Finished it today. Great movie, plenty creepy; but a mediocre "game".
The ending was abrupt & wet fizzle but fitting, because Simon spends a lot of the first few events of the game killing people to get an outcome he wants so the ending is just pure karma.
The characters are flat, tedious objectives, the enemies had good enough variety visually, some of them operate by sight, some by sound, some just don't like movements.
That variety is appreciated but they didn't lean hard enough into the inner ecosystem of WAU's kingdom & the diversity of said creatures, I was actually surprised at how basic the roster was for the enemies. But they are plenty creepy, what defeats that is how annoying they are.
Can't tell you how many times I ran into a few head first out of defiance cause I really REALLLY wanted to beat the snot out of those screaming, shrilling spazoids. Wasn't even scary anymore.
Otherwise they are mostly the same chase bot, they are at their scariest just before you face them, like a brief glimpse of one through a window, or their silhouette. While isolated in an empty hallway, knowing you have to go in that room to get what you need, Cath is on sleep mode, and it's just you.
#That is the horror of SOMA at it's best, until you get used to it.
The fact that you aren't human but all you can do is run & hide was a horrible decision. Not taking advantage of the techno-organic angle, I'm not saying give us a damn plasma rifle but a taser, a gauntlet, 10 second cloak or limited resource means of defense would've added variety & tactics without becoming braindead.
I mean jfc, you are in a state of the art Lab facility. So you're telling me we can fist WAU a hundred times for HP but not get a buff? DO SOMETHING WITH THAT concept to enhance the player's experience!
The word is "monotonous"
* Vs a contrived sense of tension because you simply aren't allowed to resist enemies who at best just push you really hard, then walk away, which shiver me timbers-- really isn't that scary. Which is why I say they're scariest BEFORE you get to them.
It's tedious. Especially when some enemies literally teleport, which is just frustrating.
The setting is great for horror, the atmosphere is the #1 best part about it, not even close to Dead Space 2008 but it's still good atmosphere.
In fact if all you heard were monstrous voices in the walls, shadowy figures peeking around corners, the sounds of things being knocked over by something but you didn't see any enemies clearly but always anticipated one because of the acoustics, that might have-- MIGHT have been better slow burn horror.. serious mind games. Like Dead Space 2008.
* Another good part of the game is getting nuggets of what other people's lives were like & seldom seeing their fates, but that's not the same as getting invested in who these people were, it's just easter egg hunts of something more interesting than what we're currently doing.
The difference between that and what Dead Space did is we knew those crew were gone, but these people are on the ARK. And we get bare bones lore at best.
The story is otherwise bland & boring because we're just thrown into the mix without having a vantage point of legitimate motivations, and a lot of it has to do with the character we play.
Catherine should've been the MC, & we see flashbacks of WAU's takeover (not talking a highlight reel but just enough to give us context), life before, all throughout the game.
Visuals to give us something/ something better, more tangible to invest in.
Teamed with us getting more focus on someone who was directly involved in the establishment, vs some rando who time traveled technically & frankly has zero stake in anything, and isn't interesting in the slightest. We should've been Cath or Brandon.
Would've made for stronger characterizations & investment if we got Catherine at the helm instead, hear her various dialogues about seeing people she used to work with trying to kill her, the psychological horror of a familiar space becoming your tomb.
Now what we got wasn't all bad, her existential comments on being a disembodied voice were good moments, having her reality paused everytime she was "disconnected" was interesting, but that intrigue is what? Less than 3% of the total interactive experience? Cause most of it she blacks out while we're doing all the work.
There was absolutely nothing here to get truly invested in beyond "what could this be about" or just the superficial appeal of the environments atmosphere, then you get what the hype was about and it's just some typical superficial robo crap. The more it unfolded, my immediate thought was: "that's it?"
I can give it this much, it begins very very strong and it ends.......seldom satisfactory, again ,it fits. But the meat of the matter is just a nothing burger.
The issue with this game is it's build up is top notch, but it builds up to a lot of mediocrity. The most interesting stuff in it, we hear about than seeing it, a lot of telling, not showing. The glitchy talking robots in the beginning, unless I missed something that element was dropped damn near instantly when we got to Catherine joining the party. I would've loved to hear her talk to more possessed bots.
I get a lot of the intention is the hollow isolation, atmospheric expression, vs upfront narratives, but you need a hook beyond atmosphere & being told everything in heavy handed exposition.
The faint hope the ARK represents is clear: but we're too disconnected from the people the ARK is the symbol of hope for-- WHY should I care?
If Simon was silent as an MC, then I wouldn't demand much, like Isaac Clarke 2008. But Simon talks, and he's really not interesting, a lot of times he's annoying, he likes to make things about himself a lot when talking to Cath.
A lot of the problem here overall is the game reads like it was trying to say something than be something. The puzzles & tasks were frankly stupid time wasters, there were many events where I find out I had to play keep away with an enemy just to do a frankly simple task, & it really made me just turn off the game. Cause it's just runtime padding, pure filler.
It's not like Scorn where the world itself is worth investment, you're told nothing but what you see alone is worth pages of context.
Soma? None of that. If we had more allies, even if they were just cortex chip personas, (because in the beginning , again, we got a lot of robots with diverse personality but as we go on we get less of that) hear their fears & opinions, maybe some of them sacrifice themselves & their place on the ARK for the ARK's exodus, that might've given waaaaay more story investment than what I just finished.
And then for me personally, the post credit scene was the one part of the game that I didn't want to end, all this hype & ARK talk, to the point where it got pretentious:
Finally I get to see the damn thing, & I genuinely wanted to see what they had waiting for them in that city, whether or not if the sim would even be compatible with the people living in it, would people revolt? Get bored? Destroy it? Regrets? Virtual kids? Like how advanced is this thing?
That was always in the back of my head throughout the game, I actually thought WAU would corrupt it in some subtle way, so when we launched it into space WAU technically would've won.
I thought since how heavy the ARK is emphasized, it would've gotten more time to cook with the player actually doing something with it, guess not. obviously not.
Whereas, the other 99% of the game I couldn't get through it fast enough, while trying to give it a chance & absorbing much lore.
The talking robots were interesting, not knowing they're robots but oddly enough, after we meet Catherine, that slowly waned away, which is unfortunate.
The one person I might've felt 'something' for in terms of hook, was Brandon, that dude is a unit for what he did in that situation. How he was handled was a degree better in characterization than the others. Mainly cause of that module sim we put him through, the lore in his room, his dynamic with Alice, and where he ended up. We were slightly more interactive with him, which provided more characterization, which is what I meant by that allies pitch. This game felt like it undercooked what it had at it's disposal on purpose to sell the isolation factor.
Overall Soma is a minimalist approach to a horror game, unfortunately, as good as it begins, it didn't execute that great throughout.
Tedious & Mediocre, glad I finished it, glad I tried it. Never playing it again.
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