SOMA Member Review Thread

[dhollmusik]

Some good reading in this thread. Soma's an 8/10 for me. As comparison TDD is a 9/10 and BP also 8/10. All high scores in my book so big praise to Frictional!

pros, with cons in bold:

- one of the best stories I've ever played: the kind of story you think about long after finishing, might even be number one. Certainly up there with FFVII and KOTOR. Where FFVII was emotional and KOTOR full of gorgeous lore SOMA was deeply philosophical, and most closely matches my preferred reading matter (hard sci-fi). It was told skillfully, was genuinely mature and ended well...a rare feat.

- masterful atmosphere, especially during the Abyss storm section. The sound design played a huge role too.

- high-quality voice acting: naturalistic and believable. The only issue I had was that a lot of the voices have a too similar tone to each other (light, mid-range, young, American). Practically, it meant I sometimes had trouble making out which character was speaking. Aesthetically, it sometimes sounded monotone (the tone, not the delivery). This varied some more as the game progressed. It's a minor issue.

- puzzles were refreshingly natural and non-repetitive, but this also meant they weren't complex puzzles and they often lacked 'gameplay' elements (compare with the best puzzles from Black Plague & Amnesia). My gf often complained "they should've made it into a movie if they didn't wanna include too much gaming". We're not fans of walking simulators but are avid film watchers. When we play a game, we wanna 'play'.

- the game mostly felt very linear, you could just follow the route, pull the switches and the game would keep pushing you forward. It lacked the sense of freedom-of-movement and tactile control of objects previous FG titles had. Even glass bottles didn't smash when you threw them: a minor detail sure, but part of what diminished the gameplay element.

- the environments, while effective, became a bit samey. Most base-sections looked alike, and the ocean floor areas especially were almost indistinguishable from each other (until the Abyss).

- the monsters' behaviour became annoying rather than terrifying or disturbing. In Amnesia and Black Plague they were a crucial element to the immersion, but in Soma their hostile nature felt forced and ultimately non-essential to the experience. And avoiding them lacked deeper and varied gameplay elements. Halfway-through I went for the WUSS mode: this paid dividends as without the stress of avoiding enemies the experience became more visceral & horrific as you could really imagine yourself in it. Another plus of this mod was you could take a better look at the mutated beings roaming the game: they still follow you around but instead of attacking the way they just hover near you is arguably more unsettling as it's probably more realistic in how a WAU-flavoured cyborg mutant would behave.


Among all those niggles, it's testament to how exceptionally strong the story's execution was that I still score it an 8.


Thomas and co. have indicated that they may go down a more interactive-movie route for the next games. I fear that won't appeal to us. That said FG deserve plaudits (and healthy sales) for SOMA.