sword.
  • Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People: A sarcastic shirtless luchador runs around his hometown, looks under boxes, talks to people, and messes with his neighbors. His favorite victim happens to be a pantsless whitey.
    • Homestar Ruiner: A sarcastic shirtless luchador regrets dressing up as a pantsless whitey and running through an obstacle course in front of people.
    • Strong Badia the Free: A sarcastic shirtless luchador inspires his neighbors (a pantsless whitey included) to start their own countries, then proceeds to conquer them, only to play some Risk against himself later on.
      • Or: After an email tax is retroactively set into law, the kingdom separates into tiny city states, only to form a rebellion.
    • Baddest of the Bands: A sarcastic shirtless luchador enters his own contest (which a pantsless whitey also entered) to fix his game console.
    • Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective: A sarcastic shirtless luchador makes a crappy action movie, co-starring with a pantsless whitey.
      • Or: A cliché-spouting cop with 80s sunglasses, a luchador mask, no shirt, and a penchant for jumping off of rooftops searches the world to look for his kidnapped partner. He finds the partner on the Sun.
    • 8-Bit Is Enough: A sarcastic shirtless luchador must defeat his dragon that came out of his arcade machine with the help of a pantsless whitey.
  • The Suffering: A guy who either did or didn't kill his wife and kids breaks out of a prison being attacked by anthropomorphic personifications of ways to die. Along the way, he frequently hallucinates that he turns into a hideous monster with a sword for an arm.
    • The Suffering: Ties That Bind: The guy from the last game returns to his old neighborhood, and finds the monsters from the last game have followed him home. Also, both his old partner in crime and The Government want a word with him.
  • Suikoden: Relatively unremarkable teenage rebel acquires a numerically significant number of allies to help take down a corrupt, centrist government in a protracted and bloody war fought over one or more magically significant MacGuffins. Just like it went down the previous four times.
    • Suikoden II: The most murderous, Ax Crazy psychopath imaginable gets put in charge of an invasion force, with predictable results.
    • Suikoden III: Longstanding territorial dispute is seen from multiple viewpoints as outside forces take advantage of the conflict to further their own goals.
    • Suikoden IV: Seafaring hero gets Cursed with Awesome/Blessed with Suck powers while a merchant with a rather dead look in his eyes manipulates an empire for expansion gain the aforementioned powers that the hero possesses.
      • Suikoden Tactics: Follow up to the previous entry, elaborates on many plot and character points that were left vague, and if you play your cards right, you can recruit the old main character who has achieved Blessed With Awesome control over his power.
    • Suikoden V: The prince of the Queendom must unite his people against a usurping noble family whose name gives a good indication of the kind of politics they play.
    • Suikoden Tierkreis: Plucky boy tries to prove You CAN Fight Fate by recruiting a diverse bunch of rebels Because Destiny Says So.
  • Summon Night: Swordcraft Story: Interns enslave other races, forge weapons, and battle for supremacy!
  • Supaplex: A Nintendo Hard Boulder Dash clone where you are in a computer and scissors and sparks are out to get you.
  • Super 3D Noah's Ark: A senile old rescue ship captain pelts his charges with fruit while answering Bible trivia.
  • Super Columbine Massacre RPG: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Built entirely with a cheap RPG design program and scored to MIDI files of songs by Nirvana, KMFDM, Marilyn Manson, and others.
    • Alternatively, kill dozens of kids, then go to hell for it.
  • Super Mario Bros: An evil turtle king has turned all the denizens of the world into bricks. The Damsel in Distress can only be saved by two blue-collar workers who do a lot of mushrooms. OR: The hero must eat mushrooms in order to kill other mushrooms in order to save other other mushrooms.
  • Super Monkey Ball: Tiny primates are permanently locked inside plastic globes and careen around collecting bananas.
  • Super Robot Wars: An awful lot of different groups are all working on robots at the same time. The developers make a bunch of Mary Sues to join in the fun. Meanwhile, players play the games rather than actually watch the shows they're based on, despite the fact that just watching the 50 episode shows would probably take less time.
  • Super Smash Bros..: Dolls are brought to life in order to fight each other.
    • Super Smash Bros. Melee: Trophies are brought to life in order to fight each other.
    • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The trophies are brought to life again, only this time there's an actual plot. Much of it involves trophies being brought to life to fight each other.
  • Sushi Cat : You drop a cat and it eats a lot of sushi before it hits the ground.
  • Syndicate: Lead four people from on high to gather a large following, or kill everyone, or both.
    • Alternatively: "Persuadatron". Just "Persuadatron".
  • System Shock: Man hacks a computer in exchange for an operation. Six months later, he goes on a rampage, killing every moving thing he sees.
    • System Shock 2: The computer the first man hacked finds another man, knocks him out, and gives him the same operation.
      • Alternatively: Squishy space zombies and insane computer duke it out on FTL ship. Man becomes insane computer's surprise nuke, beats a Russian collectivist, and rebels.
  • SWAT 4: You lead a SWAT team consisting of often bumbling squadmates, who can (and will) blind you with your own flashbangs.
  • Sweet Home: Five uninvited visitors enter a private home and anger the lady of the house at the moment of their arrival. They also take photos of the valuable paintings in the house without permission and kill a notable amount of the inhabitants with kitchen utensils. In the end, they evict the lady using the corpse of her child, who was killed in an incinerator.
  • Taiko no Tatsujin: Talking drum has two notes.
  • Tales of Phantasia: A hero chosen by fate receives the blessing of his Gods and sets out on a quest to save his world, the hopes of his people carried on his shoulders. You must stop him at all costs.
    • Tales of Destiny: A boy with a talking sword must save the world from evil businessmen.
      • Tales of Destiny 2: Kid Hero tries to avenge the previous hero. The man who betrayed his father comes back to life to help him.
    • Alternatively: Big Guy with a big axe makes a big mess.
    • Tales of Eternia: The sky is falling. The world's only hope is a guy in a really fruity hat. Failing that, a guy in a really fruity shirt. You are the guy in the shirt.
    • Tales of Symphonia: You fight against angels led by a spandex bodysuit-wearing legendary hero and ruin his plans for world peace.
    • Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon: A fanboy and a fangirl alternately break and fix the timeline through cosplay. Extreme cosplay.
    • Tales of the Abyss: A young aristocrat suffers a severe emotional crisis, is betrayed by his most trusted ally, abandoned by his family and country, treated with contempt by his friends, and attempts to kill himself repeatedly.
      • Alternately: A boy and his teacher agree that the best way to solve the world's problems is to Screw Destiny, but end up having an argument about the best method of doing so.
    • Tales of Legendia An Ex-marine punches things to death while searching for his sister on a ship bigger than some continents.
    • Tales of Rebirth: A White-Haired Pretty Boy fights racism and screams his girlfriend's name in a really dramatic fashion.
    • Tales of Innocence: A general becomes a schoolboy, then has an identity crisis. His lover and sword follow suit. Don't ask what happened to his pet dragon.
    • Tales of Vesperia: A hooligan goes on a quest to fix a fountain, but ends up in everyone else's quests. His friend disapproves.
    • Tales of Hearts: A girl's heart breaks, and her friends take her on a journey to put it back together. Later, they save the world from a giant soul-eating flower from space. All this happens by way of Power of Friendship.
    • Tales of the Tempest: Fantastic Racism with werewolves! Considered non-canon... for a series with almost zero continuity.
    • Tales of Graces: A young knight gets in a fight with his best friend. The little girl who follows him around frequently has to save him.
  • Task Maker: An all-powerful leader has you run his errands. If at any point you swear, you instantly die and go to hell.
  • Team Fortress 2: Bring a bat to a gunfight, run very slowly with a gun that's too large for you, die trying to set people on fire, heal the ungrateful masses, stand very still and hope nobody notices you, blow yourself up trying to reach new heights, set bombs in a corner and wait for people to step on them, solve the same puzzle ("use rifle on man") over and over again, or build some buildings.
    • Alternatively, A construction company and a demolition company which are administered by the same person fight over each other's briefcases, land rights, and proper waste disposal procedure, all while the teenager complains about the lack of necessary equipment on his side.
    • Alternative the second: sit around doing nothing while hoping that you are rewarded with a purely cosmetic reward as a sign of your hard work. The developers actively troll their fanbase over this.
    • Alternative the third: Gameplay so refined the focus is hat collecting.
