SOMA

I cannot help but feel this game has been incredibly over-hyped over the years. It is not the worst game I have ever played, and it does have great atmosphere, but it's outshined by other games that did it better, notably Alien: Isolation, which came out one year before Soma did. Soma's gameplay amounts to being a walking simulator. It's incredibly linear, and lacks urgency. You will encounter trivial puzzles, like "find the code," or "find the sweet spot." They're not particularly engaging. You do have to sneak around monsters who shamble around a given area, and they are the only dangers you will face. I played Soma on Normal Mode because I felt Safe Mode would be cheating. But you can easily outrun the monsters, so you might as well play the game in Safe Mode because it would be the same. Doing so comes with the added benefit of being able to progress when one of the monsters is camping at the entrance of an area you're supposed to go to, which makes the game incredibly unenjoyable to play. The main character is also not particularly likable. It seems like the developers wanted him to as ignorant as the player, which is fine. But it seems like they couldn't make up their mind if they also wanted him to be either a jerk or whiny. One moment he's going "yeah, whatever," then the next, "but there are monsters outside." Good grief. The story can be summarized as a analyizing Nozick's Experience Machine thought experiment from another perspective. If you know what I am talking about, then you already understand. Many people seem to find this concept mind-blowing. It may be the fact I am far more well-read in philosophy than most people, but whatever the reason, Soma's premise does not offer me anything I have not already familiar with, and I think other franchises have done a better job of it. But for as much as I've trash-talked Soma, it's worth playing if it's on sale. Form your own opinion. That's my hot take on Soma, thanks for reading.

Meh. Nice story shame about the repetative aimless wandering.

Really enjoyed this game, had a good mix of suspense and puzzle solving. As far as being scary, not so much, Alien Isolation was much, much scarier. Still a good game and worth playing.

One of the best games I've played in my entire life.

An absolute masterpiece of atmosphere, interactive story telling, and good old-fashioned body horror. One of the best games I've played in a long time.