SOMA, The story is completely enigmatic and is giving us in small doses through eight hours of the campaign. As it happened with the survival horror of the past, information about the context in which we find ourselves is found in documents, photographs, audio tapes and through conversations with Catherine, minor character who guides us so reserved through radio.
SOMA may not be as scary as Amnesia, but it is without a doubt a stronger game
With this appointment opens the prologue of the game, so pretty good as SOMA plays all the time with our perception of reality so terrifying. During the first hours of play I found myself totally confused about what happened and why I was there. Several times I doubted whether the enemy were actually evil in nature or whether it was misinterpreting; characters who swore to be victims gave the impression of having bad intentions, and so the horror was being constructed more in my head than what I saw in the game directly.
A study success is definitely atmospheric horror. Throughout metallic corridors and different areas of the research center we find nauseating combinations of men with machines. Both enemies as secondary characters move in gray personalities where we can not be sure who’s good and who’s bad, because both combine with organic metal bodies and the only difference is the aggressiveness with which you addressed.
Unlike other games in the genre, here we have no weapon or tool with which to defend ourselves. The gameplay, aside from exploration, labyrinthine levels is cleverly designed to break our heads trying to figure out how to get across undetected. Hulking masses of metal rusty lurk those levels, and the only way to go unnoticed is learning their distract movement patterns or throwing an object against a surface.
With no supernatural enemies as ghosts or demons, SOMA is more puzzling, disturbing and upsetting to deal with machines that have human characteristics. A high difficulty accompanies each challenge, so an enemy in the area enough to keep us busy for a long time.
A single detail of the game is the inability to die. If the machine detects within us, it calls us and unless we escape (which will be incredibly difficult due to its high capacity of perception), the enemy will use his superhuman strength to strike us with great force and leave us half dead. So, we will have to restart the challenge but with the distorted vision, limping and gasping foot, which becomes even more difficult to overcome successfully the area. The distortion of the senses is the mark of Frictional Games still in use in this game and appreciated.
Sobriety with which the game is built are also grateful. By not using resources like gore and jamming of colors and enemies on screen, level design and atmosphere are those who get all the attention in SOMA. Small details like the impeccable ear detects changes when an enemy we or the twinkling lights of latching on and off lamps in the vast underwater areas are crucial to guide us through the levels.
The game never takes us by the hand and brings us to advance tutorials obvious. We must be discerning enough to explore each location and find all possible leads that tell us how to open certain door or access certain terminal on a computer. Passwords, keys, levers names and locations will give us depending on our ability to find clues to follow wiring or ventilation pipes, for example. Omnitool is an indispensable tool that we will improve as we move forward and allow us to activate mechanisms, lighting plants light and collect information on computer terminals, among other things.
Having the ability to save game without leaving the mandatory or some type of log to review all the files we have collected would have been an excellent addition.