    • Alternative the fourth: Play as one of nine different people killing their cosmetically different counterparts by either: running very fast, shooting lots of rockets, being the ultimate Leeroy Jenkins with a flamethrower, throwing bombs around while drunk, ripping people to shreds with a minigun, building automatic guns that only shoot people not wearing your colour, healing people so you can make them invulnerable and get very frustrated when you die whilst doing this, either sniping people to the point where they foam at the mouth, or stabbing them in the back to the point where they foam at the mouth and blowing up buildings by becoming invisible and wearing a literal Paper-Thin Disguise. All the while surrounded by Ludicrous Gibs. Both teams are run by the same person and owned by the same men who have owned them since the 1800's thanks to literal not-dying machines.
    • Alternative the fifth: A sandbox killing game with no story mode and half the weapons are broken. Requires players to kill anyone who's a different color than they are because they are inferior.
    • Alternative the sixth: A war between a piss-throwing Australian, a smartass who drinks radioactive soda, a cyclops with a grenade gun, a fat sandwich addict who obsesses over his "sasha", a mad German doctor with technology that hasn't even been invented yet, a gender-unknown person who doesn't have the balls to take their mask off, a French pervert, a brainwashed American who thinks a shovel is an effective weapon, a redneck who, again, has technology that hasn't been invented yet, and their hordes of clones.
    • Alternative the seventh: Ethnic stereotypes fight to the death in a cartoonish desert and/or industrial environment. Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how many hats you have.
  • Tekken (entire series): Members of a dysfunctional family violently argue over property.
    • Tekken: A Shotoclone fights in a tournament hosted by his father, a Corrupt Corporate Executive. Shotoclone wins and tosses his dad off a cliff.
    • Tekken 2: Shotoclone's father lives. He returns the favor with interest.
    • Tekken 3: Shotoclone's son asks his grandfather for help. Things don't end very well.
    • Tekken 4: Shotoclone's son distances himself from family and attempts to live in peace. Things don't end very well.
    • Tekken 5: Shotoclone's son meets his long lost ancestor. Things don't end very well.
    • Tekken 6: World War III is born from a fighting tournament by Shotoclone's son. Things don't end very well.
  • Terraria: Destroy the environment so you can kill an old man and steal valuables from his tomb.
  • Tetris: Building supplies drop from the sky, and you must use them to erase any sign of your hard work to build the Kremlin. Failure Is the Only Option.
  • Theme Hospital: Treat ridiculous, made-up illnesses with equally ridiculous, made-up cures for fun and profit.
  • Theme Park: You hire fursuiters. Should you run out of biscuits, they'll all go on strike.
  • Thief: the Dark Project: Among the citizens of an uncaring city, a boy spends most of his time cowering in the dark, hoping that passing authority figures don't see him.
  • Thousand Arms: Son of a blacksmith loses his home and reputation, has to rebuild it by dating pretty girls.
  • Threads of Fate: A runaway, some dolls, treasure hunters, and a doctor fight over a man's estate.
  • Time Hollow: The protagonist draws circles to try to fix the past. He makes it worse.
  • Time Splitters: A guy who looks like Riddick travels through time and shoots aliens dead. Monkeys are involved. Lots and lots of monkeys.
  • Today I Die: A woman becomes suicidally depressed after a bad break-up. She solves her problems using jellyfish, glowing bubbles, and Mad Libs.
  • Toejam and Earl: Rap enthusiasts throw tomatoes at people as they try to fix their ride home.
  • Tokimeki Memorial: Wake up, go to school, exercise, study, and date pretty girls. Maybe one of them will confess her love to you under a tree.
  • Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero: Explore Tokyo through its highways, with an opportunity to cruise down an extremely-straight twenty-kilometer stretch.
  • Tomb Raider I through III: A gifted archaeologist desecrates the ruins of ancient civilizations and kills local wildlife.
    • Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation: The archaeologist wins by not despoiling the cultural artifact, and is rewarded with death.
    • Tomb Raider Chronicles: At the start of the game, the archaeologist is still dead. The first part of the game is told in flashback.
    • Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness: The archaeologist is on the lam for allegedly murdering her teacher.
    • Tomb Raider: Legend: Reboot. A gifted archaeologist chases after a phallic symbol.
