Half-Life: Alyx, hands down.
I may have cried a little bit after my first round at it.
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2024
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I came here with the intent of saying the same thing.
Maybe putting "immersion" and "VR" in the same paragraph is a cheap shot. But Alyx is the first and possibly only VR title that, in my opinion, actually manages to nail all the aspects of real world presence to the extent that it actually does feel at times that you are standing in a genuine place. It's not just the visual design and fidelity of the world and the models in it, but all the little details and aspects added together that make HL:Alyx feel right, and when you go back to other VR titles afterwards you suddenly realize how they've been getting it so wrong all this time. Even other games that have "realistic" rather than cartoony graphics.
It's things like the scale of the world, which feels genuine. A lot of VR games seem to scale their world slightly too large, and as a result there are lots of familiar objects in them that seem uncannily wrong until you figure out that their scale is off. All the doorframes are just too big, so you don't feel like you're getting stuck in them. But you've walked through a million doorframes in your life and they feel wrong. And the desk tops are nearly at chest height, so you don't have to bend over to look at their contents. But you've sat at a desk a thousand times in your life so that feels wrong, too. Etc., etc.
Alyx doesn't do this. Everything is life scale. This means that, yes, you probably will have to get down on your knees or grovel around on the ground to search the lower drawers in that desk or turn over all the boxes on the floor looking for ammo and resin. All the window frames are at realistic, rather than convenient, heights. So you might have to get down very low to avoid incoming fire below that windowsill. Or stand on your tiptoes to reach a top shelf.
Sometimes it's just as simple as being able to look down and see yourself. Or see Alyx, anyway. So many VR games present you, the player, as just a floating pair of hands. Alyx doesn't. As a matter of fact, the developers even experimented in the beginning with fully modeling Alyx from the perspective of the player, i.e. giving her not only hands but also arms and elbows. They gave up because the experience was visually disconcerting.
Then there's things like the gunplay and manipulation of healing syringes and so forth. This is another aspect where a lot of "realistic" games fall down, by trying too hard to mimic real life firearms and tools which inevitably winds up shoehorning the controls onto the available buttons in a way that winds up feeling unnatural. But all the guns in Alyx are Half Life sci-fi guns, so Valve could make them work however they wanted to. So they seem real despite being pure fantasy, and operate in an intuitive manner that matches the controllers very well and feels right. The only thing I don't like is the squeeze-to-arm grenades. I get it, but I think a ring-pull mechanic would have been a bit more intuitive as well as potentially allowing players to put the pin back in.. (Perhaps, if you can't put away the gun in your main hand in a hurry, an available gesture should have been pulling the ring out with your teeth.)
It's also packed with incredible setpieces. I can't list them all, but one that absolutely will stick with you is watching a 1:1 scale freight train careening at high speed with the wheels screaming mere feet away from your face, and crashing into a wall.
And despite being so immersive, Alyx is not an immersive sim. It's thoroughly linear, and your interactions with most objects do boil down to shooting them, poking them, yanking a lever on them, slotting a key item into them, or throwing stuff at them. And every interactable for the most part only has one way for you to interact with it. Yet even despite this, emergent gameplay... well, emerges. I read a story online (and you probably did, too) about one player who absolutely could not stand leaving grenades and stims and grub jars lying around that they couldn't use just then thanks to the limited inventory space. So they found a crate and dumped all their extra items in it and carried the crate around with them everywhere, throughout the entire campaign. And the game lets you do this. Even bringing your junk with you across loading zones. It is an incredible benefit to immersion if you can logically think of a thing and then find out that you are able to do that thing, even if it's not an explicit game mechanic that was explained to you in a tutorial.
It's unfortunate the barrier to entry to even be able to play this is so high, because it's a damn shame a lot more people haven't played it. Sure, you can watch a playthrough on Youtube or whatever but that absolutely does not do it justice. You have to be there.
I will never forget my first play through. At one point I was exploring a pitch black tunnel with my gun and just a narrow beam flashlight to see by. I couldn't see anything at all outside the beam of the flashlight. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear a head crab approaching but I couldn't find it with the light. I was shining the flashlight this way and that trying to spot it and hearing it get closer and closer... and then my cat brushed my leg.
I jumped and screamed and scared the hell out of the poor cat. I may in fact have tried to shoot her with the controller. Needless to say, she no longer trusts me when I'm wearing the headset.
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I probably wouldn't have bought it, but it came with my Index and Holy shit what an incredible experience. I've been playing the Arizona Sunshine remake and it's been scratching the same itch. The reload mechanics are a ton of fun.
