Top 10 worst ways to die in video games

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Whenever video games are brought into a negative light by the media it tends to be because of their violent content. Of course this isn’t always the case as there are just as many games out there that are clean and innocent but that’s not what this list is about.

In this top 10 we have a look at the top 10 worst ways to die in video games, the sort of deaths that have you wondering just what the developers where drinking when they choose to include it. Not only will I be listed them as I will also be looking at them in a real world light too, you know as if this list wasn’t nightmare fuel enough.

If you’re not a fan of gore or just don’t like the idea of killing your fellow-man/women in unique and violent ways, this top 10 may not be for you. For everyone else remember that this top 10 is based on my own opinions and only features games I’ve played.

Oh and before I forget at number 11 we have BOOM HEADSHOT (every shooter ever) and now that I have that out-of-the-way, let’s get started.

10: Set on fire by a Taser (Urban Chaos Riot Response, Syphon Filter series)Starting this list at number 10 we have police brutality defined with setting people on fire with a Taser.

In the real world a Taser is a non-lethal weapon that’s usually used as a method of subduing violent people. Police issue Tasers tends to pack a shock of around 50,000 volts though you can illegally mind you get lethal Tasers that have 1 million volts.

While there have been some cases of Tasers setting people on fire in the States but these tend to involve petrol or in one case a cigarette lighter. The amount of electricity that would be required to set clothes on fire would be insane and the chances of the person surviving long enough for the fire to start is slim.

Someone however forgot to tell the games industry about these rare cases because here Tasers can be weapons of death and just as lethal as the guns their supposed to replace as well as somehow capable of setting people of fire.

The worst offender of this though has to be T-Zero from Urban Chaos Riot Response because not only are their Tasers the handle-held variety but who the hell would arm a Riot Team, even a riot team armed like an army with these types of Tasers. The amount of bad publicity you’d get would be insane and T-Zero already have enough bad publicity as it is.

9: Eaten by Rats (Dishonoured)

In Dishonoured players are encouraged to play through the game the way they want to. This means that you could stealth your way through the game and only engage the guards in the event that your seen or you could yell screw this and slaughter everyone.

During the game the city of Dunwall is being ravaged by the Rat Plague, a deadly plague that wiped out half of the city’s population. The reason I bring up the plague is because in Dishonored Corvo can learn a spell called Ravenous Horde. This spell when fully leveled (through the means of runes) lets you summon a hordes of rats that will devour anyone who gets in your way.

This isn’t as unrealistic as you might think since rats are strong enough to rip through flesh and in the past were used in torture but I’m going to leave it at that.

Now just imagine for a second that you’re a guard in Dunwall, your on patrol when all of a sudden a black pool appears around your feet. Before you can react or call for help however dozens of rats that resemble those damn plague rats hop out of the pool and start eating away at you faster than anything you’ve ever seen.

Think about that for a second, you’ve just been jumped by an army of rats and in a matter of seconds they’ve reduced you to nothing. Hell there isn’t even a skeleton left over to bury by the end. What a clean and delicious (for the rats of course, you died in agony) end to your life and here it is at number 9.

8: ‘Kissing’ the chainsaw bayonet (Gears of War series)

You really have to wonder what was going through the mind of the army in the Gears of War universe when they though that a chainsaw would make for the perfect bayonet. Maybe they we’re watching a bunch of old horror movies because the humble chainsaw have been a favoured method of murder in fiction for years now.

Fortunately we won’t see chainsaw bayonets any time soon due in part to the weight of the engine for the chainsaw alone would add to the gun. Also along with the weight I’m sure the dry blood would cause the guns to jam especially considering the amount of blood everybody in Gears of War seems to have.

Thankfully though games don’t have to worry about pesky things like realism so we get chainsaw bayonets and one of the most violent chainsaw deaths in gaming which also so happens to be one of the most satisfying ways of killing someone in an online multiplayer match.

Like you’d imagine using the chainsaw reduces whoever you catch into a pile of gory body parts but if you think the front assault is bad, try getting behind someone and watch the blood fly in one of the nastiest uses for a chainsaw in gaming.

Now I know what your think, why is this at number 8 when its so vicious etc. Well like the Resident Evil 4 chainsaw it loses some of its appeal after a while. Also compared to some of the later entries this feels a little normal, as disturbing as that sounds.

7: Getting fed leg first to a wood chipper (The Punisher)

Moving to number 7 we have the wood chipper. Usually used as a quick way to get rid of large quantities of wood, the wood chipper is responsible for 12 deaths since 2010 in America (according to OSHA figures).

The thing about these deaths are that they tend to be accidents caused by the persons clothes getting caught in the machinery or bits of wood hitting people in the head.

There not however caused by a nut in a black trench-coat shoving people into them leg first like in the 2005 action game, The Punisher.

As we all know wood chippers shred wood down to sawdust by means of a series of knives tied to a pulley which is connected to an engine which controls its speed.

Now imagine that these things can do to the human body, all while the last thing you’ll ever see is the permanently angry face of the Punisher as he shoves you in leg first so you feel as much pain as possible, after he forced you to tell you whatever he wanted of course.

6: Von Twirlenkiller’s death (MadWorld)

When you think violence in video games, usually the Nintendo Wii isn’t the first console that comes to mind. Someone forgot to tell Platinum games however and in 2009 they released MadWorld to the unsuspecting market.

MadWorld has a reputation of being the most violent game on the Nintendo Wii and it definitely earned this and I like to believe  Von Twirlenkiller’s death helped a lot in that.

Von Twirlenkiller is the third boss in the game and in typical Platinum games insanity has both of his arms replaced with wind turbines and now is probably a good time to mention that these turbines are strong enough to create tornado’s strong enough to send people and items flying.

