The horror in SOMA

[Streetboat]

well it was a different kind of scary. it was 'dread' scary, rather than 'danger' scary. TDD's scares came from the fact that you never knew if there was another monster around the corner, or (for the first half or so of the game), what they even looked like. AMFP was scary because the atmosphere was absolutely and completely oppressive and lonely. the sound design in AMFP is the best I've ever heard in any game to date, and that was like 85% of the reason it made me absolutely hate going down deeper into the machine, because i actually felt like i was getting further and further from sanity.

think of it like this: TDD is like waterboarding, and AMFP is like the chinese water-drop torture.

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at any rate, i think SOMA will make me shit my pants. I know everyone seems to think the monster they revealed is lame and a 'disco ball grunt', but I thought it was terrifying. everything has a very menacing loom to it underwater, and the silent nature of the way that monster could slowly plod up to you from afar, glowing hypnotically (many underwater creatures have bright flashy colors on them to ward off predators or warn of danger) is freaky as fuck, and then suddenly its RIGHT THERE IN YOUR FACE and god knows what it does to attack you! to me, that's some scary shit, and that's just the first monster to be revealed.

some people were saying they wanted to see a deep-sea fish be at least one of the monsters, and I disagree. it's not as scary being chased by a beast, because it's just a beast. you know you can outsmart it if you want to. an unknown humanoid, though, is terrifying because you don't know how smart it can be. with the advances in AI technology lately, I hope frictional is making their humanoid monsters be as devious as possible.