SOMA Game Review – soma is Just Not Worth the Money

SOMA is a recently released Horror game by Frictional games. Described as a survival horror with an HR Giger feel. To be straight with ya, that’s bullshit.

SOMA starts off interestingly enough. You’re a bookstore worker in a mundane life who has suffered brain damage from a car wreck. One that “hinted” to have killed a female coworker. The first order of business is to find the “tracer pills” your Dr gave in order to get a brain scan. Simple enough, search every damn drawer in the room. No matter where you start, the pills will always be in the very last drawer. Assholes.

You arrive at the Doctor after a short and meaningless train ride. I think it was put in to show just how boring Simon’s life really is. The office looks abandoned, but no matter, they did say it was a shared office space. At this point any normal person would have all sorts of red flags. A brain scan being done in an abandoned looking office by a Doctor I never met in person… Furthermore, Simon has to literally break into the office because there is no reception and the door is locked. Let’s just say, after this point, Simon got everything he deserved for being so stupid. Maybe it was just the brain damage.

You sit in an Assassin’s Creed looking chair and wake up 100 or so years into the future. A future where some catastrophe happened that wiped out humanity. What happened was barely even mentioned but would have been interesting to know. So now Simon awakens in an underwater city (Rapture?) flung into the future and no one is around to help. Well, except murderous robots.

Except the robots in SOMA don’t kill Simon. They just sort of punch him unconscious and walk away. Like a robot version of the Knockout Game. You also can’t weaponize anything. This is a survival horror game without any form of means to defend yourself. No guns, no long poles, just your ability to run away and hide hoping the bad robots don’t find you. Despite the fact each room is full of items you can interact with, nothing can be used in your favor, except as a distraction.

Thankfully the halls of SOMA are relatively empty. All the humans are dead and there’s few robots that function. Some are friendly, but in disrepair and mostly used for spare parts, that feed into Simon’s already unstable mind. Yes, Simon is unfit for this role and slowly breaks down. Not because of the horrors he sees, but because he had to pull a core chip from a dying robot to save himself. Unless you a really fond of whiny characters that progress to even more whiny as the game progresses, you’ll want to punch Simon a lot.

Here’s some of Simon’s more Whiny moments.

As this video goes to show, even the other main character Catherine is getting to the point she just wants him to shut up. She’s just fortunate to be unplugged most of the game.

As for the Horror and HR Giger side of things. Nope. HR Giger is most famous for Alien. His other works consisted of melds between human and machine, in twisted sexual ways. This game looks like a first year art student’s loose interpretation of HR Giger. Since SOMA has no real consequence for failure, and rarely do you die, there’s nothing to be afraid of, ever in this game. The enemies play the Knockout Game with you then leave so you can go about your business. It’s like the “Everyone gets a trophy” philosophy. Even if you suck, you still win.

The SOMA end boss, or the WAU is briefly met in the game after “flickering” horror man shows up to warn you about things. This battle consists of walking right up to the WAU, sticking your arm in it and that’s it… The boss dies. Then flickering man promises to kill you. As he approaches, you grab a pipe and stab the fuck out of him. Nope. He get’s eaten by a giant fish that bursts through the floor. This giant fish later “helps” you get to Tau station by knocking you out. Each time getting a little closer to the doors. Seriously, there was little challenge even at the end game. In fact things got EASIER at the end.

I highly suggest skipping SOMA for dinner at an ok restaurant, or playing another game all-together. It wasn’t even fun to complete but I wanted to write as honest an opinion as I could. I just wish someone would pay me for the time lost on this game.