Top 10 games to play when you’re depressed By Val1s  [23 more lists]

Okay, it’s a way-obvious choice, but come on! It may seem like the brightness of the game and the yelps of joy are the main reasons to include this game, but really it’s about the gameplay and the soundtrack. Just watch (and listen) to the clip here and try to stay in a grumpy mood. Seriously, try it. Watch the clip and try to keep wearing your biggest frown. I’ll wait…

It’s impossible isn’t it? The sheer playful joy has cracked your bitter and apathetic exterior, and that’s just watching a clip. Once you play the game the genius of the level design will melt the ice around your heart. Go, explore Mario’s playground. He doesn’t even want thanked when you finish his game and go back to the real world. In fact he will thank you. "Thank you very much for to playing my game". No, don’t thank us. Thank you Mario. Thank you.

A beautiful but bitter sweet experience, Ico may seem like a strange choice for a game to cheer you up. Like Mario, the level design is gorgeous and the game is enjoyable. It’s the enemies that are the real reason that playing this game is such a positive experience. Shadowy, moaning opponents, these creatures bubble up from the environment like smoky, snaking nightmares. Their lack of form and distinct shape makes them a cypher for the obstacles we face in everyday life, they manifest all our fears and our pains and in this game and you fight them off with a stick. Beyond that, you fight them to defend not only yourself, but someone who is helpless and defenceless. You are a young boy, terrified and physically weak, but you defend those that cannot defend themselves and you fight enemies who want you to give up or to run away. Nothing could be more heroic, no metaphor could be more appropriate. Don’t give up, because doing the right thing is almost always the same as doing the hard thing, but it’s also always worth it.

A game doesn’t have to include heroes, princesses and terrible foes to be uplifting. The simple joy of Minecraft will also raise the spirits of anyone who once sat and lost themselves in world’s made of lego, building blocks or drawings of magical kingdoms. Devoid of narrative, lacking in many of the basic elements of a game, Minecraft is a toy and a playground as much as a game. But Minecraft is also a means to express the imagination you have within you that’s been worn away by board meetings, reality TV and the Black Eyed Peas. The worlds you create are vast, they have an austere beauty and a life and it’s all shaped and moulded by you, the player. We all have a desire to create structure and order in our lives, and Minecraft lets us start small, with a whole new world.

Mass Effect 2 is a gigantic space opera full of destroyed planets, aliens and immense laser-filled battles. It is also a game about talking, solving family problems, overcoming prejudice and learning to forgive. The majority of the missions throughout Mass Effct 2 revolve around meeting new crewmates and preparing them for what may be their last, suicidal but essential mission. To allow them to do so you fly around the galaxy helping them establish better relationships and tie off loose ends with their parents, siblings, mentors or their whole race. It’s like a gigantic space counselling session as you ask your alien crewmates questions like "when you’re mother said you were grown in a vat of di-phosphorous chemicals on Phobos, how did that make you FEEL?". In the end, your squad mates who forgave their mothers, protected their sisters or tipped their babysitters were the ones who had the best chance of making it to the end of the game. I’m sure that provides a positive message. Perhaps it’s that you should leave each day as if you were about to go on a suicide mission to save the galaxy tomorrow. If not, at least you can have some freaky alien sex!

Some days you feel like humanity is a sea of unthinking, unfeeling monsters who would happily rip your throat out if they thought it would help them get ahead. In the Dead Rising games, this is literally true. The shuffling monotony and soullessness of shopping malls which was echoed so artfully by Romero with the literal shuffling and literal soullessness of zombies is present in the Dead Rising games, but with the added bonus of funny hats and cross-dressing. Everyone daydreams about the joy of running amok in a mall and taking whatever we want, but going a stage further and dreaming of chopping up other people with a sword, meat cleaver or wolverine claws is something many of us would be ashamed to admit. Doing so in Dead Rising 2 is an enjoyably guilt-free experience. There’s also the underlying positivity of saving people and looking out for those close to you, but the real reason to play Dead Rising 2 is to take a little revenge on the world when it’s done you wrong.