I was thinking a lot about this rating. I wanted to give this a 4/5 but the game reeks of arrogance. Even if this game was perfect its creators shouldn't sh*t on other games and/or companies. The metafiction is also too much. I don't want to hear lectures on designing games while the game isn't designed properly. For example: There are many occasions when it is obvious what needs to be done, but I just can't do it at that moment, because some other unrelated event hasn't happened yet! (I don't want to spoil anything, but you'll see). The casual mode is also broken. I was ~25% through the game when I realized that most items aren't necessary and I have no use for them (they would have been useful for hard mode). I didn't want to lose my progress, but this way I had to carry a lot of useless junk around. All in all, this is a good game, it will give you at least 15 hours of fun, but it is nowhere near classics like Grim Fandango or even games like Gemini Rue.
When I finished SOMA it reminded me of how much I liked the story of the Talos Principle despite how mind-blowingly hard the puzzles were in it. My brain was literally hurting but I just couldn't stop playing it, because it was so immersive. I felt the same with SOMA, but instead of being extremely hard, it is extremely nerve-racking. The horror is constant, you always fear what you'll see beyond the next corner. There were parts where I was literally suffering, it was that horrible (not horrible as in BAD, but horrible as in HORROR). I've played dozens of horror games, and none of them can hold a candle to SOMA. I'd like to give this a 5/5 but I can't because the immersive gameplay and the superb story are overshadowed by the permanent nerve damage you'll surely suffer while playing through it.
This is one of my all time favorites. They just got almost everything perfectly right. I played this like 3 times and there are still some secrets in the game which I haven't solved. The combat is very hard, the story is perfect and the only thing I can mention is the horrible looking models and the respawn system (monsters respawn on levels). It is a shame that Ken Levine copy-pasted the story of System Shock 2 into Bioshock because this game had all the original ideas and plot twists. I think this is where the e-mail messages / voice recordings idea was invented for the first time. The character improvement system is unrivaled. I am yet to see another game which executes this first-person-horror-rpg-adventure genre so well.
I've played plenty of adventure games from the Amiga era (Future Wars) to new games like Soma and this is simply the best. Not because of the graphics but the immersive story and the sheer length of the game itself. Don't wait and buy this one and prepare for a very long journey! The only way this game can be improved is some kind of remaster since it didn't age well.
