Hey all, I’m on the hunt for games that really suck you into their world, the kind where you look up and suddenly three hours have gone by.

Games I’ve loved and couldn’t put down:

  • Plague Tale
  • Horizon
  • Subnautica
  • Mass Effect
  • Expedition 33
  • Homeworld

Doesn’t matter the gente, as long as it’s got that vibe where you just exist in the atmosphere and forget about everything else.

What are your go-to games when you want to disappear into another world? Bonus appreciation if it’s something underrated or off the beaten path.

Edit: Thank you all. I will definitely keep this thread bookmarked. You all dwarved what I found on Reddit ir any other platform! Well done!

  • Dzheyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    21·
    1 day ago

    Ah yes, the game definitely isn’t the issue. I should have just known that hitting the prompt to wave to a passing by stagecoach twice in a row was against the law somehow. In a game I just started playing. Yep, definitely a skill issue.

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Howdy stranger. Are you just waving down random stagecoaches wearing a gun in order to say hi and be friendly-like, or is your intent to draw your weapon and deprive us of our property and/or our lives? Because if you’re going to rob us, I am afraid to inform you that I will be taking defensive action that might include running away and/or killing you. It’s fine either way, but I just want to be crystal clear about your intentions and I want you to be crystal clear about the consequences of your each and every action beforehand so there are no untoward surprises.

      Absolutely gripping gameplay and dialogue.

      • Dzheyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        12 hours ago

        Look, on one hand I see your point, but on the other it’s a fuckin game and tutorials are a thing. Except apparently when they aren’t. It’s the wild west, by the amount of people that were shooting at me afterwards it’s clear just about everyone carries a gun so…not sure what your point there is either. Contrary to popular belief, you can indeed be carrying a gun without the intent to use it on every person you have an interaction with. My intention? New town. Talk to NPCs. Stage coach rolls by and button prompt pops up to wave? I do. It pops up again? I do it again to see what happens, to see if the dialogue changes. Chaos ensues followed by a quick death that didn’t make sense to me right off the bat. Games can be flawed. I don’t have to love a beloved game just because people think I should.

        • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          I think people are objecting because you are asking it to be something it isn’t.

          An open world game is something you immerse yourself in and you learn as you go. It is 100% incompatible with strict “win conditions” for every instance. Example: I was playing Fallout: New Vegas and ran into a character who was trying to collect bottlecaps. I offered her some of mine, but, discovering I had bottlecaps, she wanted all of them and IMMEDIATELY started shooting. That was a fun experience, not quite emergent game play, but at least surprising. That is the fun of open world games, they can be unpredictable and context-dependent, and sometimes you only know the context by getting shot at. Your job is to learn the rules of the world as best you can. Though I do understand why you get frustrated, I think it just indicates that open world games are just a genre that you don’t enjoy, or at least there are aspects of them that rub you the wrong way.

          It would be like if I said, “I don’t like tetris because it doesn’t have a story. Like, where are the cutscene animatics? Where is the character development?”

          Edit: Might be better to say “A to Rob Stagecoach”, but that is kind of implying your intent, when all your character is doing is waving it down to stop it, and the response depends on the context… like now every prompt has to predict what the response of the action will be.

          • Dzheyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            This has been the best take I’ve seen on my issue with the game so far. Cuz you’re right, I’m not super hot on open world games. Saying that, I did indeed take the whole experience as a learning moment but the game in general just didn’t keep my interest afterwards. That was just the most memorable part of the game in my brief time trying it out.

            And look, while I completely understand that not every game is gonna hand hold (I honestly prefer they don’t), I do expect some sort of in-game example or…hell, even some side dialogue saying that could happen that could still be fully in-world and immersive. The game is huge, it’s gonna have some flaws here and there, and at the end of the day it just wasn’t for me. And me having an issue with a small part of the game has clearly rubbed some people the wrong way, and me the wrong way in their response.

      • Dzheyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I do believe I said it definitely isn’t the games fault for not telling me about a mechanic that would have me shot at and killed. We’ve already established that it’s absolutely my fault for not knowing something I wasn’t taught in-game before it happened. The game is without flaws. Perfect. 10 out of 10. Impossible for someone to have a bad time in without it being their own fault.