SOMA | Full Game Walkthrough | No Commentary
72Frictional Games are royalty when it comes to horror game developers. Their initial releases of Penumbra were quite entertaining with clever puzzles and some nice scares, but of course they got worldwide renown with their major hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Plenty of YouTubers have their successful career thanks to that game. Many people were excited to see what their next game would be and expectations were unreasonably high. The follow-up to Amnesia was made by a different studio and Frictional Games instead focused on their new project called SOMA. And in my opinion SOMA is their best game they have created to date.
SOMA tells the story of Simon who suddenly wakes up in the future and is no longer in the body he is used to. It seems that the world has come to an end and only a handful of people live in these underwater facilities. We need to find out what is happening, avoid various grotesque monsters and hopefully save what's left of humanity.
Though arguably this game might be less scary than Amnesia, it makes up for that in sense of scope, unique setting but most of all: the philosophical aspect. It takes inspiration from cyberpunk themes seen in Ghost in the Shell or Bladerunner but expands on it with it's own lore and story. Where the earlier mentioned properties were mainly focused on what makes someone alive and can an artificial created being have a soul, SOMA offers a different perspective where one's soul or brain can be copied into another being. Which means there will be multiple versions with the brain as a template, but ultimately will be created differently by their individual experiences. It might sound a bit complicated or complex if you don't know the game but trust me when I say that SOMA executes this flawlessly
. We have seen elements of this story in movies like Chappie or even in The Prestige, but SOMA still feels so unique with how it approaches it. If you make a copy of yourself, it means you are still you. But what about that copy? Is that copy also you or is it someone different since it won't have the same experiences as you from here on out? Its a shame not everyone loved this philosophical aspect when it came out, but luckily the game was a massive hit; both critically and financially.
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