Five Immersive Games To Survive Valentine’s Day
You’ve been here before, right? It’s Valentine’s Day and you’re single. Admittedly, being a single person on a day dedicated to couples isn’t usually the most fun. Thankfully, if you’re anything like us, you can still enjoy 14th February. For gamers, nothing is better than a truly immersive game. The sort of title that you can totally lose yourself in, barely noticing the hours fly by, until you’ve completed it. These immersive games are often a result of amazing graphics, storylines and cinematics.
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In short, we love games that are almost like movies in parts. The crossovers between movies and games is a well-established one, and if you’re playing or watching online, any movies or games you choose to watch on Valentine’s Day or otherwise – are worth using with a VPN installed. They’re easy to activate, there’s even an aptly-named infographic for Valentine’s Day on streaming with the software, along with movie recommendations if you fancy a change of pace. But if it’s purely a gaming experience you’re after, VPNs will still vastly improve your overall experience. After all, nothing ruins immersion like game lag and timeouts.
So, for all those in need of a survival kit this Valentine’s Day, here are some of the most immersive game picks you can plug into this February.
Metro: Exodus
The Metro series is one of the most underrated and overlooked sets of immersion, FPS games in recent memory. A post-apocalyptic tale set in Moscow, and eventually other parts of Russia, see you wrangling with mutants and the ever-present threat of radiation – all captured in a beautifully designed world. It’s the little details that take Metro: Exodus to that next level.
The panting breath against the inside of your gas mask, the ticking of your oxygen supply falling each time you reach the surface, the thick blackness of the subway tunnels you use to travel around Moscow. With an underlying and genuinely believable love interest that develops through the first two titles, it’s actually even sort of romantic too, right?
Battlefield V
This game, at its highest graphic setting, is stunning. It’s for that reason that players can find themselves so utterly immersed in Battlefield V. The artificial environment of many games is always just that; stubbornly, obviously artificial. Finding those breaks in the coding and map limits always takes us back to the real world again.
Battlefield V bucked that trend by making it one of the most interactive, destructible environments in gaming. That ability to manipulate and shape the world you fight in is where Battlefield V, at times, manages to extend its believability to rival some of the most cinematic movie titles.
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Gone Home
Games like Gone Home are clever in how they construct their immersion. It’s not so much about the graphics or the dialogue options. In fact, Gone Home, like a similar immersive title – Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture – actually features almost no characters beyond the protagonist. What they do is suck you in by asking questions.
Both questions of yourself, and the game itself. Gone Home is simple, centring on the protagonist returning home only to find it empty. An extensive clue-gathering ensues. It’s hard to tell if you’re playing a horror game, a thriller, a mystery, or a romance game at times. That’s what makes it so enticing in essence.
Gone Home prefers to create questions and intrigue, rather than getting wrapped up in making the game as close to reality as possible. It’s a beautifully escapist creation – an important example of storytelling in gaming – which makes it so immersive in the first place.
Lose Yourself
Immersing yourself in a game, whether you choose to while away your Valentine’s Day or not, is a fantastic experience. It’s one of the reasons so many of us fall in love with gaming and continue to enjoy it right through our lives.
The titles above are some of the very best at doing that. Sometimes, it’s creating a world that looks so believable it shocks you, others manage to recreate enough of the intricacies of life to drag you into the story. And some are simply strange enough, filled with just enough mystery, to keep you playing long into the night. They’re the best of gaming and Valentine’s Day seems like the perfect day to show them some love.