GTFO, the survival horror first-person shooter game from independent studio 10 Chambers, can be experienced in all its notoriously difficult glory either solo, via online matchmaking, or by making a lobby with your friends. The latter, however, is definitely the best way to experience this game.
In GTFO, players assume the roles of prisoners who are deployed to an abandoned underground research facility known as the Complex in order to complete objectives, which involve overcoming increasingly difficult challenges. The nature of the game makes teamwork vital, and thus a great game for friends to play together. Here is why GTFO should be the next game for friend groups seeking a new cooperative experience.
Cooperation in GTFO Is Essential
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As the game’s tagline, “Work together or die alone” suggests, GTFO is a game where cooperation with your teammates is the key to success. The facility is swarming with hostile mutated creatures of many varieties that will usually be in a dormant state when encountered. The ideal way to dispatch these enemies is stealth kills, which requires teamwork, as mistiming a kill can potentially awake the other enemies in the room. The team will need to communicate in order to sync up their kills, assign targets to individual players, and also to sweep the room, and inform the team of any other sleepers in the area.
Each mission will periodically force the players to fight a large horde of enemies. To survive these, players must work together and decide which tools should be used where, and also where each player should position themselves. The enemies in GTFO do very high damage and move fast and erratically, and an uncoordinated team will not survive for long. Also, resources such as ammo, tool refills, and health packs are rare and subject to RNG, so distribution of them according to need is non-negotiable. The intense cooperation required to succeed makes playing with people you know a far superior choice to going it solo or matchmaking with strangers.
GTFO Is a Highly Immersive Experience
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GTFO goes the extra mile when it comes to making the foreboding, labyrinthine Complex feel real, and the player’s role as an unwilling prisoner sent into its dark depths even more so. As the player finds themselves surrounded by sprawling corridors, dense fog, and pitch blackness, they will certainly feel like they are right in the middle of somewhere they shouldn’t be. The constant atmosphere of dread and mystery makes it difficult for the mind to wander. Also, the game mechanics are represented in immersive ways. For example, the player’s HUD is what is displayed in the character’s helmet visor, and enemy alertness levels are shown through animations rather than a stealth meter on the HUD.
The immersion is made stronger by the weakness of the player characters. Enemies take a significant amount of health off when they attack, and their movements make aiming at them very difficult, especially considering there is no aim assist in this game. Combat with the enemy feels like a frantic scrap to merely survive, and stealth sections have no room for mistakes. The immersive nature of GTFO makes it an incredible game to play with friends because when everyone is fully engrossed in their roles, it feels more like a shared experience and will provide quality memories.
GTFO Is Terrifying
The feeling of helplessness in the dark, the tension of being one mistake away from death, and the horrifying enemy designs make for an experience that is nothing less than downright frightening. The mutated creatures within the Complex have humanoid bodies but move in unnatural ways, which seriously evoke the uncanny valley effect. They have incredibly monstrous features, such as heads split down the middle, rows of sharp teeth, and tentacles with which to strike. The intensity of trying to stealthily dispatch a wandering Scout enemy without startling it and causing it to summon a horde will have the team’s hearts in their throats.
The success of games such as SCP: Secret Laboratory, Phasmophobia, and Dead by Daylight has shown that people love experiencing horror in a group. In a similar vein to how people like going to see scary movies with friends, horror games experienced socially can provide great shared memories on which to look back, while at the same time softening the intensity for those who can’t stomach it alone. In these regards, GTFO is no exception, and friend groups who venture into the dark and foreboding Complex together will certainly be talking about it for a long time to come.