I would probably recommend Alien: Isolation. (This post is a bit long, sorry about that)
Setup: You take the role of Amanda Ripley investigating the space station called Sevastopol for evidence on her mother's disappearance. When you arrive however, you find that the station has divided into groups willing to do whatever is necessary to survive, all in fear of some mysterious creature lurking in the shadows, killing them one by one.
Atmosphere: Phenomenal. I have a very high tolerance for scary and/or unnerving atmospheres, and this is one of the few games I've played that made me jump so bad that my hands completely left the keyboard (many times). Even the easy areas give you a sense of dread, much of which is because of a fantastically designed main antagonist (The alien if you didn't guess). The audio and visual design keeps you on the edge of your seat, and I still shudder every time I hear the stomping of the alien's feet nearby. The way the alien is designed, it only needs to catch you to kill you, and it moves incredibly fast, and it'll hear you if you run a single step. I've played a lot of games, and very few things manage to capture that same fear I feel when I hear the alien's footsteps speed up, meaning it either heard or saw me. This game doesn't rely on bad jumpscare mechanics. It doesn't need to. The alien is far scary enough.
Mechanics: This game is a stealth based survival-horror game that does a great job handling and balancing mechanics. It has crafting that is important, but not overused. All enemies you encounter pose a threat and have different methods for escaping, distracting, or best yet, avoiding them. Many situations need you to use a very tactical approach to get through, keeping track of the nearest hiding spots while setting up a distraction to lure the enemies away from that door you need to get through. And this game has one of the best death/save mechanics I have ever seen:
When you die, you are reverted to your last save-point. There's typically one or two manual save points across each level, and it doesn't autosave unless you complete a level. The reason I like this so much is because you can save any time you want (there is a cooldown, but it isn't that long), but you usually have to make the choice between risking the slow, tedious journey back to the save point, or trying to just keep going on with your current task. The reason I like this so much is because I'm never furious because I died and lost all my progress during a particularly difficult part of the game, instead, I think about how I could have done things differently. Maybe I should have taken the time to return to the save-point after turning the power back on instead of just trying to keep going. This means that I don't get annoyed at the game for having bad save locations and forcing a segment to be more tedious than it needed to be by refusing to give you checkpoints and that sort of thing.
To summarize, it really is a great game and I highly recommend everyone try it out. I did the best I could with describing the game and its mechanics, but I know I didn't do it justice. Really the only way you can truly understand how great of a game this is would be by playing it yourself.
Good luck to all the other entries and thank you GOG for the giveaway!
Post edited November 03, 2021 by BeetleIII