  • Tomena Sanner: A Japanese salaryman races the clock and evades numerous obstacles to earn the right to breakdance.
  • Total Overdose: Once Upon A Crime in Mexico.
  • Total War: A Million Is a Statistic: The Series.
  • Touch Detective: A 12 year old tactfully earns her work permit by chasing a paper bag in her sleep.
  • Touhou: A bunch of girls in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink settle disputes with Extreme Dodgeball.
    • Highly Responsive to Prayers: You play literal Dodgeball against whoever destroyed your shrine.
    • Story of Eastern Wonderland: Ghosts partied at your shrine, a boss from the previous game comes back with the future co-protagonist of the game.
    • Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream: A hyperdimensional ship near my shrine? More likely than it sounds!
    • Lotus Land Story: Ditching the recurrent boss, you wake up a psychotic flower-obsessed girl. The whole story ends up hijacked by a maid.
    • Mystic Square: You twart a goddess's plan to transform the Fantasy Kitchen Sink into a demon tourist trap.
    • Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: Vampire decides she wants to take her nightly walks whenever she wants. And then her sister leaves the basement.
    • Perfect Cherry Blossom: Groundhog Day (the holiday, not the trope or film) takes Refuge in Audacity. The protagonists are not amused.
    • Immaterial and Missing Power: A very short, very drunk demon uses her density manipulation powers to make the inhabitants of said Hidden Elf Village party hard.
    • Imperishable Night: Two fugitives shelter a draft dodger. This pisses off everyone.
    • Phantasmagoria of Flower View: Death slacks off. Many flowers bloom. A certain fairy decides to notify everyone that it's Spring. Repeatedly. With bullets. A familiar youkai who seemingly disappeared with a recurring boss returns after sleeping in for several years, and a paparazzi girl takes over as 'The Recurring Boss'.
    • Shoot The Bullet: Nearly everyone in the series is defeated by the paparazzi.
    • Mountain of Faith: A goddess needs prayer badly. To survive, she must go in the Fantasy Kitchen Sink with her personal priestess to leach the main character's Clap Your Hands If You Believe power.
    • Scarlet Weather Rhapsody: The weather goes out of control. The main character's shrine gets wrecked. Twice.
    • Subterranean Animism: The goddesses from the tenth game needs electricity badly. She decides to give a bird from Hell nuclear powers to start an Industrial Revolution. The bird decides to incinerate the Fantasy Kitchen Sink instead.
    • Undefined Fantastic Object: The mains + the priestess of the tenth game are off to find a treasure ship. They end up fighting Magical Gandhi instead. Also, UFOs.
    • Hisoutensoku: The recurring priestess and the two main Ensemble Darkhorses sees a giant... something. They then decide to beat the crap out of each other. The nuclear bird and a frog also joins the fray. Who ordered catfish?
    • Double Spoiler: The rest of everyone in the series is defeated by the same paparazzi. Then, a blogger is added.
    • Fairy Wars: One of the Ensemble Darkhorses gets her home destroyed by fairies. She vows revenge. Also, one of the mains shows up with flashlights.
    • Ten Desires: Conspicuously colored divine spirits appear out of nowhere. To fix that, the mains, the priestess and the samurai gardener from the seventh game have to beat the tar out of angry, if dimwitted taoists who are threatening the newly-built temple as well as heralding the ressurection of a DJ.
  • Tower Madness: Evil aliens are going to steal your sheep and turn them into a scarf for their Emperor! You must defend them!
  • Trace Memory: White-Haired Pretty Girl moves to a long-abandoned island and attempts to solve a mystery while playing with her Nintendo DS.
  • Track Mania: Madman builds hellish racetracks. It may be you.
  • Traffic Department 2192: Well, the title alone belies the nature of this top-down mid 90s shareware sci-fi vehicle shooter, but let's give you the skinny: Bitchy woman uses her car to stop gangs named after scavenger birds.
  • Transformers: War for Cybertron: An unemployed librarian and his friends fight a downsized blue-collar worker and his friends.
  • Transformice: A multiplayer version of Lemmings.
  • Trauma Center: Play doctor. No, not in a sexy sort of way.
    • Trauma Team: Play as six different doctors, learn the destructive power of butterflies.
