Ha, that's fine! It's a general thread anyway, not (just) a "help me I'd like less stress" thread. :P

Any GTA with cheat codes on. :)

Journey, man. You just gotta have Journey in there. I lol'd

Depends on what particularly mood that stress puts me in:
UT '99 - with low AI setting *smirk*
Duke 3D - pig cops are gonna die!

RCT2/3 - in case I like something more relaxing
Bejeweled 3, Bookworm

One of these days I need to try that one just because it always looks so ridiculously over-the-top.

Dependent on what causes you stress, i suggest S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (preferably with a few mods).

Its actually something that helped me overcome the nervous breakdown / period of mental illness i suffered 2007 - 2009.

For me, wandering the zone relly helped, but the action, the story all played a part (that may sound weird to some -but there you go!).

oblivion,, hunting dears and mudcrab and skyrim running through the snowy plains was soo good ( sadly dont have the game anymore to relive stress lol)

Well, for me, it was always a game like Carmageddon when I needed to blow off steam... but when the stress wasn't necessarily relieved by blowing off steam , I found that a game like Alpha Centauri would get me so involved I would forget all the stress inducing problems and end up much more relaxed ( although very bleary eyed :-) ) when I stopped playing.

SpaceChem. It's a logical problem and you have all the time you want to solve it. I lose the sense of time playing it, and it does wonders to my stress level.

Yeah that would certainly do it as well, it's just that I noticed it had a lot of the same beats as Flower so I didn't like it quite as much. But it is still very good, I'm not denying that.

So I'm going with a ps2 game (hope this you can play!), you mentioned everyone was going for serene or violent so I'll say one that is neither: Sly 2. Both visually and in theme it's kinda like a saturday morning cartoon, so it felt very happy for me, between the humor and the camaraderie of the main characters, it maintained a light hearted tone all throughout. It seems perfect to bring your spirits up.

It took me 2 years to figure out thats what they were saying! I'd sit there looking at the screen mumbing "And in the wool?" "As in the wall?" HUH!?

F yeah!!!

The Postal games.

Minecraft is great for idling around, relaxing.I wish there was a more diverse suite of background music though.