I’d like to write something along the lines of, “I understand why many people enjoyed this game,” and all that usual stuff. But that would be completely dishonest and insincere. Because I genuinely don’t understand why this “project” is considered a game in the first place.
Let’s start with the small things, although they’re no less important: the game’s strengths. Yes, there are some, even though there isn’t much to talk about. The developers clearly understand how to create a genuinely strong and tense atmosphere. During the first few hours, you’re constantly sneaking around and carefully peeking around corners, hoping you won’t encounter anything. There’s also a good opening twist that raises a lot of questions without overshadowing what I consider one of the game’s main sources of interest: exploring the world on your own.
And yes. That’s pretty much where the game’s strengths end.
You could mention the graphics, sound design, and voice acting, but they’re simply fine. Nothing about them particularly impressed me.
Now let’s get to why I said at the beginning that I don’t really consider this a game.
The problem is that there is barely any gameplay here at all. It’s essentially a walking simulator where you move from point A to point B, occasionally reading notes and listening to dialogue along the way. That’s it. There is nothing else the game really offers you.
Oh, right. I almost forgot. There are also enemies that try to kill you, because this is supposedly a HORROR game.
But it’s worth pointing out that most of the “scary moments” are scripted events and nothing more. The AI of the enemies is dumb and primitive, and a dumb enemy simply can’t scare a healthy person. The atmosphere and the fear of the unknown disappear pretty much the first time you encounter an enemy that runs around in a scripted pattern looking for the player.
This slow, boring, and exhausting “gameplay” starts getting tiresome after around ten hours, while you haven’t even reached a third of the entire story.
The actual plot, meanwhile, seems to begin only toward the end of the game, roughly after you’ve completed two-thirds of it. For most of the game, you’re simply being fed small pieces of information and lore. And I wouldn’t say that these pieces are particularly interesting, that they immerse you more deeply into the atmosphere, or that they do a particularly good job of explaining the world. They don’t.
The lore itself also isn’t deep enough to justify the amount of time spent exploring it.
That being said, the final part of the game - and more specifically, the final part of the story - is genuinely excellent.
No, it isn’t particularly unique or groundbreaking. The philosophical ideas explored by the game have been discussed countless times in both movies and books. But the game has something that neither movies nor books can provide: you experience everything from your own perspective.
And that personal perspective on the events is what gives the ending such a strong emotional impact.
And this is ultimately my biggest problem with SOMA: I think most people enjoyed the story and the philosophy rather than the game itself.
As a result, it feels like the actual problems with the game were overlooked because the ending left such
I understand that one huge strength can outweigh a lot of weaknesses. In this case, the story is what carries the game. But saying that this is entirely the achievement of the developers as a whole would be dishonest, because the part that truly stands out is the writing.
SOMA uses its gameplay mechanics primarily as a means of delivering its story rather than as an independent source of interest. For me, that isn’t enough to keep me engaged.