  • Tribes: In an online game where you fly around like a fairy, a major exploit to move really fast is found in the first week. Sequels would build this feature right into the game.
  • Turok: An Indian goes to Post-Apocalyptic alternate earth where "Time Has No Meaning" to save children from a cyborg viking's armies of robot lizards and the Thuggees from Temple Of Doom with a crystal-powered Martian death-ray that SKULL-FUCKS people to death.
    • Or: Native American kills dinosaurs with guns. Aliens are involved.
  • Tux Racer: An adorable penguin races down customizeable slopes of ice, snow, and rock, often at breakneck speeds.
  • Twinkle Star Sprites: Adorable characters blow each other to smithereens in order to find a redneck star who grants wishes.
  • Twisted Metal: Sadistic millionaire grants a single wish to the person who can survive an all-out war with people in cars that shoot missiles, ice beams and tactical nukes.
  • Ty the Tasmanian Tiger: Anthropomorphic marsupial goes on quest to save parents, find rest of species, and defeat an evil bird by using a pair of boomerangs, and collecting anything that isn't nailed down, including jewels, geodes, small furry animals, parts of a machine, and more boomerangs. Also has an interesting relationship with a dingo, and occasionally rides on a boar.
  • Ugh!: A caveman earns money by flying other cavemen in his helicopter.
  • Ultima: The locals have unrealistic expectations about their hero. Said hero comes up with increasingly creative ways to assassinate their leader in protest.
    • Ultima IV: If you don't live by a strict code of honor, you lose.
    • Ultima VII: Hero fights the evil forces of Scientology and Electronic Arts.
  • Umihara Kawase: A girl swings across an absurd dream world with her fishing rod. Said rod is more flexible than Bionic Commando.
  • Uncharted Drakes Fortune: Lanky guy with a penchant for guns, hand-to-hand combat and one-liners searches for El Dorado with his Heterosexual Life Partner and April O'Neill. They are beaten to it by Simon Templeman.
    • Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: Your character and Morrigan team up to stop Alistair and his new boss from discovering immortality.
      • Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: An adventurer and his 60 year old friend stops Helen Mirren from acquiring a hallucinogenic brass vessel in the middle of the desert.
  • Uninvited: Your poor driving skills lead you to stop and ask for help at the first house you find.
  • Uniracers: Sentient one-wheeled vehicles compete in race and stunt competitions.
  • Unreal: You are stranded on a planet where the invading reptiles are out to kill you and the natives.
  • An Untitled Story: An egg travels throughout the world to hatch and fight ghosts.
  • Urban Dead: Thousands of warriors face off in a never-ending battle and die, only to get up and do it again the next day. They gather at shopping malls to do so. Basically Valhalla with less mead.
  • Urban Rivals: Massive gang war among diverse groups, such as pirates, enviromentalists, cops, the undead, the mafia, aliens, and the military. Drug use is rampant and aids in the fighting.
  • Vacant Sky: An ordinary high school girl gets murdered and spends a lot of time complaining about it.
  • Vagrant Story: A royal peacekeeper is sent into a haunted town to rescue the son of the duke of a kingdom. A creepy pale-skinned guy dressed in chain mail taunts him every step of the way.
  • Valkyria Chronicles: It's World War Two and you're Poland.
    • Alternatively: It's WWII with women of mass destruction. The Fantastic Racism is due to the fact that you have the wrong hair color. And yes, you are Poland.
      • Alternative to the alternative: Battlefield 1942: JRPG Edition.
  • Valkyrie Profile: A lot of people join the heroine's party and die. But not in that order.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines: The fate of a Dark World version of LA depends on not opening a Mesopotamian sarcophagus, while you face off against incredibly difficult and terrifying monsters.
    • Alternatively, a disastrous one-night-stand forces a recent hire to prove himself/herself truly worthy of employment.
  • A Vampyre Story: An opera singer tries to get away from her clingy boyfriend with the help of a sarcastic bat.
  • Vectorman: A garbage-hauling robot has to stop a sentient nuclear weapon from taking over the world, using only his shooting hands and burning feet. He encounters fat versions of himself, killer light bulbs, and pesky mosquitoes.
    • Vectorman 2: A garbage-hauling robot has to stop a bunch of over-mutated bugs and their big-brained queen from taking over the world.
  • Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun: Spend a hundred years providing people with coal and opium.
  • Viewtiful Joe: Movie fanboy obsesses over movies, pretends to be his hero.
    • Viewtiful Joe 2: Said fanboy teams up with his girlfriend to punch his father in the face.
  • Virtua Fighter: Fighters from around the world challenge each other for the rights to battle a corporation's metallic Super Soldier.
  • Viva Pinata: You are put in charge of a breeding ranch for party favors.
  • Volley Fire: Two ships fight across mini asteroid fields containing mirrors. This was made by an animation company.
  • VVVVVV: Captain of a wrecked ship rescues crewmates by screwing with gravity.
    • Alternatively: A blue man who can't jump (and looks a lot like Sackboy) attempts to save some other colored people with strange names. SPIKES. SPIKES EVERYWHERE.
  • Wacky Wheels: Mario Kart WITH FUNNY[IER] ANIMALS!
  • Wandering Hamster: Hamster with mallet, a water mage, and a dancing canine end a war in the first chapter, conquer the invader's castle in the second chapter, and get eaten in the third. Currently in Development Hell.
  • Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures: A clueless British inventor and his dog do stuff.
    • Fright of the Bumblebees: A clueless British inventor and his dog try to improve their latest business venture, which leads to them fighting giant bees.
    • The Last Resort: A clueless British inventor and his dog run a seaside resort out of their basement.
    • Muzzled!: A clueless British inventor and his dog invent fish-flavored ice cream and sabotage a fun fair.
    • The Bogey Man: A clueless British inventor and his dog join a golf club in order to get the inventor out of an unwanted engagement.
  • War of the Monsters: A fuel crisis causes immeasurable havoc.
  • Warcraft: Immigration leads to a race war. The immigrants win.
    • WarCraft II: The Tides of Darkness: The race war expands. Farms make better barricades than guard towers. The natives win. Immigration is temporarily suspended.
      • WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal: Immigration is possible again, but not for long.
    • WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos: War criminals and their descendants rediscover their heritage, and start immigrating again, emigrating from the last place they immigrated to. They are the good guys this time. The racial leaders don't stay dead anymore.
    • World of Warcraft: Everyone is an immigrant and spends their time forcefully displacing the natives. The local government is powerless to stop it since the immigrants will just come back in greater numbers.
      • World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade: The immigrants realize they'll have better opportunities in another country when they discover a hole in border security. A massive exodus soon follows. Displaced aristocrats and marooned space aliens decide they want in on that action.
      • World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: The immigrants realize they have yet to colonize the Arctic and surrounding areas. They seek to rectify the situation. Meanwhile, a group of natives become disgusted with anti-foreigner sentiment and decide to help the immigrants.
      • World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: The natives and immigrants resume their war. A senior official, formerly in exile because of his skin color, decides to return home. This causes property values to plummet. Furries and insane corporate executives join the grassroots campaign to kick him out of the country.
      • World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: The immigrants discover the Far East and, ignoring the protests of the natives, proceed to fight over colonization rights. Almost all of the immigrants decide to learn new things from bears.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: A bunch of red-armoured Super Soldiers land on a planet to help the local Redshirt Army fight off an invasion of Different Orcs. A Church Militant shows up, looking for an invasion of The Legions of Hell. It's also licensed.
  • Wario Land: Fat man does a Heel Face Turn, travels through lands named after food, blows up Pirate's gothic tower, and gives his nemesis a priceless object. And there's a Genie in a Bottle involved, who also does a Heel Face Turn and gives a castle...if you give him enough money.
    • Wario Land 2: After being robbed by a Pirate, fat man sets out to kick her ass.
    • Wario Land 3: Fat man gets sucked inside a music box. There he finds a being who tells him to find a bunch of music boxes, bribing him with the treasure. He then proceeds to desecrate an entire community, kills the locals, only to discover that he was working for an evil clown
    • Wario Land 4: Fat man desecrates ancient ruins for money. A cat turns out to be a princess. An insane "diva" tries to kill them both. And there's Mr. Game & Watch involved.
    • Wario World: Fat man gets his castle destroyed out of greed. Goes through a lot of crap to get a treasure, only to discover that it is an evil sentient jewel.
