So, if you fancy trying out the Jean-Luc Picard look, settle down with a few of these Switch hair-tearers…
This co-op cooker starts out easy enough, but at a certain point the number of culinary tasks coupled with the obstacles of the increasingly silly kitchens, plus the ever-present timer, becomes a relationship test to rival the stress of organising a wedding or moving house. Divorce is famously third on that list of all-time stress inducers, so just be careful that Overcooked doesn’t send you off the deep end.
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In many ways, Fortnite can be quite relaxing. In a map this big, it’s entirely possible to drop onto the island and spend 10 minutes pottering about, keeping yourself to yourself while everyone else shoots one another into sparkly loot blasts.
But when you’re down to the last ten, eight, five survivors and that ring is closing in, your pulse will quicken and your hands are liable to get all sweaty, making the simplest of manoeuvres tricky to execute if you get down to the last two and are genuinely anxious to claim your Victory Royale.
You’d think that being stuck within the ruins of a space station with a xenomorph stalking the corridors would be stressful enough, but Alien: Isolation also houses a bunch of creepy androids that aren’t too pleased about your presence. It’s not just the pure horror that makes it so stressful, it’s the constancy of the dread that the alien could be lurking around any corner (or in any vent). Keep that motion tracker handy.
Speaking of dread…
While the E.M.M.I.s don’t have acid for blood, they do have pointy, RoboCop-style barbs that shoot out of their faces and impale Samus should they find and overpower you. They also clamber around on all fours like General Grievous and emit a disconcerting chirp while they’re scanning for you. Not the most relaxing way to tour a creepy planetary facility filled with otherwise facile fodder for your arm cannon.
Tetris 99 is cutthroat. Trying to keep track of the various tiny wells can be challenge enough, as is strategising and targeting the ones you want to whittle away on your journey to collect a chicken dinner in this battle royale. But on top of that, you need to play Tetris — and well! With the additional time pressure of other people, as well as the ever-falling blocks, you best stick to Tetris Effect if, like some members of Team Nintendo Life, you love Tetris but have always been a bit rubbish at it. This one will raise your blood pressure, tempt you back for ‘just one more’, and do the same ad infinitum.
Forgive us for including a ghastly Cloud Version on the list, but it felt wrong to exclude Mr. X given that he’s essentially video gaming’s poster boy for stress. Honestly, as much as we like the game, just knowing that he’s in there and constantly lurking somewhere is enough to discourage us from blasting through it again. This dude makes the constant, shambling threat of regular zombies feel like a Sunday afternoon stroll.
As with any game, if you get into the zone with Thumper, it can be fine. But the combination of its music, rhythm elements, the split-second precision of the cornering, and its unrelenting, none-more-metal presentation makes it a one-way ticket to Thudding Temples if you can’t get into the required flow state.
It’s perhaps the most celebrated shoot ’em up of all time, and therefore people have taken the time to master it, but let’s not forget what a stressful time Ikaruga is before you’ve committed its patterns and mechanics to memory. It’s a sublime piece of software, but also a hair-tearing proposition if your reaction time isn’t what it once was, or if you’re just not in the zone.
Possibly the most ‘fun’ stress on the list, you’re still given an increasingly short amount of time to pull off a set of increasingly difficult tasks in WarioWare. The manic silliness and party atmosphere helps disguise the intense pressure, but if you’re looking for something to take the edge off at the end of a long day, give Wario and his farty behind the boot and go for a swim or something.
Playable on Switch with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, the adrenaline spurt from the timer when you drop Mario or Luigi at any point is akin to the panic we’d experience if we dropped a real-life baby while out jogging. That wailing haunts us to this day. The game’s all sunshine and rainbows and cute, colourful dinosaurs, then you drop the baby and all hell breaks lose.
Inside is quite an easy game, all told, but that doesn’t stop it from being a butt-clenchingly stressful experience. From escaping a pack of vicious dogs by the skin of your teeth to copying the movements of a group of zombies to fool the watchful eyes of the security cameras, Inside is absolutely determined to make you feel anxious. It almost never lets up, but it makes the eventual release toward the end of the game all the more satisfying.
Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack subscribers are able to fire up the N64 app and soak in the warped, beautiful fatalism of this gem — and also experience firsthand the ticking three-day clock that put off so many Ocarina of Time fans in this sequel. The trick is to accept that, as in life, you can’t do everything. We’re better at Dandori-ing our tasks these days, perhaps, but when the maniacal moon is bearing down on you, as the sun goes down on the third day, it’s hard to keep calm and carry on rewind time.
And speaking of Dandori…
The stress here is cunningly disguised in a pleasant, cutesy wrapper. Oh, a nice sunny morning! Oh, some lovely little creatures running around, carrying bits and bobs, and making adorable sounds! Oh, the light glistening on the pon—SOME MASSIVE BUG-THING IS EATING ALL MY PLANT DUDES WHAT THE F—
The Dandori battles, the Waterwraith, the desperate 10-second scramble to gather the troops at the end of the day lest they be devoured as your exhaust fumes dissipate. Despite appearances, Pikmin is — and has always been — a recipe for a heart condition.
A relaxing dip in the ocean sounds nice and all, but what if you crash-landed on an alien planet and had to explore the ocean there, which is filled with unknown (and terrifying) creatures? Subnautica is all about that, and while there are ways you can make the game a bit more relaxing, Survival Mode is sure to have you shivering in your flippers. Juggling your hunger, health, stamina, and oxygen tank with the looming threat of underwater terror is enough to make us never want to go in the sea again.
What do you think of those, then? Do you find some perverse Zen-like calm in playing any of the above? Is there something else you’ve played that got you riled up? Does Sonic deserve a spot just for the drowning countdown music? Let us know below and who knows, we might even add it above.
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