Quick Look: SOMA

I mean you also solve puzzles, read e-mails and other world-building information, and talk with characters and learn more about the world and story. It's pretty reductive to say you just run and hide. Alex barely even did any in this QL, and even then he did more hiding than was probably necessary.

I'm really enjoying the game, I think I'm past most of the "twists" and am really enjoying the story and game flow. For most of the game you feel like you have a real objective, which feels different than Amnesia from what I remember (ha).

Good game. Completed it yesterday.

While I did find the monster parts scary (Im a sissy), I don't think the mechanics of it were anything special. But I don't want something like Amnesia where it's literally impossible to play it because it's non-stop terror.

SOMA struck a good balance for me. It was scary at times but the story and exploration really kept me going. I completed it on PS4 and I might buy it for PC as well.

Oh and this Quick Look format does not do this sort of game justice. You need to be alone, listening to the environment and all the little audio queues to really get absorbed into it and freaked out.

What a thought provoking comment...

I agree, man. I wish people would just sack up and play a real survival horror game like Call of Duty or the library from Halo 2.

I really, really enjoyed this game. Yeah, the monsters are really annoying and there are some minor issues, but that does not at all get in the way of this awesome game. I haven't played very many 2015 games, but SOMA is my favorite so far. The story and atmosphere are top notch. I'm not one for audio diaries and emails, but it's presented in such an organic way that I wanted as much supplemental story-telling as I could find to further my understanding overall. Not a lot of movies or video games take place underwater like this, and Frictional just nails it.

Even if you don't like horror, I think you should check it out. One because it's more psychologically horrifying than in-your-face scary, and two because the story is just so good. This isn't like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which was just constant terror with a sparse story connecting it all.

I played it on PS4, which has some issues, but it didn't take away from the experience at all.

As someone who found Amnesia to be boring, ugly and not the least bit scary... I am enjoying Soma quite a bit.

My wife and I have been playing about an hour of Soma every night this past week and I've found it very engaging. I don't find it particularly scary either, but it makes up for the lack of scares with great sound, art direction and a story I'm finding genuinely intriguing and somewhat suspenseful. And though some of the graphics are pretty rough, there are parts - such as the underwater sections - that are actually quite beautiful.

It's totally been worth my $30. (or $26 w/ PS+ discount)

Nope. You should play the game. Also, anyone worrying about a "big twist," don't. SOMA's story goes places, but it isn't built around a twist. It's much more clever than that. As you progress through the game, more and more layers are revealed. It's very intriguing.

I've just got this game and am three hours into it. It is amazing so far!

@uninvincible: true, though I mean more on the "action" front, I'd rather this was sort of an adventure game ala cradle, so you can enjoy the story with all the exploration and whatnot without the obnoxious sequences with the unbeatable enemies from which you can only run and hide.

I guess you could still do a very competent horror game in that format, but perhaps all the suspense of having to evade unbeatable things is what people dig these games for.

Strokes announced they were making a new album this week. Coincidence?

@onarum: My thoughts exactly. I know Amnesia games are all about hiding from some enemy or another, couldn't they have taken that aspect out for this game? Stealth in horror games needs to end, it's not fun in the slightest. I won't be picking this up now because of that. :/

This seems like a neat game to play with the wife. I'll probably grab it once my Steam Link comes in.

"Is he.....is he jammin'?" Cracked me right the hell up.

ENN OORR EEEN ORRR EENNN

I'd watch a playthrough of this for sure.

I can't wait to play this. Gotta get me SOMA that.

I've completed this game, its in my top 5 of the year

I blew through this in 7-8 hours and was disappointed as heck. No idea how you guys took 12 hours. I read all the logs, explored the areas, and never got caught up on anything, except that last monster, the one in the diving suit. Maybe the worst thing to me is that I was the most scared at the very beginning of the game, when you're in Simon's apartment and then the office. Afterwards I felt a bit of tension, then relief upon seeing the first monster, then nothing, really, outside of curiosity as to where the plot was going. The game never managed to spook me, just frustrate me.

As others have said, the stealth hide-from-the-monster sections all felt very clumsy, a bit forced, and provide you with very few hiding places. The enemies tether to you, hard, often simply pacing back and forth past your hiding spot, and then when you move, following or teleporting to you in order to keep doing that until the section is over. As a result, every stealth section boils down to crouching in a corner facing the wall, waiting until they pace away from where you need to go, then crouch-walking to the next hiding spot and doing it again. It felt like a really, really bad Alien: Isolation. Tossing objects doesn't even help because the enemies will just as often run straight at you instead of where you tossed the object. I honestly would've preferred if they'd removed them entirely and just focused their efforts on the story. I'd even have preferred chase sections to the dumb, clumsy stealth.

The story also nosedives after you meet up with Catherine.Everything from that point onward becomes focused on launching the Ark, and all of the mystery inherent to the first 2-3 hours evaporates. There are no twists, everyone is who they say they are, and are completely straight with you, and the entire concept of humans trapped in robot bodies is abandoned for a bunch of guys wrapped in organic goop, like that hasn't been done a thousand times before. The AI villain is also so poorly fleshed out that it might be the worst fictional AI I've ever seen, and you arbitrarily take a detour listening to an impromptu cyberghost to go kill/spare it because ??? Also, Simon is a fucking idiot. They play a few moments off like they're this big surprise, but it's just that Simon is fucking retarded, like the writers thought that just because Simon can't put two and two together, neither can we. They even do the same twist twice, and both times they try to create artificial drama by making him throw a fit and act outraged, even though its been explained to Simon a bunch of times before.If it's not clear, I'm talking about him switching bodies by scanning his brain.

The whole game just felt schizophrenic to me, like they changed writers or staff partway through, or went back and redid large portions of the game without bothering to smooth the transitions. It was a real bummer.

EDIT: Also, someone said there are no mirrors in the game. Untrue. Bathrooms have mirrors and you can totally interact with them and take a good look at your monstrous form. It even has a little interaction with forced camera movement, like when you use the anuses.

Removing the monsters isn't the only answer. Just as we can imagine the game being better without the monsters, I'm sure someone else can think of a way to have monsters in the game in a non-irritating way. The problem is the way the monsters are used in the game, not that there are monsters to begin with.

Why is it that in this video, they just "tap" the anus thing?

In my playthrough, you put your finger in it (and later, more) and the anus practically sucks on it.

man that one AI voice sounded like Helen Mirren

@branthog: I'm pretty sure it's not until around the time you meet up with Catherine that the anuses start sucking your whole hand in. I distinctly remember touching one about a quarter of the way through the game and having it suddenly suck me in, making me think "OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE THERE WERE ACTUAL REPERCUSSIONS TO PUTTING MY HAND THERE"

Did something funky happen with your capture software/hardware? See left side of video. Something to do with capturing from an OpenGL source, perhaps.

Wow, I didn't know this was on PS4 as well. I thought it was just a PC game. That's awesome. I just got it, and by the time I'm done watching this, the game will be about ready to play! I somewhat feel... unequipped? Not sure if that's the right word, but I feel like I wasn't prepared to jump into this, so the time of buying it, and my time of being excited for it coincides, and that's not usual. I don't actually know much about the game either due to not looking into it. It looks like it has a great atmosphere, and I hear it has great sound design too. Good timing. It's the middle of the night, and playing with a home theater system should be a nice experience. I couldn't get into their previous games, though I bought them all, the Penumbra, and Amnesia titles.

This is my favourite game of the year, alongside Until Dawn.

Overall enjoyed the game, but very much agreed with what Keichan had to say.

"That doesn't look good... like windows 10"

Sensational.