    • Wario Land: Shake It!: Fat man helps the Pirate mentioned above shake the crap out of everything so he can beat up different pirate.
  • Warriors Orochi: Giant snake man is revived by fox-girl and merges Ancient China with Warring States period Japan to kick their collective butts. Of course, the ones to stop him are what remains of the armies of both periods.
    • Warriors Orochi 2: Same giant snake man has to be revived by his old and new lackeys. No one is able to stop them but they do get to beat the tar out of his powered up form.
      • Warriors Orochi 2, Orochi's story mode: We actually get to see the giant snake man's rampage. He also kicks a few gods' asses as well.
    • Warriors Orochi 3: Giant snake man is replaced by an actual giant snake. Everybody dies besides the Justice Freak Horseman, the lazy Ruler and an also lazy Strategist, who are then sent back by the Moon Princess to save everyone.
  • Wax Works: Go inside the titular sculptures to get killed horribly.
  • Wet: Game-ified exploitation movie.
  • Wetrix: You create pools of water.
  • Where's My Water?: An alligator takes a bath.
    • Cranky's Story: An alligator hates eating vegetables.
  • The white chamber: Regretting your actions gives you a better ending.
  • White Knight Chronicles: A boy finds magic armor that lets him transform into a White Knight to fight an Evil Empire who has its own Dark Knight counterpart. You tag along, but only for the sake of going on your own completely unrelated adventures.
  • Wii Fit: You find yourself in a world where working out is Serious Business. Your Arch Enemy is metabolic syndrome. Your sidekicks are a piggy bank, a talking scale, and a fitness trainer who may or may not be an android. During the course of your adventure, you will avoid panda heads, be turned into a pool ball, and attempt to meditate while an insane sensei screams at you if you don't sit still. It's not a Widget Series.
    • Wii Fit Plus: Pursue further physical fitness by leading a marching band, flying in a chicken costume, and/or chasing robot moles on a Segway.
  • Wii Sports: Play simplified versions of baseball, golf, bowling, boxing, and tennis by swinging the controller around.
    • Wii Sports Resort: Play simplified versions of swordplay, wakeboarding, Frisbee, archery, basketball, table tennis, power cruising, canoeing, cycling, and air sports by swinging the controller around more precisely. The world is more developed and cohesive, and golf and bowling make a return, too.
  • Wild ARMs 3: Amnesiac environmentalists fight against the users of a demonically-possessed science wiki.
  • Windom XP: Humongous Mecha that are the "incarnations" of Windows OSes blow each other up. Can be a ridiculous Massive Multiplayer Crossover with the plethora of sound-only user add-ons.
  • Wing Commander: Mark Hamill flies a fighter in the Pacific theater of World War II IN SPACE with 7-foot-tall alien furries standing in for the Japanese. There are a lot of cutscenes.
  • Wipeout: You pull the finger to gravity in rocket ships with missiles.
  • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: Assassins of Kings: You're an elf who was falsely accused of killing a sovereign. You prove your innocence by killing the responsibles while being given the chance to bang girls.
  • Within a Deep Forest: A ball rebels against its creator.
  • Wolfenstein 3D: You have a knife. They are wearing chaingun-equipped Powered Armor. Good luck!
  • The World Ends With You: For dead people, fashion is incredibly Serious Business. They overcome difficulties and learn to love. And kill people with Myspace Flare.
    • Alternatively: Dead people kill things and eat food in order to dress the most macho of them in the girliest clothing ever.
    • Alternatively: Emo dead kid plays LARPing game show in order to come back to life.
  • World Heroes: Historical figures duke it out against each other, and then a shapeshifting alien.
  • World in Conflict: Uh oh, the Cold War didn't end and the Soviets invade. Already sounds propagandic...
  • World of Goo: Make bridges and towers with gooey balls.
  • Worms: Lacking opposable thumbs, invertebrates use heavy artillery to kill each other instead.
  • X-COM: Aliens invade Earth. The only way to defeat them is to send waves of disposable troops at them, capture their equipment, and execute a large, helpless brain on another planet.
    • X-COM: Terror From the Deep: Aliens invade from twenty thousand leagues under the sea. The only way to defeat them is to throw waves of disposable troops in diving suits at them, steal their equipment, and execute another helpless brain.
