SOMA

1!

Good

ye

Before anything else: Yes the story is good and the game is very provacative. I really enjoyed myself when the narrative was in full swing and could appreciate the odyssey that I was taking part in. This is enough for some people and if you are fine with playing walking simulators then this is probably the best the genre has to offer. But I am not a fan of walking simulators and this is undoubtably one. The gameplay has been reduced from previous frictional games and it doesn't help that this is hardly a horror game. The monsters pose little threat to you, there is no resource management or combat, and the inventory has been streamlined so you don't have to ever think about it. To me, these elements do the opposite and make it harder for me to get immersed because I don't feel like i'm interacting with the world in a meaningful way. The game does offer alternative moral decisions and a lot of voice acting which does give the game some replay value but I still have no desire to return to the game and see what I missed. If the monsters had better AI or acted more agressively, and if you had better ways to interact with them outside of your usual running and a few gimmicks then I probably wouldn't have been so upset that it doesn't have the usual mechanics of a survival horror. If there were more puzzles with harder difficulty I might even forgive the weak monsters, but really I just felt like the game was a slog. Again, this game is going to work for some people, and I can imagine that a person who usually isn't good with horror would be able to handle this. The story can be intersting enough to hide its faults, and if anything i'm glad this game exist since it was clearly made with passion and creativity. I just wish that the underlying game was more appealing.

Like the idea where you start questioning your own existence