Top contenders:
- Subnautica
- Dishonored
- Prey
- Bioshock
- Control
- Titanfall 2
- Modern Warfare 2
- The Outer Wilds
Subnautica is so immersive I’d find myself holding my breath if I was running low on oxygen as if it would help.
Yeah, by the end of Subnautica I spent my time
spoiler
just going around to my bases and decorating them and fixing them up so they were pleasant places to be in. I built the rocket ship, and I did use it just to see what happened, but canonically in my head I chose to stay on the planet by myself and not leave. Hands down the most immersive game I’ve played.
Outer Wilds and subnautica still trigger all my phobias so effectively. It’s terrifying
As much I love those games I cannot get very far into them. Especially Outer Wilds. That ocean planet is something I’ve literally had in my nightmares.
Yep. As far as I know there isn’t even anything dangerous on it but it’s such nightmare energy for me that I will literally run out of the room like a child.
Also, I found that space feels eerily like underwater for me mentally. Fucking terrifying
Yeah that’s what made Outer Wilds terrifying, it’s veeeery realistic with handling outer space. Elite Dangerous gave me the same feeling, took a long while to get over the fear. Still gave me the jeebies infiltrating a Titan (large xeno ship that generates hazardous space weather around itself, like a hurricane in a fog).
The rest of the Outer Wilds just ups that nope factor. Thought I should go to a different planet but my choices were the newborn singularity, planets eating each other, or a planet that defies reality and home to very angry space bees.
The quantum moon was the only one I could handle, was super fun.
I can handle everything but dark bramble, giants deep and just…anything with open space. I did almost everything on the sand twins tho! That wasn’t too bad at all.
Oh I struggled most of all on the sand twins. I’m mildly claustrophobic and those caves freaked me out (especially as I tend to think poorly under pressure, so running out of time made me panic and get lost more).
I can get that. I do get claustrophobic IRL but luckily it doesn’t really equate to games, unlike my thalassophobia. I was just happy it was sand and not water
The space mechanics was definitely one of the great things about that game, in my opinion. Most space games when you land you just press a button and it plays an animation. Having to land manually with a landing camera is very satisfying. When you crash and parts of your ship break and you have to float outside to fix it, that was also very fun. I feel like a lot of space games are a bit lazy about the actual space mechanics, this game did it very well.
Dishonored is the one game I’d love to erase from my memory just to have to joy of playing it for the first time again. It’s easily in my top 10 favorite games of all time. I wish there were more like it - Prey was great, too, but not quite the same, and there hasn’t been anything else that’s really scratched that itch.
Prey yes
With that list of games, you may like Green Hell.
Football Manager. I’m a simple man. I don’t like starting off as a top team, it’s always more fun for me to download one of the extended databases and take an amateur Sunday League team to the highest heights. I’ve been managing my current side, Wakefield AFC, for almost 20 years. I’ve led them up the ladder from the Northern Counties East League Division One to the Championship.
I remember the first time we averaged more than 100 fans in attendance per season. I remember the first player we sold for cash (veteran midfielder Jack Sang, for a whopping $2,400) instead of letting go on a free. I remember our first ever televised match in 2030 during our Cinderella run in the FA Cup. It was a respectable 2-1 loss to a team 3 divisions above us, but the $250k share of the gate receipts saved us from bankruptcy. I can picture the statue they’ll build someday of Seb Bolton, who scored 116 goals in 223 appearances between 2026-2032 and led us to back-to-back promotions. I’m currently trying to shepherd the development of youth player Tony Okonkwo, a 6’5" center forward who very well could become our first homegrown million dollar man.
do you follow tradition and put on a suit for the Finals?
The first STALKER game. Near the beginning when I had hardly any ammo.
I saw a pack of feral dogs in the distance and while they didn’t sound friendly I didn’t know whether they would be hostile or how close I could get before they would aggro. Since I had so little ammo I resolved to not take any shots unless they got close.
Well, one of them did start running towards me, but before it got that close it cut off and ran away at a 90° angle. Then another, and another did the same thing. “Maybe they’re not hostile?” I thought to myself, “Do they just run around randomly?”.
Then I realized I was being circled. Which was an extremely unnerving realization. I went from thinking about aggro ranges and AI states to being thrust into a situation that I sometimes have to worry about not falling into in real life.