      • Alternatively: If you thought the aliens were unfair in the first game, wait until you get a load of this.
    • X-COM: Apocalypse: Aliens invade a very large city and try to take over its leaders. The only way to defeat them is to throw waves of disposable troops in absurd-looking suits of armor at them, steal their equipment, and blow up helpless buildings in an alternate dimension.
  • Xenogears: You are simultaneously the two-most powerful beings on the planet and the biggest whiner in the galaxy.
    • Alternatively, Adam's metaphysical soul reincarnates into a schizophrenic teenager. He fights God with kung-fu.
    • Xenosaga: You watch the prequel movie. Occasionally, there are interactive parts.
      • Xenosaga Episode I: A hot scientist builds a hot robot, Jesus rides a spaceship, and a Psychopathic Manchild severs his body parts to frighten a little girl.
      • Xenosaga Episode II: A little girl's mind becomes an interactive playground, The Pope tries out his new Humongous Mecha, and a psychotic mass murderer is killed by his brother and ascends to Heaven.
      • Xenosaga Episode III: The heroes decide to destroy the universe. This is a good thing.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles: A White-Haired Pretty Boy saves the world from giant robots using a red plastic lightsaber. The world he's saving also happens to be a giant robot.
  • X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse: Non-humans battle Egyptian man.
  • X-Men vs. Street Fighter: Non-humans battle martial artists in a tag team match.
    • Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter: Non-humans, humans with skill, humans with super powers, a cyborg, a demon and an obscure octopus creature battle martial artists and a creepy fanboy in a tag team match.
    • Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of the Superheroes: Non-humans, humans with skill, humans with super powers and a human with power armor battle martial artists, a monster, robots, a mech pilot, an assassin, and another human with power armor in a tag team match. There is occasional outside interference.
    • Marvel vs. Capcom 2: The same characters from one side of all the previous games plus more non-humans, another human with power armor, a non-human-hunting robot, and a space alien battle the same characters from the other side of all the previous games plus more martial artists, more monsters, a monster-hunting bounty hunter, more robots, a pirate, a fat walking cactus, a transforming monkey girl, a human with skills and guns and zombies, and a futuristic swordsman in a 3-on-3 tag team match.
    • Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Super powered humans, human mercenaries, a tentacle alien, demons, a Norse god, a wolf goddess, a giant head, and a couple of robots team up to stop a platinum blonde Neo and a man in lightning-shooting armor that plan to rule the world and accidentally wake up a giant Planet Eater. They still fight in 3-on-3 tag team matches.
  • Star Wars: X-Wing: Slaughter thousands upon thousands of relatively unarmored people just doin' their jobs in your quest to overthrow a perfectly legal government. You Bastard.
  • Yosumin!: You force smiling shapes to kill themselves in order to repair a stained-glass window.
  • You Have to Burn The Rope: An egg creature is given direct instructions by the game to progress. The game finishes.
  • The You Testament: Jesus teaches you the Force. You can thank him by kicking him in the jimmies.
  • Yume Nikki: A girl travels through her own dreams to collect goodies. Said dreams are completely and totally disturbing.
  • Zack and Wiki Quest For Barbaros Treasure: A ten-year old chocoholic pirate and a flying monkey turn their foes into tools in their quest to reassemble a dead guy made out of jewelry.
    • (Alternatively): A kid shakes his best friend to solve puzzles.
  • Zeno Clash: Travel through a fascinating world, meet interesting characters, and smash their faces in with your bare fists. Also, the voice acting is unique.
  • Zero Wing: As the good side's last remaining soldier, you save the universe from certain destruction. All that's left of your epic journey is a tired meme.
  • Z.H.P.: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman: You are recruited to stand in for a guy who got killed on his way to the longest Final Boss battle in the history of mankind.
  • zOMG!: A guy has daddy issues, so you have to use jewelry to kill his pets.
  • Zone of the Enders: A boy rides inside of a Visual Pun.
    • Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner: An ex-soldier rides inside of a Visual Pun that is acting as a replacement for his heart.
  • Zork: You explore a dungeon with a total of about five enemies. The evil parser remains undefeated.
  • Zuma: Shoot marbles to appease the Aztec Frog God. Requirements: Pot.
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