Well, seeing as some of my stupid objectless anxiety has decided to hover over my shoulder a while, I figured I'd make this topic! So, what games would you recommend as stress-relief?

From my own experience, I'd throw in Waking Mars and Torchlight 2 — the former for the relaxed vibe, the latter for the explosions of gore. :P In terms of console games, I'd always go back to something like a Mario game (3D or platformer), Zelda, Rune Factory or Final Fantasy 6 — music, colours and nostalgia are all great. I'm fond of Nintendo, and their games are invariably perfect if I need something to cheer me up a bit.

Flower. Just not the 4th level, good God not that one! All the others will do though.

I like to take out my frustrations on Alien Shooter 2.

HOTLINE. MIAMI.

Do not get fooled into playing Osmos. Your stress level will go through the roof.

Carmageddon 2 - hands down!!
Iron Maiden does the soundtrack. That should be enough to relieve anyone's tension.

Quake Live is good online fun.

You know, I've heard so much about this game — yet somehow I know absolutely nothing about it, nor have I ever seen footage. I don't think I've ever even seen screenshots. I should probably amend this.

EDIT: well, um, wow! It's pretty damn beautiful. Now if only it wasn't PS3 exclusive.

It's COD MW3 for me :)

A little bit of the ol' ultra violence...

On a side note.
Games NOT to play when stressed.
Hitman (any)
Commandos (any)

I'll second this !
If you want a less bloody stress-reliever and like star wars, jedi academy is great too...Nothing beats killing yoda !

Ha, it seems for most it's either violence or serenity. :P I tend toward the latter, as you can probably tell from my original post, but probably the biggest factor for me is satisfying sound. Just like with Zelda I play largely for the music, I play torchlight for those satisfying goresplosions and the... clickyness (sound-wise, not mouse-wise) of killing stuff.

Like... there was that Lord of the Rings game for PC (and possibly other consoles) that was based off the last movie I think, which had the most satisfying combat sounds of any game ever, to my ears. I don't remember that much about it other than you could play multiplayer and it had role-playing elements and (I think?) branching paths to an extent, but my god I loved it.

Certainly nothing which requires co-operation on public servers. Team-members are a gamble.

Everything which allows for quick escalations in a rapid sequence, like bombings, mass kills, atomic warfare.

But in fact I'm not playing when stressed at all.

Oh sorry, since you mentioned consoles I thought you might be able to play it. But yes, it is pretty amazing.