Then I realized I was being circled. Which was an extremely unnerving realization. I went from thinking about aggro ranges and AI states to being thrust into a situation that I sometimes have to worry about not falling into in real life.
Makes it that much more sad seeing A-Life getting trashed in STALKER 2. Moments like these were awesome
Probably skyrim. The first time I played it, it made me feel like I had a 2nd separate life that I had to pull myself back out of to rejoin the real world.
Same. I remember seeing a lot of buzz surrounding it on release day, but I’d never played a TES game before. Decided to download it and play for an hour just to see what it’s about. I remember after what felt like roughly an hour I suddenly had massive hunger pains, checked the time and realised I’d just been playing for about 9 hours straight with no break. I don’t think I’ve ever had another game do that to me before.
Red Dead Redemption 2, by far.
Honorable mention to Elite: Dangerous while playing with a HOTAS
Elite got too real. When you pick a “job” the grind gets real enough to feel like a real job.
That reminds me, my carrier is probably in a ton of debt.
…Meh. I’m pretty sure I can’t be bothered.
Yeah, lost mine. I got it, thought it was cool, and then never really felt like I could utilize it well. Ran out of $ and that’s that.
You can always buy another one with just one afternoon’s worth of mind-numbing Robigo passenger runs.
Oh, I prefer exobio, but that’s a slog sometimes. Everything gets to be a grind after a while with that game. The common lamwnr: lightyears wide, an inch deep. It’s a great game, just need a break.
Control. Not the entire game but one very specific sequence with a hard rock tune stitched throughout. If you know, you know.
The ashtray maze was a great sequence and a ton of fun, but immersive? I don’t think so.
Cyberpunk 2077 by far
Came here to say this. One of the only games I went back to beat several more times. I was sad to finally stop playing, but I definitely got my monies worth. I don’t think I have been that into a game since half-life 2.
SOMA. Downright existential horror in all the right ways.
SOMA was fantastic, I played it in peaceful mode
Same I think the monsters work better as museum pieces than threats
Prey.
They really put the immersive and sim in immersive sim. So much player agency over the world and everything you do in it just makes sense. The computers you use are physically interactable, no UI as dressing. Your menus are just you accessing your handheld smart device (inventory, logs, map).
Every object on the map is persistent. You want to fortify your office to fend off Typhon on your return? Gather the turrets around the map and have them guard the staircase leading to your little paradise. Want to decorate it? Drop items from your inventory and drag them around. Have some trophies of your accomplishments.
I could go on and on about other mechanics like the fantastic gloo gun or how the maps are filled with little secrets/shortcuts, but then I’d be here all day.
Playing for the first time currently and I can’t put it down. We finally got a good successor to system shock 2 and I am so happy
Subnautica. Literally immersive
That’s virtually immersive. Literally immersive was when I fell into an actual pool while playing Super Mario on a gameboy.
I remember being soldered to my game boy as a kid, too…
Actually happened in my 30s LOL.
when you walked into a pool of tin ?
Fallout New Vegas, had me fantasizing for weeks about being a desert cowboy. My wife and I finally went to Vegas and we visited a bunch of spots from the game. We played FNV all week together and then we went up the strat tower to get a birds eye view of the city. It was a really fun experience.
Game definitely shows its age now, but it really sold the atmosphere and dragged you into it when it came out.
…definitely shows its age now…
What I’m hearing is we need someone to make Fallout 4Vegas.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Felt like I was fighting for my actual life in that game.
Pretty sure I have actual trauma from that game because I tried to play the bunker and had to quit 5 minutes in.
Never even saw the monster.
THE WATER LEVEL THO.
I know there are much more immersive games, but the most immersive I’ve played is The Witcher 3, I don’t play many realistic games. Stardew Valley and Minecraft for the win.
VR is going to win this for me multiple times over. Half Life: Alyx; Resident Evils 7, 8, and 4; Pavlov; The Exorcist: Legion, A Chair in a Room: Greenwater; Batman: Arkham VR; the list goes on.
Skyrim with the right mods
VR Skyrim.
Haven’t touched it in years, but there was a mod that converted all player dialogue to voice commands. Meaning that when you were talking to an NPC, you actually spoke the words you wanted to say. That, with the verbal dragon shouts, and gesture activated spell casts… Good times.
Best part is that your normal Skyrim mods generally work just as well with VR Skyrim.
Totally. Some graphics mods especially can make it pretty amazing
