I feel like most games are empowering anyway, so yea.

I like challenging games so I feel accomplished after I win, wether it’s Fire Emblem, Resident Evil, or Halo, I generally play on hard and have a blast winning against a superior force.

I guess empowering? Games fill the same niche for me that books fill for other people. I mostly play them for the story. I used to enjoy the thrill of overcoming a challenge but these days I don't have the time I once did to invest in such things. Rather than the, "[i]YES! FINALLY NAILED IT![/i]" feeling they once gave me, now it's more of a, "[i]Jesus f***ing Christ that was tedious. Thank God I FINALLY got that over with.[/i]" That being said, I do like disempowering games that rely on good strategy vs. twitch speed. I thoroughly enjoyed [i]Don't Starve[/i]. Some stealth games like [i]Shadow Tactics[/i] kind of fall into this category too. I guess (to me) it feels more like I truely accomplished something (because I know I could do it again and I've aquired knowledge and skills that will aid me in the future) rather than just got lucky after multiple attempts (because I know if I'd forgotten to save it'd take me another 50 attempts to replicate success).

PaRappa the Rapper

Disempowering mostly. Hence why I'm huge fan of games like Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Nioh and Sekiro. Even add Ninja Gaiden Black in there. I like the idea of actually learning the mechanics of a game without being specifically told them. There's just that level of satisfaction when you GET something. When you overcome an obstacle you otherwise thought impossible. I can't describe how happy I was when I finally beat The Nameless King in Dark Souls 3.

I'm going to do this green text style: >Be me. >Download Thrawn's Revenge mod for Star Wars: Empire at war, forces of corruption. >Begin the Art of War campaign as the Yevetha. >Find that your at 205/140 population, only 20,000~ credits to your name with an income of roughly -355, and your planets have nothing. >Get attacked by the Empire of the Hand (the Chiss Accendincy) and half of their strongest fleet. >In a panick pull the fleets over every planet in an unorganized fashion. >Successfully retreat all but the fleet over the planet. >The retreat auto magically masses them all on one planet. >Laugh off the ground invasion force. >Crush all but two (absent) ships of the invading fleet. >Retaliatory counter invasion with a big a** fleet. >Fail to properly set a scout ship. >Destroy the defenses anyway. >Kill Thrawn himself. >Rejoice. >Conquer the planet. >Get economy fixed. >Save game.

I've come to realize that most games that I play are disempowering. So whenever I play an empowering game, I put more time into it.

Somewhere in between. I enjoy a balanced power curve. I like games where you start out weak but gradually build up your powers and strength. But I don’t like games where you become completely OP by the end or games where you are still getting crushed by basic enemies at the end. Getting the balance right is tricky I guess.

[quote]The best games are commonly the ones that mix "Empowering" and "Disempowering", as you put it. Give you all the strength in the world, but the enemies are powerful enough, cunning enough, and sometimes just plain evil enough to pose a threat none-the-less. Or the ones that give you all the tools you need to destroy a planet, and then question your morality, intentionally breaking away from the idea that "There are no consequences" in gaming. They take you in under your assumption that it will be a relaxing break from reality, where you can go slaughter a few thousand bad guys, but no. You can't. That's not how it works. This is not an escape; You cannot escape reality. So suck it up, and get back out there. A lot of people don't like that, but that is the point and part of what makes these "Corrupted Empowerments" consistently beautiful and just plain better than games that are simply or or the other. [/quote] ^Wyoming

Generally empowering, but the opposite still works for my reason why given it's possible at all. I like being able to push the limits of power levels in games, setting up crazy powerful builds or powerful weapons (specifically riskrunner in d2 with the perk active) that break the norm for what you can normally do. Gives that sort of [i][b]"Plus Ultra!"[/b][/i] feeling, which just feels good since success is something we seek. Usually harder to achieve in disempowering games like Dark Souls which wants you to get really good. Though I've seen a build in ds3 which is immune to damage and that's pretty hilariously powerful so figuring out to do stuff like that gives an even greater high than in empowering kind of games.

I like to feel powerful but I like for it to require skill, and not just be a one sided massacre delivered by me. I like checks and balances

i’ve been playing a lot of sundered recently on my switch so i have to go with disempowering, but fights that were once hard become easy as soon as you beat them, which i really enjoy

Powering. The purpose of a game is to take you away from reality not make your reality worse >_<

[spoiler]For the first time in a long time, I drew so many blanks trying to think of the rights words to articulate my thoughts. Throughout my life I have mainly played games where you become overpowered at the end and I used that to trivialize things, front, left, right and center. However I remember that when I would start a new game of the same game I have already completed, it always felt refreshing to feel so weak when compared to end game stats. Lord of the Rings: The Third Age comes to mind. If you take end game characters to starting zones, you will very obliviously overpower everything but it also reflects this in a visual way, very much like FF10s ''Overkill'' system, however it reflects it in words like double, triple, quadruple critical kill. It was also funny to see when they actually get an attack on you, go through Berethor's shield and hit him in the head, only to say ''Blocked'' or even ''Missed''.. Hahahahaha. Destiny 1 also comes to mind. I miss playing that game. Anyway, you're given 3 different classes with so much raw potential and power and it wasn't until the taken king, that I discovered how to become stronger by refining my thought processes in PvE combat. Each weekly reset heroic strikes would rotate perks and let me tell you, I had a thrilling set up for each character, with their own unique play-style with guns AND oh man. I killed SO so so many foes and I literally felt like a god compared to my randomly match-made teammates. It was heavenly colorful each week, not to mention they added some of my favorite strikes EVER!!!. Nothing beated being able to 1 shot a fallen walker with a Titans shoulder charge in the Taniks strike. Simply wonderful as my heart was filled with glee * -*. [/spoiler]All I could think about as of right now. Got carried away but I'll leave that.. I just had to say it.

