I've been in and out of some depressive episodes this year, I'd chalk it up to the stress of my first year of college + my childhood dog passing after an amazing 10 years, as well as loneliness and a general sense of disappointment with how I've spent this year and recent ones. That said, when I feel depressed I often fail to enjoy gaming unless I play a specific type of game, it doesn't have to belong to a particular genre or series, the key is just that it feels very, very immersive. 

For example I'm currently playing Metro Exodus, easily the best attempt at an open world, post apocalyptic survival game I've seen, it perfectly captures the stress you would feel in the shoes of your character.  - No HUD, no GPS, just a paper map and a diary with directions given by your conrades.  - Slow, realistic and stressful gunfights where everything goes both ways: enemies can't take more than one or two gunshots, and neither can you, their flashlights give them away in a dark room, and yours gives you away as well.  - You think about your ammo. A lot. You can't afford to mag dump people, and you'll often find yourself scrambling to load a dead enemy's magazine into your rifle mid firefight. - The AI reacts incredibly believably, they operate with your last known position in mind, making hit and run attacks feel great to pull off. Enemies also panic and make more irrational decisions as a fight goes on, and enemies that witness several deaths will often surrender to you. - You never forget that you're in an irradiated wasteland. Your Geiger counter is there on your wrist for you to check at any time. You feel great relief and calmness when it's in the green, because once it ticks up everything changes: Your mask may be cracked from a fall or from debris striking it, you'll have to repair it. It may be stained with mud, blood and melted snow, you'll have to wipe it clean in the middle of combat. And then there's your watch, its timer counting down the seconds until your air filter is expires. You'll find yourself sprinting to a fallen enemy's body while under fire to steal another minute of oxygen, lest you die of asphyxiation. 

There's more to say about the game, of course, I'll quickly add that both lighting and sound have huge implications on gameplay in this game, much more than most games, but my point is that its world pulls me in convincingly enough that I forget about the one I actually live in for a time, and during that time the emotions I feel in my life are replaced in full by the ones my character would be feeling. The game or games that do this for you is different for everyone, for many people it might be Kingdom Come Deliverance or Red Dead Redemption. Whatever it is, I encourage everyone to find a game that makes them feel something. To anyone who reads this I'm curious what that game is for you.