fate/hollow ataraxia - wait no come back. i like how it's a visual novel that really treats the various slice-of-life scenes you can pick and choose at your leisure as all contributing to the overall experience at every 'checkpoint' that unlocks the next set of main story scenes and more slice-of-life content. just structurally a very strong method of conveying character and it fits incredibly thematically with fate overall and what the game specifically is going for.

voices of the void - building the muscle memory on how to keep all of the old as fuck soviet-era systems for a bunch of satellites in the swiss alps going hits so fucking good. moving around and the physicality of the spaces is also really really cool. i also think the different ways the horror can affect your screen and UI and the Game Itself is immensely strong. just feels good to play.

pathologic 2 - feels bad to play, which is basically exactly what it is going for. p3 is going for a lot more of an 'actual playable and not-frustrating' experience which is like, better for the game overall, but you really do feel misery and how it hits when you die and fuck up in pathologic 2 where the amalgam of pathologic 3 really just means you can shoot yourself in the head like a dozen times before it actually has consequences.

dead space - the first one. the original not the remake. the stomp one of the greatest actions you can perform in a video game ever. it's so fucking good.

beyond citadel - probably my favorite shooter ever. just one that feels incredibly intentional to move and flow and shoot through. i don't love 'movement shooters' or the score-chasing stuff like ultrakill so i like that alongside getting wall-running and triple jumps and other weird movement stuff the game rarely wants you to platform and all of the motion is just in service of making the moment-to-moment gunplay more interesting. and it already: fucking rules. it's so good to have to unload a clip and try and avoid enemies until you can unjam a gun and reload and start blasting again playing on higher difficulties is so fucking cool.