Review: SOMA

2023-11-19

I went into this game with relatively high hopes, having heard praise for its story and atmosphere. While the overarching plot and setting were interesting, I think it fell flat in a few ways. First, the grand philosophical discussion boils down to "is a (presumably perfect) copy of a person still them", and "is it better to live on in a digital world than die". Both interesting, but not really explored that deeply or in thoughtful ways. The second large issue with the story is that the context is delivered mainly through audio logs, which you must sit in place and listen to, instead of loading up and listening while you explore. This was incredibly tedious.

Story aside, the game is mechanically quite bland. There's some simplistic puzzles, and enemies that can be reduced to "run away from", "hide from", or "move slowly around".

Finally, it feels like there's not enough structure, guidance, or cues for what to do. I like games which make you think, but sometimes it felt either negligence or sadism. One example that comes to mind is, when it comes time to descent into the abyss, you can walk outside Omicron, continue straight, descend a partially broken ladder, then die from the water pressure being too high. The proper location was around a corner to your right. Which, by the way, is not pressurized, so our character should have also died descending that way. A second example is the final "fight" against the giant fish, which I had no clue how to approach. Follow the blue lights? Die. Try to sneak around? The fish does tiny circles around you, and you can't see anything. It dragged me away twice before seemingly taking pity and bringing me to the end of the encounter, almost like the devs realized they didn't give the player enough information to go off of, and had the boss just hand-hold them to the finish line.

Overall, SOMA is a game that takes place in a cool setting, which makes an okay pass at philosophy, and a bad one at gameplay.