pic related is the only thing that mattered
somafirst paragraph is spoiler free
soma is a horror puzzle walking simulator where you find yourself underwater and then you have to oh stuff that was close how did that happen whoops. if youve played amnesia its pretty similar in that you forget around solving puzzles while sometimes being hunted by a monster. you know what amnesia didnt have; stufftons of exposition. this game nonstop explains the story and the implications of a sci fi gimmick i wont spoiler yet despite it being piss easy to comprehend. all the characters that you encounter including yourself are poorly written and the story has a bunch of plotholes. the gameplay goes heavily to the puzzle end which was the worst part of amnesia and is now the worst part of this game because the getting chased by monsters to puzzle ratio is heavily skewed to puzzles. all the puzzles suck. when it was monster hidey time the game wasnt scary and i had similar feelings about amnesia but amnesia managed to keep up a tense atmosphere by making much more of the game about dodging monsters and stuff. amnesia wasnt that good or scary either though but it was better than this. this game is amnesia choked on the hubris of its story and gray morality so just play amnesia if you enjoy walking simulators with boring puzzles and mildly tense monster encounters.
gameplay mostly focuses on puzzles with some minor run away from the monster horror stuff thrown in there and it really does choose puzzles over scooby doo chases. to progress through most of the game you must solve a stuffton of boring puzzles, most of which are the grab an item and bring it somewhere or find the lever to pull/plug something into type and all of those feel like filler created to add more boring exposition. these puzzles are the same kind of rpgmaker press x on things to proceed puzzles ported to a third dimension. often its worse due to everything being rather dark, sometimes masking whatever you were supposed to grab despite you having an unlimited energy flashlight. when the puzzle piece is not immediately obvious searching for these things is a chore due to a general slow movement speed and a feeling that the youve passed the piece a thousand times combined with a lack of atmosphere, monster encounters, and collectibles means exploring itself is a chore, and this is most evident when the game tells you to find things. the physics engine ported from amnesia that was so often used for puzzles in that game is outright ignored here and is only ported over probably because the devs already had it ready and were perhaps trying to tie the game to amnesia further. the puzzles that dont fit into the former niche are usually a sparse few computer related puzzles that entirely ignore all game mechanics for a sparse few bland, hud based minigames, all of which can be solved by clicking until you win at most. im sure there are a scant amount of puzzles that i forgot to discuss that dont fit either mold but they are incredibly scarce and certainly wont redeem the title from the onslaught of boring that the rest of the puzzles willingly provide. so forget you.
the monster chase things make up an extraordinarily small part of the game when compared to amnesia. ive clocked in ten hours and id say like an hour or two was monster encounters while the rest was puzzles and exposition. when monsters do appear they are about as engrossing as the puzzles. like amnesia, the player is unable to attack anything and has to run from monsters if spotted. the difference between this and amnesia is that amnesia had some nice gimmicks for monster behavior sometimes. soma does not. you are practically invisible to monsters when crouched and with your flashlight off and without any penalty for doing that ala amnesia's insanity mechanic. crouching, despite sounding incredibly loud, makes your character soundless to any enemy not within a foot of you. added to this, most of the enemies have gimmicks that actually limit them instead of adding danger. the most encountered enemy in the game is a blind guy without arms who relies on sound in a game where sound is almost entirely avoided. notably the game devs forgot to include any sort of sound creating mechanism that the player had to bypass barring one or two switches. other gimped enemies include one guy who wont attack you unless you look at or touch him which, despite him being one of the more imposing enemies, made all encounters with him completely laughable when it was easy to look away for a few seconds or just walk past him. there is only one enemy near the end who actually posed a threat and he was easily avoided too. i only died a handful of times and felt threatened nowhere and i usually just died because i was bored of waiting or got caught in a corner.
i think map designed played an important role in the overall poor quality of monsters and puzzles. almost every single monster encounter takes place in an indoor hallway looking area with no fluctuations vertically while many puzzles often include a wide area of nothingness that serves no point other than to confuse or delay players forced to cross it. i believe that the lack of interesting map design and subsequent design limitations to chasey monsters who move on a 2d plane despite the game being set underwater has to be some sort of remnant from amnesia design choices and a lack of innovation due to a focus on story over gameplay. the open area thing for puzzles is often used as a way for the game to continue to force the story on the player via audio log things in the form of remnant data things that you press e to pick up or whatever in a similar way to every single audio log ever. the problem with that is the game already forces the story on the player enough as it is and the excruciatingly slow walkspeed, probably so because of the chase monster format the game does except problems arise when most of the game isnt monster chase, helps nothing. thus the game has these weird sandbox-esque exploration sections that are filled with nothing but audio logs that you dont even feel compelled to find anyway.
the story isnt really terrible but it certainly isnt gamechanging. its pretty basic and doesnt have any twists unless you are braindead and incapable of understanding the really basic existential schlock that constitutes it. sure it brings up some moral issues but most of them force the player into one choice which defeats the purpose of interactive games. the game also has its share of plot holes and despite all of the exposition and often enjoys not informing the player about how things work despite one of the main characters apparently knowing all about everything. questions such as how the black techno gel stuff works, how the wau operates, why the wau is freaking out and trying to keep everyone alive while also trying to kill you, why the earth is still on fire but the ocean is fine, why the earth is still on fire, why there is no dust in the atmosphere, whatever theres probably more. maybe after so many stuffty video game plots ive become emotionally desensitized to them since this didnt really elicit more than a few groans when it did some forced moral choices but the general premise is sound enough and figuring out how you got. its a bit of a shock that a game that focuses this much on story and character development has such open questions, often despite characters knowing what the answers are.
