Developer: Frictional Games
Publisher: Frictional Games
Rrp: £22.59 (Gog.com) £22.99 (Steam) and £22.99 (Humblebundle)
Released: 22nd September 2015
Available on: Steam, Humblebundle and gog.com
Played Using: Mouse and keyboard
The strange and unfamiliar world creaks and groans around you, the walls are cold and damp. You can hear unintelligible shouting and screaming coming from somewhere near you and all the while a sense of dread and confusion envelopes you. Welcome to the underwater world of Soma.
Soma is a First Person Horror game by the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Decent, the game is set in a facility that is deep under the ocean, but it doesn’t start off that way, it starts in Toronto of all places. You play as Simon Jarrett a young man who due to a accident, sadly doesn’t have too long to live.
The game controls quite a bit like Amnesia: The Dark Decent (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it I guess), you interact with the environment and objects by using the left mouse button. Any item you pick up can be rotated, zoomed in on, dropped and thrown which can really come in handy as a distraction tactic. You also open and close doors etc by holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse in the appropriate direction.
Certain things you interact with will reveal a portion of the story/backstory to whats going on. Its this games equivalent to an audio log. You can only listen to it if you stay within a small distance of the item you touched, quite handy if you are impatient and don’t wish to listen to the whole thing.
Through these audio snippets, paperwork that you can read and some environmental storytelling you can piece together what the hell has happened and has gone on. It’ll be obvious by the end, but you can get some more details and info if you read the paperwork etc scattered about the world.
There are moments of real terror, as you can’t really can’t hide from your pursuers, only run and even then most of them can run faster and for longer than you.
If you get caught you get to continue but your movement will be slowed as if you were injured, which makes sense. However if you get caught again before you get a chance to heal then its back to the last checkpoint for you.
That being said, there are moments where the encounters with enemies can be annoying and tedious. I like stealthy gameplay but having creatures that can track you regardless of how quiet you are is just infuriating.
The enemy designs are wonderfully grotesque with all their odd tumors, mutations and deformities. Frictional Games have really gotten the body horror aspect of this game down pat, if you’re anything like me, they’ll cause you to have a weird almost sympathetic feeling towards them. Even as you flee for your life.
The body horror doesn’t stop with the enemies either, the environments, especially later in the game, feature some elements that made me feel physically uncomfortable.
Believe it or not I didn’t actually like any of the Amnesia series, something about them just didn’t gel with me, Soma however… yeah this one got right under my skin and into my brain.
In many ways this is a game with a philosophical side to it, its not trying to push you to a conclusion one way or another but it does give you enough space to ruminate on the concepts… while trying to not die.
Definitely one to play this Halloween, or any time really.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Outlast
Alien: Isolation
Bioshock
