Space station 13

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.

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.

Is it cheating to pick an immersive sim? Probably the original Bioshock. I know it was dumbed down from System Shock 2 (which I later played and enjoyed). But when I was a teenager and played it for the first time I was completely pulled into that world.

Similar but distinct runner up would go to Metroid Prime which my child brain found unbelievably immersive. It is exactly like what I’d imagine exploring an alien planet to feel like.

Honourable mention to Dark Souls 1 where the mythology feels simultaneously vague and fleshed out. Somehow the vagueness adds to the authenticity. Your actions mattering and killable NPCs also help.

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.

Stray

Civ II

Rhythm games. I’m not getting immersed in the theming or story generally, but immersed by way of losing my attention span for anything else!

I can think of two, for different reasons

1. Planetside, it was an MMOFPS made in 2003. It’s hard to describe but having sieges where you actually had to take time to get to the battle, organise people to drive transports, etc; or on the other side end up stuck guarding a door from constant attack for half an hour, was really immersive. (Like everything sony makes, the sequel was terrible)

2. The original steel battalion, a mech sim for the original xbox with a massive dual joystick controller, that would delete your save game if you didn’t hit the eject button before blowing up.

This is the controller:

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.

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.

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.

dying light. i forgot to eat for 10 straight hours when playing that. was kinda short though.

Super Mario on a Gameboy, by a pool, when I wasn’t paying attention.

The Mass Effect Trilogy. Just can’t stop playing that game haha