Top 5 Games Your Mom Will Hate

Your mom may claim she loves you, but at the end of the day, she hates everything you like. What you wear, how you eat, who you date – it really doesn’t matter. Trying to please dear mummy is an exercise in futility. How to cope with it? Just enjoy life as you see fit. That means trying out new games, even (and especially, if you’re a typical adolescent) the ones she hates. Not sure what titles qualify? Well, some mothers have unique hatreds, but we feel the following list should keep you covered.

Dead Space
Best to get the obvious choice some attention first. In case you haven’t heard, EA’s latest marketing ploy is crafted on the premise that mothers’ disgusted reactions to Dead Space 2 will heighten interest in their product. It wouldn’t a stretch to suggest that teenage boys are the main audience for this campaign, who predictably jump at any opportunity to defy authority figures. As far as content goes, Dead Space 2 certainly seems to strike all the right chords, packed with extraterrestrial monstrosities and copious gore that would certainly make any decent mother uncomfortable.

Grand Theft Auto
Bringing our senses a little closer to earth, one realizes that an open-world crime simulator showcases the best humanity has to offer. Drop the player in a vast playground teaming with innocent civilians, police, and thugs, and you have a mom-approved recipe for utter chaos. Or perhaps not-so-approved, as the case may be. What really grinds the parental gears in GTA is the sexual content, if national news outlets are to be believed. Fully decked out with digital strip clubs and trashy prostitutes, GTA serves as an excellent reminder that in modern American society, sex is far more dreaded than violence.

Bioshock
While this aquatic sci-fi thriller has no shortage of violence, it’s the inherent creepiness that parents will likely find off-putting. Shooting vicious enemies is understandable – after all, one must defend oneself when visiting a derelict submarine city – and this sort of violence is quite commonplace in video games. However, the addition of superhuman powers (flesh-eating swarms being my favorite) may strike a more familiar note of fear. The same could be said of the claustrophobic atmosphere, which constantly threatens to buckle under the pressure of the deep sea. The environment is often cracking, leaking, bursting, or otherwise breaking in a manner most upsetting. Ask people what scares them most, and “bugs” and “drowning” will probably come up long before guns, right? The incorporation of the sickly “Little Sisters” is really just the icing on this cake of unnerving.

Mortal Kombat
No compilation of inappropriate titles would be complete without the horribly tired franchise that was Mortal Kombat. In its heyday, the game could be genuinely fun. What made MK famous was not its gameplay, or even its use of “photo-real” digital actors. We all know the meat of the series could be found in the infamous “fatalities” which allowed the match winner to inflict unspeakably gruesome acts upon the loser. Most any murderous mechanism imaginable could be found within the franchise’s ever expanding array of finishing moves, from slicing up a hapless foe, to transforming into a dragon and chomping down on his torso. It’s easy to see why Mortal Kombat became the center of one of the first great parental outrages against the video game industry, and its tried-and-true content is sure to work wonders on your mother.

Leisure Suit Larry
Good ol’ Larry isn’t a character with which most gamers are well acquainted. There is a good reason for this: most of his games are terrible. That being said, anyone who can put up with a lame session or two will have no trouble repelling his mother. Larry occupies a world that is brimming with sexual promise. If the double-entendres aren’t enough to upset your mom, the mission objectives (sex-toy collecting?) should do the trick. Since the libidinous Larry isn’t the usual muscle-bound hero you see in a traditional video game, he must rely on less conventional methods to achieve his lofty goals. This may sound like an intriguing concept, but a few moments of cumbersome gameplay will make Larry’s lackluster reputation quite clear. Try playing when your mum is visiting, and she’ll never make any surprise visits again.

This list may pack more than enough puerile punch to send your mother running for the hills, but it’s possible you can recall an even better game that will serve this purpose. Let us know in the comments section below!