Anything that’s turn based

For the most part empowering.

[i]Most of my games are RPG’s or Adventure games. I play games as a form of Escapism from the monotonous grind of my daily life. I also love a good story, and I find these games are the most entertaining, at least from a narrative point of view ( which is very important to me ). I suppose a large part of why I love these genres, RPG’s in particular, is because I do enjoy feeling [b]Empowered[/b]. There’s something cathartic about watching your character’s stats ( health, defense, attack power, ) go up the longer you play, unlocking new skills, and acquiring better gear. Psychology, it’s also very, very satisfying to see your character grow stronger the more you play a game, it doesn’t feel as if you are throwing your time and efforts into a black hole. In regards to Adventure games, I find that games like God of War, Bayonetta or Devil May Cry also do a good job of fulfilling that power fantasy because you are slaying gods, demons, and other super natural things while don’t things that no mortal being can ever do. That fantasy elements in these games really taps into my desire to ‘Escape’. Even games like the Uncharted ones, or the Tomb Raider games, these also tap into that Escapism fantasy because they feed that desire for Adventure, an escape from the mundanity of daily life.[/i]

To indirectly answer your question, I like to play games that help focus my mind on something, games such as XCOM (obviously I guess). But also games with backstory and implied lore such as The Division (and 2), it tells a rough story but hides a lot of the finer details in collectibles, such as audio logs and ECHOs (kinda like a freeze frame vr thing). You can learn quite a bit about the world through these lore pieces, and start to piece things together about characters and events that happened.

I typically play games that make you feel underpowered for pretty much the same reason. It's nice to finally conquer something that was near impossible through trial and error. But I have a couple games that are fairly easy for if I'm just too stressed to play something challenging. Example: if it's my day off or an easy day, I'll probably play Sekiro. On a day where my job was simply ludicrous and I just need to wind down and be stupid powerful, Warframe.

I mostly play Borderlands and Dark Souls, so I'd say some of both.

Probably more empowering than disempowering, but I think I’d like to do a full in-thread consideration of what games I play and whether they’re the former or the latter: -Warframe [spoiler]Hands down, this is an empowering game. Tenno have abilities that for the most part cannot be copied by the enemy, and can be expected to be given the task of killing 200 enemies in a day and go “yeah, I could finish that within the hour.” Space ninjas are dangerous.[/spoiler] -Risk of Rain (2) [spoiler]It’s possible to become wicked OP but I think the Risk of Rain setting could be disempowering. The whole planet wants to kill you, and while you can handle some of the locals with ease they will only continue to grow in numbers and strength until they finally kill you. There’s plenty of stuff around to enhance your abilities but you need money from the enemies and random barrels to get them and a lot of these objects have some long term cost your character will have to deal with if you survive.[/spoiler] -Killing Floor 2 [spoiler]On one hand you’re goring hordes of mutants that tore through most of society with relative ease, doing so with a wide selection of weapons (some of which being pretty big and/or high tech. Probably while looking as good or silly as you want, I might add. On the other hand, the harder difficulties make it so you’re scraping by more and more, in spite of how you level. Let’s not forget that the zeds have multiple cloning facilities under their command to produce more meat, and might have captured people just to test horde compositions on them. It’s kind if like how somebody said that the DMC universe would be a horror setting if you weren’t Dante and Pals. Your characters might be the closest (the good half of) Horzine can get to a Dante, but you’re still mortal. I guess it’s somewhere in the middle, possibly empowerment if your characters are breaking zeds down faster than they can be recycled.[/spoiler] -Apex Legends [spoiler]Battle Royales are kind of mildly disempowering in general. Sure, this one’s a blood sport and you’re one of the star players, but that’s too empowering when everyone else is a star player too. You’re all still scavenging for the same weapons and are all one bad shot or ambush away from being killed to the last. Of course, this means you’re also one cool trick away from empowerment, I guess.[/spoiler] -Rising Storm 2 [spoiler]War is hell, and the vietnam war made that pretty clear. With a game designed to mostly simulate that experience in large scale (32v32) battles, it is easy to know that you are just one of many grunts for the meat grinder. Listen for artillery.[/spoiler] -For Honor [spoiler]On a small scale (and against AI?) it’s empowering. You’re one of the big soldiers of the battle. Those underfed troops are almost nothing compared to you, which means you just need to apply your skills or cunning against those of equal size. When you get to the basics of the setting it can get pretty grim but not too many folks seem to care?[/spoiler]

What about games that start disempowering and slowly progress to empowering? I'll go with that