SOMA

Did anyone else play the latest survival horror offering from Fractional Games (makers of the Amnesia games)? It actually came out in September or something, but I didn't get a chance to play through it until recently, and didn't finish it until yesterday. I kept having to take breathers because I was too terrified to go on. Yeah, it's that sort of game, of the run-and-try-not-to-die genre, and it's got the similar fight-or-flight intensity and spooooky environments/sound design that made the Amnesia games such viscerally uncomfortable FUN. However in story it's very different to its predecessors, in being firmly science fiction.

Long story short and spoiler free, you play a guy who wakes up in a futuristic undersea colony, totally mystified as to how he got there. It's seemingly abandoned, and something Obviously Bad has happened, though as you'd expect from their other games, you have to read 10,000 journal fragments to work out what's really going on. There's plenty of running from monsters, which some critics have complained seems shoehorned into this game, as it's otherwise telling a slow-burn, melancholy, wordy story about human consciousness and identity. I'm not fussed. I like running from monsters, and I like reading endless email logs to look for clues. But I can see the issue: Fractional likes to tell these complex stories, but the genre they re-invigorated relies on jump scares, and rather than try and innovate, they've stayed with the same rather repetitive monster mechanics. The storyline holds up, IMO, but it does sometimes feel like it comes from a different game. Or maybe it's the monsters that have waltzed in from another Amnesia sequel.

Anyone else? Did you enjoy it? Like the story? Hate every moment you spent playing it?

No-one else?

Viridian said:

Oh hey. I did.

Gave me chills. Gameplay was meh, but that story. My god.

I agree, the monster mechanics were dull. But IMO, not every game needs to be perfect at everything. The game was just a vehicle for the story. Does it really need a challenging or creative fight system? I do wish it was a little bit harder, or that they did something to make the monsters more frightening.

But it was a truly horrifying game. It still doesn't sit well with me, and I keep thinking about it occasionally. The way that Simon reacted at the end really opened my eyes.

There is no coin flip. There are two consciousnesses: the original and the copy. The original always stays behind inside the old body. The copy always takes the new body. Of course the third version of Simon was left behind. He didn't lose the coin flip. There is no coin flip. He was guaranteed to get left behind.

If you look in his apartment at the beginning of the game, you can see a male-male power cord plugged it and carelessly left on the floor. If Simon stepped on that, he'd kill himself... it's a really stupid thing to do. He loses things easily and forgets to send emails.

Simon v 2.0 is a low-quality copy of a brain-damaged man. Of course he didn't realize what would happen when Catherine "transferred" him onto the Ark. He's not capable of understanding. A lot of people inside the underwater base couldn't grasp it, either, and they were fully functional human beings.

Click to expand...

Yeah. And the full implications of the Ark are pretty horrifying if you think about them too long. Basically, sensory deprivation torture for all eternity. At least *spoiler*Cyborg Simon could interact with the real world in a dead woman's body.*spoiler* I imagine that once a copy realised its environment was fake, it would be like looking at one of those optical illusions when everything clicks into place: you wouldn't be able to unsee the seams of the simulation. You'd be like the guy they unsuccessfully try to wake: driven insane within seconds.

ALso, *spoiler*the death of the last human on Earth*spoiler* was cheerful.