SOMA

I only had to look up the solution to a puzzle once because the way it worked was entirely unintuitive to me, but other than that they fit the narrative and the structure of the world well.

Exploring Pathos-II was an absolute joy and I felt genuinely curious at times, disturbed, sad, even shed a few tears during moments of the story or when finding a particularly disturbing scene halfway through the game.

Despite the gameplay being not really gripping me that much, what absolutely gripped me was the atmosphere, worldbuilding, sound design and narrative that is spun throughout the game.

Yes there are monsters, yes there is atmosphere and great sounds and lighting, but I kind of figured out very fast that if a monster touches you, it just kinda knocks you out and moves you a few feet away from it rather than actually killing you, it just takes a chunk of your health and then resets back to its normal mode rather than being a persistent chase that ends in your proper death.

The pacing is perfect and progress is never too difficult to figure out, and the way the story unfolds is masterful.

Underwater sections are surprisingly heavy especially at 4k netting me sub 30 fps but the game looks fine at 1440p and never dropped below 60 fps.