REVIEW

SOMA Review

by Liam Gittins, October 2nd, 2015

SOMA is the new title for PlayStation 4 and PC brought to you by Frictional Games who previously brought us Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game that I cannot play to this day because I am far too terrified to go up against the Lovecraftian monstrosity that stalks you throughout. My plans were originally to have the same approach with SOMA, but as I’m reviewing it I had to put aside my fears and experience the game, albeit through partially closed eyes and possibly a pillow.

The gameplay of SOMA can be easily described as a game of hide and seek, you must make your way through the underwater ruins of a facility named PATHOS-II whilst avoiding the mechanical monstrosities that now house it. Throughout your time in PATHOS-II you slowly unravel the mystery as to how the facility to came to this and what happened to the employees.

The mechanics are fairly similar to those of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. You interact with objects in your environment with the click of your mouse button. If you with to slide open a door you click and drag it to the side, if you’re bored and want to start throwing the contents of the room around then you can simply hold the left mouse button to pick it up and then throw with the right. That’s pretty much all the interaction you will have with the environment, nothing more than doors and switches, but you don’t really need much more than that to truly experience SOMA.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I originally planned to play this title in 5 minute segments, because horror games usually only take 5 minutes before the tension became too much and I have to turn the game off and walk away. I didn’t experience this with SOMA; don’t get me wrong SOMA is not doing its job badly but it is by no means a scary title. Some moments will be tense and the atmosphere of the game can be filled with dread, but I felt no need ‘NOPE’ out of the experience. This was due to the fact that I didn’t find the enemies physically terrifying, the enemies of this title being the murderous robots, they look like standard robots, they made a panicking noise if they were to spot you but the sight of them didn’t make me feel like I should cease playing.

This could be considered disappointing for those of you who are looking for a game to give you a cheap scare, but it became clear from very early on in the title that SOMA never had the intention to leave you with a hollow horror experience and instead wants to offer an interesting Sci-Fi mystery storyline which takes place in a dystopian, underwater world.

One phrase comes to mind when considering SOMA and that is ‘SOMA sits upon the shoulders of giants’. Many elements of the game seem to be borrowed from other titles. The interaction gameplay being similar to Frictional’s previous title: Amnesia, the underwater dystopian feel from Bioshock and the hide and seek gameplay similar to that of Alien Isolation, but it takes all of these gameplay elements and ties them together to create a unique video game experience.

SOMA doesn’t come without a few gripes though. In traditional horror game format, there are moments in the game where you cannot progress without solving a puzzle or finding a solution in order to progress, most of the puzzles in SOMA are well thought and out and are still entertaining, but every now and then you will come across a puzzle where the only solution is to ‘find x and bring back’ which can sometimes come across as a very boring and lazy puzzle to throw into the game in order to make it feel like a longer gaming experience for the player, it is nothing but filler to prevent progression.

My other gripe with the game are the moments where you leave the inside of PATHOS-II and walk around the ocean floor, you would think exploring the dark depths of the ocean would be terrifying and interesting in the messed up world of SOMA, in reality it slows down the pace of the game and can be a fairly dull experience despite it being a rather pretty sight.

Despite this minor faults, SOMA still proves itself as an entertaining and narratively exquisite title that will sate your storytelling and scary cravings for the entirety of its 10 hour playing time.