Seems like the trend games are going in is "disney, family friendly, no controversy, safe for China."

You might want to play Red Faction Guerilla or Just Cause 2/3, though the former does take a while to open up your choices of destruction.

Hmm, maybe a "Just Cause edition" would be a fun game. Or just "you found the keys to the depot forklift". The physics simulation would make your computer scream

Lots of call outs to Postal 2, but not a lot of talk about the GTA series? Weird. Postal 2 was "3 edgy 4 U" and all, there were definitely some hilarious and violent things you can do. I remember pissing in somebody's mouth and they started throwing up, so I hit their head off with a shovel, and the vomit continued to shoot out of their neck into the sky. But once you get past the shock value the game is pretty bland. I played the hell out of the demo back in the day, and eventually got my hands on a copy and I remember thinking "oh, it's just the same thing but with more levels"...

Anyway. The GTA series are actually good games. Like the controls, physics, story, comedy, etc etc... But also, you can go into a boutique clothing store in a affluent part of the city and murder all of the patrons and then when the cops show up - shoot rockets at their cars. Then pull somebody out of a high end vehicle and beat the shit out of them with a baseball bat and escape a high speed car chase. You can even play it in VR. Never done it myself but I remember seeing videos of beating people with blunt objects while they attempted to put their arms up in defense but succumbed to the blows and went unresponsive on the ground and though "holy fucking shit, that was really violent".

Anyway... That also lost its shock value pretty fast, but at least the games remained fun when playing the objective.

I don't want to take my stress out on randos, I want to take it out on the ones responsible for my stress

I see the Postal series has gotten some mentions, but where is my Carmageddon Crew?

Ha ha, it's funny reading this immediately after a 4 hour long session of Supermarket Together. Chatting with friends, slacking off, causing mischief (like renaming the store, moving shelves), and being a menace in general - to robbers, innocent customers, employees, or other players.

There's a whole genre of games you're describing. Single and coop. Many are free to play.

Untitled Goose Game?

given the history of video games, and video game censorship, i know this has a low likelihood of coming to fruition. however, i would adore a game where i massacre a bunch of capitalists like ultrakill

Because Postal already exists.
And postal 2, 3, and 4

For the record, the science shows that Destruction Therapy is not effective at actually managing anger, and may actually cause more harm long term, as you're normalizing that behavior in your brain.

But as for why we don't see more games along those lines, I don't know. It does seem like a genre that would sell well right now. I remember there was a series of desktop games when I was a kid called Stress Reducer that would give you a set of animated weapons to "destroy" your windows desktop (an image of it).

Check out the Youtube channel Let's Game It Out. Josh is very creative in finding ways to torment the NPCs of various simulator and tycoon games.

I think we all just destress differently & there's some games where you can make a mess or cause chaos, but some folks like a challenge to overcome like souls games finally beating a boss, climb a leaderboard, get x rank elo, etc. Others build a farm or speedrun shooting demons or just keep replaying the same nostalgic games.

Warning : tasteless comment right here.

I found that one of the bars you go to in cyberpunk on a side mission, the police won't enter no matter how wanted you are. It's crowded, too. And it feels pretty therapeutic to do a mass shooting in there. Start with a grenade onto the dancefloor then pick people off as they panic and flee.

IRL I'm totally non-violent, but there's something about doing this that takes the edge off my stress. I've returned to that save point several times.

So you want a game where you can go… postal?

Also, I don’t remember asking for armchair psychologists to come here and start dropping unasked thoughts about how to best relieve stress. Check those at the door.

oshi-- you guys its the king of fediverse

I feel like this is what people do with the multiplayer games where they are allowed to be mean to each other

I saw an ad a few days ago for a game called Roadside Research.

It's a gas station management sim where you play as an alien disguised as a human, running a gas station and "researching" humanity.

It looks pretty fun.

Untitled Goose Game is what you are looking for :)

If you want to shoot Nazis and klan members there are Wolfenstein games.

I bought just for some cathartic relief. Unfortunately the first person camera jostled around too much and gave me too much motion sickness.

Damn. Really needed that.

https://youtu.be/JWfD4geJm2Q

Here is a cool video from a small time creator about why we don't get Nazi-killing games anymore.

Say No! More

I'm playing Postal 2, I think this is kind of what you're looking for lol

My feeling, that I've learned after many years of doing it wrong, is that 'taking out' your stress with violent or aggressive acts, even virtual ones, isn't a healthy way to deal with it. It reinforces it rather than releasing it. Calming exercises, deep breathing and letting stress go is a much more useful way to deal with it.

In that vein, I recommend Tiny Glade for stress relief. Or any so called 'cosy' game.