SOMA Review (PC)

  SOMA takes high concept science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and Bioshock's Rapture, layers them on top of each other and bakes them into a pretty delicious, disgusting treat. These inspirations are fairly obvious and the game can suffer from a bit of the “been there, done thats” that can take the edge and shock away from the prolific horror game player, but the overarching narrative that explores human consciousness and existence is well worth the journey. And it still managed to scare the shit out of me a few times.

  You play as a brain damaged car crash survivor undergoing an experimental procedure that calls for a high tech scanning of his brain. Shortly after the questionable treatment you awake roughly a hundred years later in an underwater facility built to act as a kind of last resort fallout shelter where the last of humanity is working to load an artificially intelligent facsimile of mankind into a pod, and shoot that “ARK” into space. Before you cry “spoilers”, know that the game goes out of it's way to drive home the point that it isn't a “mystery” story; there aren't any major twists that pull the rug out from under you, and looking for clues so you can feel smarter than your average gamer is pointless. This isn't an M. Night Shyamalan movie; the narrative is straightforward, and any extraneous detail is there to add flavor, not clue you in on some hard left turn the game will take later on. Are you a robot? An AI? Is the world really dead, and is this really the future? Well... yeah, dummy. It's all laid out in front of you. Accept it and focus on the larger story and bigger questions, because there's engineering problems to solve and monsters to hide from. I quite appreciate this approach, as the game's themes and effectiveness don't live or die on how grand of a twist it delivers at the end.

  The moral and emotional questions explored in SOMA impressively hit home, and are rather timely if you buy into our species rapidly approaching the technological singularity. Would you give up your body to carry on living as an AI? What weight would life and death carry at that point? How would you deal with copies/clones of yourself? These complex and mature intellectual queries are handled very well in the game, and the story congeals symbiotically around them. Your AI companion/door opener, Catherine, provides most of your guidance and exposition as you make your way throughout the dead underwater habitat, fixing things or breaking things as needed to progress. Your interactions with Catherine always come off as small moments of sanity in an otherwise completely alien and hostile environment. The only drawback to these character moments are some spotty voice acting; everyone seems overly calm and unimpressed in the face of death and the complete global apocalypse. I can understand the need to throw some lighthearted moments into such a heavy experience, but the offhanded nature of the protagonist and some of the supporting cast pulled me out of the immersion at times.

  If you've played Amnesia the hide-and-don't-look strategies for dealing with the malformed monstrosities that hunt you in the dark won't be a big surprise. At one point Catherine even remarks, “You know the drill...” in a moment of self-awareness. The familiarity doesn't make certain, terrifying moments any less nerve-racking as you throw any piece of debris you can find down a hallway to distract the screen-distorting, tentacled creatures. It also helps that these scenarios are used sparingly, so the tension doesn't wear out it's welcome. Only once did I feel like the game crossed a line where I was running around directionless in a maze, and the monster became more annoyance than nightmare. Otherwise the gameplay effects just being near one produces are still gleefully disorienting and freaky. Scattered around the game are organic “health stations” of a sort to heal your fragile mind, because just like in real life: if you're feeling down, fisting a butthole will make you feel oh so much better.

  Graphically the game is quite good. You spend a surprisingly large chunk of time exploring the vast, open ocean floor which looks fantastic. It manages to be both oppressive and agorphobic at once, with some nice lighting and particle effects that really drive home the hopelessness. The other major environments are all tight, claustrophobic interiors clearly inspired by the Alien movies... or more recently/fittingly Alien: Isolation. In fact, most of the puzzles you're tasked with solving adhere closely to the formula established by the recent Alien survival-horror game. Kind of tangentially, I think Alien: Isolation might be a better, more cohesive overall video game, but it also had the benefits of a much larger budget and the established franchise... but don't let that dissuade you from SOMA, as the themes and aspirations of either are completely different. If you did enjoy the structure of Alien, however, you're bound to appreciate SOMA if you can dig what it has to offer.

  SOMA is a very good sci-fi/horror game. It will make you think about life, death, what it means to be human, then it will throw some tentacle zombies at you. It successfully blends both genres with equal measure, and weaves a tale of morality and mortality that's well worth the price of admission and damage to your psyche you'll take on the trip. Think about it.