SOMA puts players in the body of Simon Jarrett, a fairly typical early 20s male who, for reasons I won’t spoil, finds himself aboard a strange vessel. Is it a ship? A starbase? Perhaps a deep ocean underwater facility on Earth? In what feels like somewhat of a blend of some of the best elements of System Shock and Bioshock, SOMA asks the player some very deep questions. Ideas like what is it to be human? Can a sentient robot be human? If you did a braindump of someone’s existence and ported it to another carrier, does that person still exist?
These questions are ones the player will have time to ponder for themselves as they’re navigating through Pathos II, a multi-site underwater research and energy-creating facility in a near future Earth. I’m going to tip-toe around spoilers as best I can here since SOMA relies heavily (and effectively!) on its well written and paced story, and it’s one that you’re like to get snared into. I wasn’t too interested at first, though. Due to embargo reasons, I can’t talk about the first hour or so of the game, but my interest in Simon and the story at this point was pretty tepid. In fact, I never really got to “liking” Simon much anyway, but the story gets vastly more intriguing once a key event occurs early on and you enter the heart of the game.
Similar to Frictional’s previous titles, it’s safe to expect excellent lighting and intimidating environments. SOMA’s horror comes from a continual uneasiness, not jump scares or gore. While there is some gore, it’s hardly the focal point. You’re likely to also get startled a time or two as well, for me it was a few of the scripted events that you sort of accidentally witness and in that split second I was like “yikes!” and quickly took cover. I know that’s super vague, but again, trying to avoid spoilers. Hiding and stealthing your way around some areas is absolutely vital; Simon has no real defense other than to remain hidden from the zombie like enemies that you encounter in some areas. When they’ve discovered you, their previous lethargic lumbering changes into a fast saunter. Simon can run, and with impressive stamina for a horror game (Castellanos from The Evil Within has about 1/10th of this stamina) so you can evade them if you’re actions are swift enough. Still, it’s nonetheless a chilling experience to hear and see these Proxies and other monstrosities coming after you. And I loved how the screen glitches when you’re close to them due to electromagnetic interference.
I will say that while these moments are nicely done and do change up the pacing and increase the intensity and sense of dread, I’m glad Frictional chose to limit these encounters. They do not make up the majority of the gameplay, rather, simply exploring, speaking with Catherine the primary NPC, and solving puzzles is what you’ll spend most of your time doing. The gameworld looks great, I especially liked the underwater explorations, and the music is perfectly ambient during these times as well. Frictional did a stellar job of mixing dark, abandoned and generally spooky indoor office/lab environments with expansive, often colorful outdoor (yet underwater) ones. I was really impressed with the puzzle design too and what basically amounts to the lack of an inventory system. The puzzles are some of the most logical I have experienced in an adventure game. With some attention and observation, you can solve them with little to no backtracking or headaches in general; I never looked up a guide or a hint at all, and that was nice. The inventory is kept intentionally lean, and better yet, Simon will automatically pull out the object to be used when you hover over the in-world item it needs to interact with. This type of design is not something I would want for a point-and-click adventure game, but SOMA is more of a first person, story based horror/stealth game than a classical point and click adventure.
That said, the combination of the puzzles being sensible and an actual treat to figure out, the inventory more or less taking care of itself, the HUD being practically non-existent in a good way, the controls being simple and effective, and the lack of any kind of upgrade system — amongst other design ideas, too — I commend SOMA for essentially getting out of its own way. And by this I mean that, the core value of this game is in the experience itself, it’s in the story and your traversal through it. An average player is not going to get hung up on puzzles or dying constantly, and you don’t have any collectibles or upgrades or any of that better-utilized-in-other-games type of stuff to get in the way of a fantastic experience. On the same token, and this should be obvious but I’ll mention it anyway, SOMA is not a casual visual novel by any means either, there is plenty of true gameplay here, much more than like Gone Home or KHOLAT, for example. It’s a relatively lengthy game with multiple gameplay elements, but they supplement the main value of the game rather than do anything to get in the way of it.
To be sure, the pros of SOMA far outweigh its cons. My other notes and memos from the game are primarily positive, and I’ll share those here, although they’re a bit random. First, let’s talk about saving and loading. I liked that when I stopped playing and came back and reloaded my progress, the game offered a one or two line synopsis of the current situation. That’s a minor touch, but it’s nice to have that during the (brief) loadscreen. The game automatically saves at certain points obviously, but the player is welcome to save when they want to, however, you can only Save & Exit. So don’t expect to quick save/load your way through this and I actually, to even my own surprise, liked that I couldn’t just do that as I might have otherwise. Basically I had the option to play more or save and quit out (and then have to reload), but not wanting to waste time, I found that not being able to quicksave made me just a bit more engaged during those potential death sequences so that I could survive them on the first go, even if it took a bit longer due to playing cautious. I also liked that how when you’re taken out by a monster, it’s not an instant gameover, you get a sort of second wind, and while you’re hurting, and your vision is glitchy, you can still carry on until you heal, I preferred this to a game over screen.
Other random notes: the physics. The physics can be a little goofy, not so much because of the game engine or any technical reason, but as the player you might be tempted to trash every office, for example, that you encounter. It’s kind of funny to be honest the first few times (ok, ten times), but this type of goofiness can reduce the sense of fear and dread that the game is otherwise doing a very good job of promoting. So on that note, I would just say don’t tarnish the game for yourself by picking up and tossing items around if that’s something that might actually taint the mood for you. Anyway, another random thought is that I liked finding data buffers and logs and things of characters that I would eventually encounter, it gave them, and thus the game as a whole, more robustness and “surface area to care about,” if you know what I mean. I recently played through STASIS for example and the difference I’m getting at is that is that with that game, you never really got to meet the NPCs you read and heard about, making it a lot less likely that you would care anything for them.
With that, let’s head on to the summary…