For the tornado’s generated from Von Twirlenkillers arms to be strong enough to lift vehicles like trucks of the ground they would need to be of the F3 variety which is where they would be strong enough to overturn trains. This means there strong enough to generate wind speeds of up to 206 mph.

In a case of giving someone a taste of their own medicine, Jack feeds Von Twirlenkiller to his own turbines and it’s not exactly a quick death either, not to mention the mess they’d have to clean up afterwards if Deathwatch had a janitorial team that is.

5: Nuked to perfection (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare)

Before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out shooters were a different beast. They hang around too much with the World War 2 crowd and gamers were starting to get bored with shooting Nazi’s. Along with that nearly every player controlled character always lived to the end of each game making them some sort of invincible god.

Then came the nuke scene in Modern Warfare 1 which changed shooters forever and started that annoying thread of killing someone in your shooters story to give it more of an impact.

In this mission named Shock and Awe you played as Sgt. Paul Jackson and after learning about the nuke and saving a pilot, your left flying away from the scene thinking another job well done when the before mentioned nuke detonates.

The insuring shock wave knocks your helicopter out of the sky and your sent flying around the helicopter. Somehow surviving this and left to crawl around a radiative crater, you the player at the time still though you were going to survive, after all games don’t kill player controlled characters.

Alas this didn’t happen and Sgt. Jackson died a painful death away from home. No matter what way you look at this death, there’s no way it could have been pleasant. The crash would have broken multiple bones and possibly fractured more and the impact would have caused internal bleeding. On the plus side he did die before the radiation poisoning really set in.

Due to how close he was to the blast zone, if he had been perfectly fine he would have been screwed regardless because the closer to the radiation zone you are the quickly the  symptoms for radiation poisoning develop. These symptoms include but aren’t limited to dizziness, fatigue, hair loss, fever and poor wound healing and those symptoms by the way are the cleanest ones.

4: Helios loses his head (God of War 3)

Part of what makes God of War so popular is the over the top ways Kratos kills whatever stands in his path but sometimes like in the case of the next entry the simplest kills are the best.

In God of War Helios is the God of the Sun yet by the time you finally meet him face to face in God of War 3 he offers no real resistance. Okay so Kratos shot his chariot into a Titan which then proceeds to toss him into a city but you’d think the God of the Sun would be you know, strong.

Instead all you do is kill his guards with a Cyclops and follow by tearing his head off to use as a lamp. To put this into context for humans if Kratos was to do that to you or me he would need around 540 newtons or around 55kg of force. Long story short it’s impossible for humans to do it naturally.

Back to the violence part of what makes this kill work so well is that Helios head doesn’t just come off. Kratos has to work for it and that makes it so much more violent. It’s the sort of thing that will have the person watching you play rubbing their neck.

 3: Assecution (The Darkness 2)

So far all the deaths on this list have been of the violent sort. Now don’t get me wrong having your spine pulled out of your backside by a tentacle demon is violent but it’s also humiliating hence why it lands here at number 3.

The Assecution stands out from all of the other executions from The Darkness 2 partly because of just how memorable it is. I means it’s not every day you see this sort of stuff and that’s part of why it’s on this list. The other reason its on the list is because this death is horrifying yet you can’t keep your eye’s off it.

There are some ways of killing enemies in video games that are easy to explain why you like them, then there’s the Assecution but instead of talking about it here’s a video clip showing it instead.

2: Failed eye surgery (Dead Space 2)

If you were to ask your average gamer what they know about the Dead Space series chances are they would respond with either a) its Resident Evil in space or b) it’s that series with that eye poking machine.

In Chapter 13 of Dead Space 2 Isaac has to enter the eye poking machine or the NanoTech Diagnostic Machine to learn of a way to destroy the Site 12 Marker. Yes it sounds insane but what do you expect from a series where every type of enemy has is own unique method of tearing Issac apart.

To survive the machine you need to line up the laser with Isaac’s eye and lower the needle slowly so it will successfully penetrate his eye to get the information. This however is made difficult because Isaac is naturally panicking during this and move his eye around very erratically.

If Isaac panics too much or you miss with the laser the machine will malfunction and the needle will shoot downwards and impale his eye. What makes this worse is Isaac doesn’t die straight away. He screams while the machine is jammed in his eye but while the machine tries to work its way out , it instead forces itself into his brain finally killing him.

While this death is famous for how brutal it is, I feel that there is one better. People who have been paying attention to what games are on this list may have noticed that there is one series that hasn’t shown up yet. One series that has been mutilating people since its first game back in 1992.

1: Make a Wish (Mortal Kombat 9)

It only makes sense that a series that helped start the ESRB rating would make the number 1 spot but with so many fatalities to choose from it would have been harder if MK9 didn’t introduce us to Noob Saibot’s Make a Wish.

Remember when at number 3 I said that the Assecution is the sort of move that you can’t help watching, well Make a Wish is the reverse. Seriously every-time me or a friend used this move in MK9 one of us always turned away.

Part of what makes this move so brutal and why it’s on this list is because somehow their still screaming till the very end. You’d be screaming too though if your opponent summoned a clone of himself and then decided to replicate the way people pull a turkey bone on Thanksgiving with your body.

In order to pull the body completely apart they have break through your pelvis, break every bone in your rib cage and get through your skull. Amazingly despite all this struggle they somehow manage to split your body perfectly in two every time. I’d call that impressive if it wasn’t so morbid.

So that’s my list of the Top 10 worst ways to die in video games and aren’t you happy that most of this can’t happen in real life. However like I mentioned above this list is just my opinions so why not share you’re in the comment section below.