I don't think VR is a cop out considering it should be the most immersive gaming experience. It just kinda sucks that Alyx is really the only kind of VR game (that's actually a game) that also immerses you in the game using the same shit non-VR games do to make them immersive. IMO this question should be a thinker; but there's not much to think about other than Alyx.
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.
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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.
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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.
That was an enjoyable read in the same vein of reading about crazy EVE Online shenanigans. I will probably never touch it but I admire how fun you make it sound.
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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
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.
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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.
Control. Not the entire game but one very specific sequence with a hard rock tune stitched throughout. If you know, you know.
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SOMA. Downright existential horror in all the right ways.
Subnautica. Literally immersive
That's virtually immersive. Literally immersive was when I fell into an actual pool while playing Super Mario on a gameboy.
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The Long Dark with headphones in a dark room. Really makes you feel cold.
Elite Dangerous as well. My ship auto-docking while I look at my side screens and hear various radio chatter is awesome.
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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.
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Elite Dangerous in VR.
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.
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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.
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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.
Super Mario on a Gameboy, by a pool, when I wasn't paying attention.
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.
Tetris Effect. Combine its gameplay, music, narrative, controller feedback and sound design, and you have quite the blending of the senses. Under certain circumstances, it's incredible.
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Hmm..
Mass Effect Trilogy. Kingdom Come Deliverance (can't wait for KCD2!). Red Dead Redemption 2. Dishonored. Deus Ex. Baldur's Gate 3. The Witcher 3. Disco Elysium. Dragon Age. Kotor. Bioshock. Cyberpunk2077 Divinity:OS+OS2
I can go on a bit, but anything with a good story gets me. I love being immersed. It helps me escape reality. Same goes for books. I love long series that I can throw myself into.
Earthbound—no wait hear me out.
Yeah it's a 16 bit RPG about a really surreal alien invasion, but the whole world is full of lively NPCs with unique dialogue that often changes depending on where you are in the game. Even though the world of Earthbound is a surreal exaggeration of 1990s America, it's a really detailed world with every line of dialogue giving glimpses into people's ordinary (or not so ordinary) lives.
You ever get really engrossed in a book or movie to the point where when you stop reading/watching there's a brief moment of shock where you suddenly remember your own identity all at once, like waking up from a dream? Earthbound was the first time I experienced that sensation from a video game.
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Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition
looks nice and i feel like I'm actually there
The awe of immersion in the first VR game I played was unforgettable. I knew that theoretically you could fool your brain into seeing depth using two screens, but that didn't prepare me to put on the glasses and completely be transported to another place. Nothing has ever borne that sensation for me. I've seen grown used to it and rarely play VR anymore, but still see it as the most immersive experience I've had.
I'm a big fan of open world for immersion. Oblivion when it came out, GTA SA and 5, RDR2.
But something that surprised me about immersion was Cataclysm DDA (with good tile and sound packs). It takes a long time to get into the groove of the game as a first timer, but once you do, the emergent stories that come out of it are incredibly immersive.
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kingdom come deliverance
In my case it's definitely DayZ. It's an open-world zombie-survival multiplayer game.
I'm not a huge gamer myself but that one has always stood out to me above all the others. Once you've spent hours into a character you seriously don't want to get killed. The map is massive and there's only 60 other people at best so you often don't even run into anyone - only hear the occasional gunshot in the distance. Wearing headphones lets you hear 360-degree sounds and the proximity voice chat I think is pretty cool feature too. It's often jokingly called hiking simulator since you, for the most part, just run in a forests.
It's also the only game where I've genuinely felt bad about shooting another player. Self-defence is a different case but just cold blood murder only because I can has multiple times left me feeling kinda shitty, so nowdays I just try and talk to people and then usually I get shot instead. I've also often felt absolutely terrified, hiding in a corner of a room in a house hiding from another player who I've just realized is close to me. I haven't felt anything like that with any other game and have felt that DayZ is quite unique in that sense.
I must add, thought, that those flight simulator cockpits that people have built for themselves seem kind of intriguing too.
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DayZ. No game makes you value your characters life as much as this game. Every adventure is different.
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this is gonna sound crazy, but oolite. seeing all the other starships leaves me wondering what they're up to, and you know what? it's because the graphics are so simple that the game can simulate more things going on in an area even on crap hardware. playing it really feels like you exist in a space and are interacting with a world that really keeps moving without you.
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World of Warcraft for me. When I first played the game I was ENTHRALLED, and couldn’t stop playing.
Stray
When I was younger I would play X-Wing Alliance on my PC with an actual like pilot joystick controller with all the lights turned off. That game is a Star Wars game where you fly space ships and fight other space ships, but it's all in first-person, so you see out of the pilot cockpit.
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