I nearly broke my nose once while walking through a bus filled with fake Freddy Kruger mannequins when an actor playing him jumped at me and I ran into the person in front of me. Early on in the game, I also wondered if I was the sole survivor or if there were others. That is, until now.
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The set and sound design of SOMA are essential in making the game what it is: terrifying. Each unsettling implication of SOMA’s premise is slowly unraveled as you proceed, giving more weight to what you discover than any individual scare. That’s about where the similarities end.
Soma made me think. Simply being in the vicinity of one of these is enough to cause visual distortion around your field of view, and it worsens if you get nearer or look directly at them. Though admittedly the list of such games are rather limited, for some reason the setting lends itself extremely well to storylines that just gush personality and tension around every turn. This has been a part of video game horror for too long and we always assumed it would be done away with as soon as the graphics were good enough for another character to impart the same information face-to-face.
When encountering enemies, it is a bit like the Slender series in the sense that the screen will distort in varying degrees depending on how close you get to enemies. You’re given a suit that is capable of communicating the distance between you and an enemy, which proves endlessly useful. The door to the next area opens, but it’s not clear what happened to this…thing. While many objects around the environments of Pathos-II can be interacted with, most are simple static objects that can be picked up and thrown. You know what I mean. There’s nothing more immersion-breaking than jumping around, hammering buttons and screaming at your mouse because the floaty, clunky door controls didn’t operate in time to stop a terrifying electromagnetic monster ripping off your skin. When you’re exploring the sea floor there’s a definite change from dramatic and eerie to grand dreamscape-like melodies that fit the vastness of the open ocean. Fortunately, most of these obstacles are mere detours that are also supplemented with a steady diet of side story. Kind of like a Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp. Despite how futuristic the technology seems, there were plenty of times where I felt like the pressure from the depths of ocean would just crash through the station’s cracked windows and creaking metallic framework. You need to follow electrical wires or air ducts or read notes for clues to figure out passwords.
In SOMA, you find yourself in a desperate struggle for survival after an underwater research expedition unearths more than was bargained for.
When you are in immediate danger, the beating of your heart drums in your ears loudly and the music matches the fevered pitch of the unearthly howling coming from the monster chasing you. SOMA is not just a horror game, it’s a nightmarish commentary on the possible future of humanity. If that’s not a sign of success, I’m not sure what is. That same comfort of protection is not in SOMA. When you use these ominous orbs to heal, you’ll regain your senses but they also disorient you slightly before you fully recover and can alert enemies to your location. Although the game does fall into the trap of seemingly all sci-fi horror, including Alien Isolation and Dead Space, in that you’re constantly moving from place to place fixing things and turning the power on – as if playing the role of some tormented repairman.
Different elements throughout the game hint at that, as well. In fact, many of these surprisingly quick foes will notice you if you let your gaze linger, so it’s best to keep completely out of sight, or to watch them furtively on the periphery. Many times I in fact looked over my shoulder while playing to check that there was no-one in my room with me, the sound design was that realistic.
I’m not going to completely fault Frictional Games for not having a manual save option since it does allow you to save upon exiting the game. You pull the other wire. I ended up dreaming about it the next night after finishing it. It wasn’t a nightmare, but it left a different kind of mark. Excellent presentation and some absolutely terrifying set pieces. I knew the story was interesting and I would be rooting for the protagonist, but I was not expecting the introspective emotional reaction it ignited as I watched the epilogue that followed the credits.
From Frictional Games, creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA is a sci-fi horror game that questions our concepts of identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human. Most of my encounters resulted in me frantically running past creatures in the hope I’d survive an attack.
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Code provided by publisher.
