Looking for your recommendation for an immersive game to play. list of games that gave me that impact inside.

[Sphio]

Hi.

 

I am looking to find a good story driven game to play. One that is immersive and makes me forget what time it is.

Any recommendations are highly welcomed. I am also curious to know your best experiences like this.

 

It is very subjective. so let me provide a list of games that gave this feeling for some context.

I guess escapism to some extent is what I am drawn to.

 

The games that did it for me are:

Final Fantasy series period. 

Played everything and love most of it. I have not played 15 though, the setting seem a little off-putting to me, but please feel free to prove me wrong.

 

Nier Automata,

Recently played this on a whim since it recently became part of Playstation Now. 

Absolutely Amazing. I have not played replicant though, is it as good?

 

Cyberpunk 2077,

I know it's cool and "in" to hate on it due to a lot of arguably quite valid reasons, but beyond the technicalities.. damn the game content is good.

 

Other games I put in this category:

Horizon Zero dawn.

Dragon Quest 11

Bioshock infinite

Mass Effect 2

Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4

Witcher 3

Darksiders 2 specifically, 1 or 3 didn't do the same thing for me.

 

What doesn't fly as well with me:

Tactical RPGs like Divinity original sin or FF tactics. Dragon Age Origins is also kind of in this space.

The combat is too tedious and just makes my ADD addled brain bored. I do enjoy them and like them, but I just can't make myself play them for long enough and ultimately abandon them.

 

Let me know your favorites!

 

[bmx6454]

red dead redemption 2

[WereCat]

This is probably not exactly what you're looking for since it's a Rogue Like but I've been playing Hades recently and I really liked the story in that game despite it's being focused a lot more on the gameplay... I think it's still worth it for the story even if it's focused a lot more on the gameplay but ultimately, you can't progress in the Story without playing a lot so it's up to you.

 

But from the story side, if you don't mind also playing old or older games then I really liked games like (some of them may not be the genre you like though):

 

Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast

Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Star Wars: The Old Republic 1 & 2 (you will likely dislike the type of gameplay based on what you mentioned in your post though)

Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons

Bastion

Transistor

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Will of Wisps

Half-Life series

Portal series

Titanfall 2

Metro series

Bioshock series

Dead Space series

Red Dead Redemption 2

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Dark Souls series

Sekiro

Mass Effect series (except Andromeda)

 

SOMA

The Talos Principle

 

The last two are imo masterpieces in their own way, there is rarely a game or book that leaves the kind of impact on me like those two did (story wise) if you like a philosophy/humanity focused story. But have in mind that Talos Principle is a puzzle game so you won't be able to progress in the story fast enough for it to keep your attention if you find the puzzle part not to your taste.

 

[mariushm]

You didn't mention the Metro series, but you probably played it. it's worth playing if you didn't.... the first two are a bit linear (as in half-life linear), but the last Metro is actually quite good and it's still somewhat linear but you have more choices on order of what quests you start.

 

STALKER series... if you didn't play it, do it. In the case of Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl, it is an absolute must to be played with the Stalker Complete mod - https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-complete-2009 - which keeps the game as original but adds loads of atmosphere, night sky with real stars (matching the location and time of year, basically you look up and that's how it would look in that year in Chernobyl), much better lightning and shadows at night making game more scary.

 

The first Stalker games are 32 bit only and they tend to crash often, especially with a mod like stalker complete which gets the engine close to 4GB of ram limitation of 32 bit games but it's worth it. Even if it crashes once an hour, you can just start the game and load level in a few seconds and continue playing (just save often)

 

Something more recent... Days Gone is cool, decent story, zombies and guy on motorbike doing quests... has enough variation that you won't get bored with it, and you can finish it in maybe 30-50 hours

 

The Outer World  (and the DLCs like Murder on Eridanos) is worth playing - it's made by the company that made fallout new vegas ... it's decent, ok mechanics, rpg with space stuff, but isn't taking too seriously.  I liked it but I wish there was more variation in clothing (armor etc) and weapons... story wise it was also sort of ok.

 

Yeah, just saw WereCat's list ... SOMA is very good game with good story, more of a thriller and not horror (as many people thought, considering who made it).

