Gadgetory

five years ago frictional games released amnesia Dark Descent a game that had a huge impact on the horror game genre it wasn't the first game to make use of a powerless protagonist that has to rely on hiding and running away from monsters rather than fighting them head-on with guns and weapons but it was one of the best ones to do it and we haven't had a new game from frictional since then we did get a sequel to amnesia but that was done by a third party company nothing directly from frictional until now with so much now I think it's important to note that there's a bit of a difference between how amnesia and soma approached the horror game genre vs. a lot of other games that have been coming out lately where a lot of titles tend to revolve around jump scares you know something leaps out at you out of nowhere makes you freak out for a little bit and then it's all done amnesia and some will rely a lot more on ambient horror where there might be some jump scares here and there but they rely a lot more on visuals sound and just a lot of little weird environmental tweaks to really give you a more constant sense of pressure and this is something I think soma does a really good job first off visually I love the aesthetic it's clearly based on Japanese cyberpunk where you've just got lots of pieces of jagged metal coming out of everything coming through the walls growing out of organic things and just gives everything this very disgusting deformed non symmetrical look to compliment these visuals the game also has fantastic sound effects which i think is one of its biggest strong points alongside just the numerous machine noises happening in the background you'll also have things like monsters wailing in the distance or more subtle effects to freak you out just a little bit for instance a dripping sound that also kind of sounds like footsteps in a puddle on top of these two senses of sight and sound the game also just has a lot of nice little effects that just mess with the environment to freak you out a little more for instance there's the constant screen glitches that happen whenever an enemy is nearby or something freaky is happening there's also lots of little weird occurrences like you might find a body that's in one room and that has moved later on when you come back or a door that you know is sealed but now is open to just a little bit it's little things like these combined with these sound effects and visuals that just make this game give you a nice constant of Terror now the thing is all this ambience is a little ruined though by the game's monster designs I found it a little weird that someone was really at its best when I never actually saw a monster but instead just heard descriptions of them heard sounds of them and had all these kind of sense of unknown fear running through me until I actually confronted a monster and lost all sense of terror because they're all designs that were familiar with and to top it off the mechanics in this game have removed a lot of bite from monsters but just doesn't make them very scary and instead just boils down any part with him and to just an awkward cat-and-mouse game where you would track them in one direction just to go around them and keep the problem is is that soma has removed any sense of difficulty that was present in amnesia see enemy Jie you have to worry about resources gone you had matches that were very precious and in fact you might even get midway through the game only to realize that you may have wasted too many so you want to start over there was also one singular monster that was fairly creepy and would one-shot you if it got too close that isn't present in soma to begin with there are no resources whatsoever you can lose health but that's replenished by finding these little healing spots that come up fairly often and monsters don't even one shot kill you instead they just knock you out where you wake up they're nowhere to be seen and you were critically injured so if you get attacked again it's game over but since there's no monsters around you can just crawl your way to whatever healing spot is nearby and be perfectly fine and this can even be abused let's say there's a part in the game where there's a monster standing in front of an item you need to interact with to move on well you can just walk right up to it get killed wake up grab the other green weed - and go about your business towards the next area to heal now that aside there's a whole lot this game still does really well like I said I loved the ambience but they also did a great job with the story I don't want to go into specifics cuz one of the big things about horror games is not knowing what the hell is going on and trying to figure it out but the basic idea is that you're trapped in this underwater sci-fi hellhole filled with murderous machines and you have no idea how you got there in the first place concept wise the story focuses a lot on the philosophical ideas behind artificial intelligence and transhumanism and it does a great job of approaching these subjects because it doesn't really try to give you any answers it just provokes a lot of questions to make the player think I also think they did a great job of pacing the main storyline because they give you just enough plot to understand if you just want to blitz through the main bits but if you take your time reading different journal entries listening to recordings there's a whole lot more to uncover regarding the game's backstory and finding out a little more about the philosophies it's trying to impart all that al Souma is a great game while I do have my complaints there's still a lot of good in here and really a lot of the changes while they do make it for a less challenging and less scary game does make for a much better story told and it does to have it's scary parts it's just that it doesn't impart that same level of numbing fear that amnesia had one last note is that I do think the game was a little further than I would have liked it to be it lasts about eight hours long from start to finish and with that reduced difficulty I was talking about it didn't take long to get through everything the game had to offer there's enough here for it to be satisfying but you just want a little more I think this is definitely worth picking up for horror fans especially if you like sci-fi stuff and it's also a great choice to look at if you want games that focus on philosophy on the other hand if you want something that's just more focused on the action and core mechanics not so much well that was my review of soma if you guys enjoyed the video as always make sure to hit that thumbs up button to let me know as well as subscribe and I'll see you guys