Man, this is one of my favourite horror games. I played it on Safe Mode, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that that's the superior way to play in order to experience the atmosphere and be able to take in the setting and details, so I concur and would recommend other players do the same. This isn't a jumpscare-y game, per se, especially with Safe Mode enabled, but it's horror in the psychological, pervading, keeps-you-up-at-night-having-an-existential-crisis way, which is my favourite flavour of horror. Even when I was at my absolute wimpiest and couldn't make myself watch five minutes of a horror movie, I loved psychological horror - plot twists, bendy narratives, eerie atmospheres, that feeling of something just under the surface being terribly, terribly wrong but not knowing what yet... SOMA has all of it and more.

People rag on Simon for being unintelligent as a protagonist, but I think he's written realistically for someone whose entire arc revolves around the fact that he has brain trauma, as well as the fact that he's very clearly in deep denial about a lot of things right up until the ending of the game.

I also understand why people criticise the ending for adding the post-credits sequence and say it ruins the emotions of the initial ending scene, but I wouldn't change it. The crushing, shocking despair of the first scene, only for that overwhelming relief when you find yourself on the ARK, and the brilliant way they re-incorporated the survey that they'd had you take earlier was great. I ended up with completely different answers to when I'd taken it the first time, and a huge part of that was because of that relief and gratitude I felt in comparison to being down there; I don't think it could've worked so well any other way.