Thursday, October 15, 2015

SOMA

WRONGLY LABELLED BUT STILL A REALITY


So,.. I finished Soma last weekend... and it was... great! Really, I absolutely loved playing this game. Not necessarily because I am the fan of horror games but because I am a fan of science fiction and story - which leads right into the first and probably most crucial point you should know about this game: Soma isn't really a horror game! It has horror elements and it keeps you tense for a big part, but it is neither the generic jumpscare-festival we're all fed-up with, nor is it the atmospheric "fear of death" experience the likes of Amnesia.

If anything, don't think you will get a game like Amnesia out of this! They don't have a lot in common. Yes, some core mechanics are similar but Soma has a much greater focus on story as well as graphics. - And the naked dudes were replaced with some killer-zombie-cyborgs btw. On the other hand Soma "lacks" almost any gameplay mechanic other than running, hiding and picking up things for the sole purpose of rotating them in your hand. It certainly misses everything that made Amnesia what it was; there is no light/dark mechanic, so subsequently also nothing - let me repeat that: nothing - to collect at all,... not even matches to light candles, the monster encounters are far less tactical and a lot easier to manage and luckily we've lost all the medieval torture devices.

The story of Soma (here on Steam) takes place in a future about 100 years from now, if I remember correctly. It is a future where basically everything on our planet is destroyed and clouds of dust darken the sky. All of mankind was extinct by a meteor and the only installation that survived the impact is a collection of connected underwater facilities on the bottom of the ocean. Before facing global extinction humanity put all effort into a final project to preserve some sort of legacy. - Of course, nothing short of scanning brains and then copying people to a computer, placed in a self-sustained space module with a continuously running computer simulation.

Well,... at least that was the plan and of course something went wrong; the ark (the computer) never got loaded on the space module and the space module (satellite/rocket) never got launched to space. So now it is your task to find out what went wrong and to finish the job, for the sake of humanity, of course. - Pretty much for a guy who just (in our time) took a more or less simple brainscan due to persisting headaches and then suddenly wakes up on the bottom of the ocean about a century later...


CUTS ON PROVEN FORMULA, BUT ADDS MORE DEPTH


Honestly, besides really impressive graphics, a perfect sound experience and a deep, immersive story, Soma doesn't work. - Not as a conventional game that is... I don't want to be too harsh on it because I really loved how the game puts you right on the spot while telling an extremely fascinating plot, but at some point it lost the status of a game in my opinion and what remains is more of an interactive first-person, sci-fi/horror movie with a bit of Jules Verne to it.

With previous titles Frictional Games usually hit the heart of the veteran horror game fans by emphasizing and focusing on simple things that were feasible for them as a small indie studio. They always managed to created something a little bit out of the box and overall appealing, thanks to immersion, challenging puzzles and the simplest, yet most playful mechanics. So if you, as the regular "stick&carrot-gamer", thinks that a game like Amnesia already missed out on gameplay mechanics, then you will be surprised that Soma tops that by a landslide and you probably shouldn't touch it.


WAIT, HOW WAS THAT ABOUT COPYING THE COPY OF A COPY?


Soma works and it is an absolute pleasure to play through it in almost every aspect, but I think at some point we have to discuss if something like that really counts as a videogame in the classic sense at all:

No HUD or display elements, no health, no death penalty, no saving, no objectives, no rewards, no weapons, no items, no inventory, no - at least in a minimal way demanding - puzzles, no map, no multiple directions, no skill, no thinking (except about the story), no secrets, no replay value, no nothing,..


Besides the mostly positive things to tell about it, there is definitely a lot of wasted potential in Soma. But as I said, Frictional always managed to deliver. And next to the fact that the result is really great and definitely worth a play also this time, I just think they delivered something nobody expected: Not a new Amnesia, not a horror game, but also - to me strangely - not a game at all.

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