Hell Let Loose. Guns, grenades artillery all hit home. Each weapon is distinctive as well, play enough and you can distinguish what’s around you just by the sound of the weapon theyre shooting.

The original Half Life, (which, BTW, is free on Steam at the moment for those young whippersnappers that have never played it), was a masterpiece of aural immersion - particularly for the time it came out.

I downloaded it this weekend (as its free and god knows where my original discs are) and immediately got all goosebumpy at the ambient sounds - even in the training course.

All the environmental effects, echo, distortion, occlusion, the radio chatter, and even the little skittering insects and things you can hear scurrying about were unheard of (excuse the pun), or at least not done so well, at the time, and they still hold up today, 25 years on.

Dead space Remake

Alan Wake 2 is next level on sound design. They did that shit in that game Audibly that hasn’t ever been done before or that well.

I can only think of Rhythm games like Guitar Hero (Clone Hero) and Osu for example. Loved playing them

Just this year, I guess Resident Evil 4, Dead Space and Alan Wake 2 would really benefit from good headphones.

Older, different and shorter, you can try Inside.

Pathologic 2 sounds incredible

Of recent games I’ve played, Alan Wake 2 had amazing audio design, especially with headphones on. On more than one occasion I thought I was being attacked by enemies because animals would rustle around in trees. I was also jump scared by a water cooler once because I thought it was one of the puddle enemies.

Fnaf

Returnal

Also, /r/headphones is leaking with the wild Ifi audio sighting

As an oldie Doom but there was one of the alien games I played a demo of, that to me had a really eerie audio although it could have been because my love of the films.