4/5 ★ – sirreldar's review of SOMA.

While I was vaguely aware of a game called SOMA, I was quick to discount it as just another stereotypical horror game, most of which have very little appeal to me. After being recommended this game many times (especially for the story), I finally decided to give it a try. What I discovered was a fantastic, thought-provoking story, wrapped in a decent horror game. The story was an easy 10/10. It was told through a well balanced combination of dialog and environmental lore objects, like notes, log entries, audio recording, and test results. As the narrative progresses, the player is challenged to ponder and question difficult topics, such as the essence of humanity and the threshold of sentience. The story felt well paced and the player was free to either catch only the major beats, or scour to their heart’s content for minor details and nuance. I was overall indifferent to the horror mechanics. I personally would have probably preferred if the game was closer to an investigative walking sim. The portions of hiding from monsters and sneaking around them were generally unfun for me. I do think they were well executed, and to someone who typically enjoys that gameplay, I imagine they would be quite fun, so this is *not* a criticism, just a matter of personal preference. If nothing else, they were a fun enough diversion to sort of break up the constant flow of story details. One criticism I *do* have with these portions is they occasionally took place in areas with story items in them. I distinctly remember a few instances of sneaking around monsters and trying to read notes, navigate in-game computer menus, etc, all while hearing the eerie *clomp, clomp, clomp* of the monster in the hallway hunting me. Not only was this distracting, it was annoying to feel rushed and interrupted. Thankfully these moments were rare, and the story/horror portions of the game were generally quite distinct. Finally, the game has a built-in story mode which renders monsters inert and practically harmless. I did not use this for my playthrough, but I appreciate that it exists. On the topic of dialog, I found the dialog to generally be very well written. The voice acting was done well and felt very natural, making it easy to empathize with the characters. The music however, while not bad, was not particularly good or memorable. In all cases though, the music was fitting to the scene and added to the theme, rather than distracted from it. Other audio aspects of the game were sufficient, but otherwise not notable. The environments and visuals generally were very good. Each new location offered new and interesting scenery, and locations were typically fun and interesting to explore. Plenty of mundane objects really added to the immersion and made searching for lore items interesting. The entire game is presented against the backdrop of ominous existentialism and horrific threats. It is apparent that a lot of care and attention to detail went into the crafting of the world and ensuring that it was consistent with other aspects of the story and lore. Ultimately, the horror game is a fitting wrapper for the existential story, which is easily the scariest part of the game. The game poses uncomfortable questions, and forces the player to consider topics they might never have considered before. These ideas are not presented as over-philosophical, pretentious ramblings, but very naturally and organically to the rest of the story and the world. I would very highly recommend SOMA to anyone interested in a video game with a compelling, thought-provoking story, even if horror games are not one of their go-to genres. The faults of the game are few and far between and easy to overlook. If horror is intolerable, I would still highly suggest trying the game with the peaceful mode. It SERIOUSLY downgrades the horror to just “really creepy” environments with some sparse jump scares, and all but eliminates the stealth and escaping mechanics. Either way, as someone who typically finds the horror genre to be “meh” I REALLY enjoyed this game and its story, and would definitely recommend it to anyone who thinks it might look interesting.