speaking of the characters though jesus christ what a bunch of handicaps. simon is the guy you play as and he is clinically incapable of comprehending any of the basic existential stuff that is repeatedly thrown at him and is forever angsty over everything. his partner is an ipad door opener that had the consciousness of a scientist lady who either has some form of autism or believes simon is too handicapped to understand anything because despite claiming to know how the wau works and the techno gel she explains nothing and often only agitates simon's angst further with her inability to read situations and factor in the emotions of others into her actions. this dynamic due often leads to pointless and stupid emotional drama which actually culminates in a terrible yet hilarious ending where a scenario that was done previously is repeated again and simon, in shock this has happened as normal, actually gets the ipad so pissed at his dumb ass that she unintentionally explodes due to her anger. this interaction is both the funniest part of the game and highlights most of the interaction between the two characters. simon is handicapped > ipad tries and fails to explain the situation > simon fails to comprehend despite the situation being explained well enough > ipad blows simon off leaving the situation unresolved until all of this pent up angst was climatically resolved in the most hilarious way possible. it is entirely possible to do this sort of science vs morals contrast the game appears to be going for but they forgeted it up spectacularly.
both main characters also display a remarkable lack of spatial awareness and ignore each other entirely unless it is a designated talk zone or some talking cue is done. for the most part this is understandable as ipad lady is incapable of talking unless hooked up to something with a speaker and it is understandable that the game devs are trying to make the player feel isolated but there are some parts of the game where it would have been nice for the ipad to express concern or help or notify the player or anything when monsters are encountered and she is able to respond. simon himself continues this trend of detachment from the environment by entirely ignoring all of the freaky stuff he sees while moving through the game but also expressing deep concern when the game feels like he should about far more trivial stuff. when going through the halls of soma the player will wander across numerous still living corpses, skin removed and obviously in immense pain kept on forced life support by an ai forever. this is almost entirely unmentioned by both characters. meanwhile simon is forever angsty about the nuances of consciousness transfer and artificially simulating human life. the game unintentionally acknowledges how handicapped simon is when you meet the last normal person alive and simon says everyone else is dead and you actually get an achievement called extinction if she dies despite all the other people being alive but forgeted by the ai. like these people stuck there are completely ignored in a faux pas that transcends character development into game development. perhaps the game devs actively ignored anything that didnt fit into their story they had set up for the main characters.
the whole ignore whatever doesnt fit motif seems to be prevalent throughout the game actually and most notably with the monsters. in amnesia you were being chased by cosmic horror powered abominations who rend sanity and limbs alike. here one of your opponents is actually a guy with no hands and you are a robot suit given life via macguffin tar and a floppy disk containing your personality. there are also many things lying around that would undoubtedly be useful weapons to beat the stuff out of the monsters but you cant because amnesia. i understand that there is often a suspension of disbelief required for video games but this is just stupid. eventually you even get into a super powered suit and the game treats you as if you were in your previous suit. added to this none of your moral choices matter, even the ones that did give you a chance to pick something. at the end you have a chance to get your arm eaten off and still wander into the crushing pressures of the abyss with an arm sized hole in your suit despite the game repeatedly telling you that you cant go down without a sealed super suit. combine all of this with the monster stuff and the plot and whatever and you have this mess of a game.
as for the graphics and misc stuff yeah it looks fantastic who would have guessed. the games presentation of the almost organic growth of the ai via whatever macguffin technology fluid is actually pretty cool but its a shame that it wasnt fleshed out more. music is mostly ambience as it is an atmospheric horror game but i mostly ignored it barring the abyss which had an unnerving and constant almost windy current ambience. sound design has no major flaws or anything either. the devs clearly had the graphical capacity to make something good but didnt so rip.
the game actually demonstrates that it can competently combine the deep sea ocean thing with a realistic atmosphere of isolation and some actual fear in a single part of the game. there is a part of the game where you have to walk across an abyss to reach a science base that cant be gotten to otherwise. the abyss is a turbulent undersea hell and your path is only illuminated by a small amount of lights planted into the ground that barely look like they will hold against the abyssal current and a few glowsticks left by previous, deceased scientists. adding to your troubles the sea life has been contaminated with the same techno gel that youre made of, making them far larger and under the command of an ai that is halfheartedly trying to kill you. that entire section perfectly captures the tense isolation that the rest of the game was missing. dodging to almost unconnected sea lights in constant fear that they will be blown away and you will be left at the mercy of whatever large sea creature is invisibly hunting you in the blackness is something that the largely indoor encounters the game fail to provide. additionally, the game is actually creative with its use of monsters, making them something other than things that force a player to crouch walk near. its a shame that the devs were too focused on making amnesia 2 story edition instead of everything the abyss presented and further confirming my affirmation that this game should have been something other than amnesia 2. and yes i know amnesia 2 actually exists but forget you that game doesnt count im talking spiritual amnesia successor.
essential games
bad tier
yume nikki
unessential games
good tier
profit motive
decent tier
chrono trigger
station 37
skelemania
the witch's house
out there somewhere
warhammer 40k dark nexus arena
sluggish morss
space funeral
planetside 2
mimicry man
mediocre tier
ib
space funeral: the legend of earth birth
hylics
mogeko castle
extremely unessential games
boring tier
soma presentable liberty
imscared (a pixelated nightmare?)
stray cat crossing
spookys house of jump scares
lieat
ananke
super columbine massacre rpg
crypt worlds
ao oni
suits: a business rpg
inflation quest
stellar 2d
actually uses boredom as a game mechanic tier
middens
furry tier
major/minor
space funeral 4
hell
worse than Riddler tier
the gray garden
off tier
off
worse than off tier
wadanohara and the great blue sea
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