 

Half-life series of course you should play it, if you didn't already... but please don't start with Black Mesa (half-life 1 remake) if you didn't play any game so far, play the original half-life source, black mesa messes up the story and "lore" by changing the maps and textures, it's great for replaying half-life 1, but not for playing half-life the very first time.. the designers cared more about "bling" and visual effects and hi-res textures and less about stuff like letting player learn as he goes along about what happens in the game, what went wrong etc..

 

Dead Space series is OK , Transistor is sort of OK ... it's a very good game, but kinda polarizing... I'm leaning towards "you won't like it" due to its turn base fights which can happen quite often.

 

 

Totally unrelated to the games above, but you may enjoy playing Celeste, a platformer... it has awesome music soundtrack and it's not hard. I loved it. Can be a good stress release between other games.

 

They just released a patch for Fallout 3 to remove Microsoft Games for Windows and make it run under Windows 10 ... if you didn't play that, it's worth playing. You list Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 so you probably played that as well.

 

I'm actually trying Atom RPG these days because they launched Atom RPG Trudograd recently... and it seems to be reviewing well but also seems like you need the characters from the previous game to continue with them, or something like that.

The game tries to be similar to fallout / wasteland  but.... I have a bit of a hard time getting into it because it's not first person shooter like fallout 3, it's more of a top-down/isometric (camera fixed above players at an angle but you can rotate map in a slightly cumbersome way) and it's a bit too much dialogue for me at the beginning. Maybe I'll keep up with it... just thought you may want to check it out.

 

 

[varrys]

I enjoy story games. Sometimes they are big things like Bioshock Infinite and the Dishonored series. Other times they are indie/smaller games like Child of Light and Oxenfree.

 

I enjoy the new Tomb Raider games for story. Also Kentucky Route Zero, Firewatch, Life Is Strange, Borderlands series, Gris, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch, To the Moon.

 

And if you can get behind the old Point and Click genre, then Indiana Jones and the Fate if Atlantis is amazing. For a modern series, there is Deponia.

 

[Sphio]

9 hours ago, WereCat said:

*Hades*
I actually played a lot of Hades, I liked it quite a bit. I think the story elements that popped up after each run really drew me in.

 

9 hours ago, WereCat said:

Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast

Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

I may give the SW action games a roll, I think there was a new one not too long ago?
 

Star Wars: The Old Republic 1 & 2 (you will likely dislike the type of gameplay based on what you mentioned in your post though)
I actually own KotOR, but I don't think I ever really sat down to play it. Curious on how the Remake that just got announced would differ. I may put this on hold until more information about the remake is available. I.e. if I could enjoy the remake after learning the story. that being said the remake is probably gonna be released in 2024 at the earliest lol.

Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons

Bastion

Transistor

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Will of Wisps

Half-Life series

Portal series

Titanfall 2

Metro series

Bioshock series

Dead Space series

Red Dead Redemption 2

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Dark Souls series

Sekiro

Mass Effect series (except Andromeda)  (I played Andromeda and enjoyed it lol)

 

 

9 hours ago, WereCat said:

SOMA
The Talos Principle

 

The last two are imo masterpieces in their own way, there is rarely a game or book that leaves the kind of impact on me like those two did (story wise) if you like a philosophy/humanity focused story. But have in mind that Talos Principle is a puzzle game so you won't be able to progress in the story fast enough for it to keep your attention if you find the puzzle part not to your taste.

I am not one for horror games so not super keen SOMA, but The Talos Principle, given it doesnt get tedious it may be interesting.

 

 

 

[WereCat]

Yeah, the new SW game is the Jedi: Fallen Order, I haven't finished it but I played it a lot then I got stuck and I think a new game came out and I haven't returned back to it... idk why. It was all right.

 

While SOMA is a horror, I don't like horror either... but it's not really that scary or stressing most of the time, it's more like a psychological horror. There are some parts where you're running away or hiding but I don't remember it being too much for me. I still think the story of SOMA is worth it.

I was never able to play games like Amnesia or the Alien one for example.

 

If you decide to give Talos a shot, just ignore the star puzzles... they are "optional" (if you complete them all you will get a different ending) but man, they will burn you out hard, some of them are obnoxiously difficult and you shouldn't feel ashamed by looking up a guide for them.

Otherwise the game starts fairly easy then it gets quite a bit more difficult towards the end.