...or maybe I'll take it all!

Fun patch, lots of Aventurine content and also introduces storytelling from the perspective of multiple protagonists (something I'd like to see used again in the future). The new twists are nice, but ultimately many things still feel like a setup for the final act, as Act 2 literally ends on two separate cliffhangers, but I enjoyed Aventurine's little sidestory a lot - just wish the writing didn't overuse the "going all-in/betting your life" aspect so much, it felt like doing him a disservice by pushing that trait so much. Either way, I'm stoked to see where the finale is headed!

It feels so odd to play a video game and have an actual reaction to the game's story like wtf?? game stories can be good???

Anyway, some parts were a liiiittle unpolished, it's missing some of the bigger advancements of metroidvanias over the past few years, and some of the combat encounters were a bit stupid in their balancing, but for a first-time team, it feels so crazy to me that this game looks and sounds this good on top of having some really fun combat and platforming sequences and a genuinely touching story. I am incredibly impressed by this game and I can't wait to see where they go from here.

SOMA is a fantastic horror story with a mediocre horror game grafted onto it. The fact that it’s still regarded as one of the best games in the genre has everything to do with its exceptionally strong narrative, and nothing with its mind-numbing gameplay.

7 / 10
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Horror is a delicate subject. Not only is it perhaps the most primal and subjective emotion a person can feel, it more often than not acts like a mirror to yourself. What or what you may not find scary says a lot about you - like it or not. There are innumerable ways to go about eliciting horror, and the fact that it exists in just about any medium imaginable speaks to our collective desire of learning more about ourselves - be it on a species-wide, national, cultural or just purely personal level.

Horror games especially have always been a very popular point of discussion. Personally, I always found movies to be scarier than games, on average at least. Most of that comes down to the fact that dying and having to start a section over typically takes the wind out of the sails of just about any game that isn’t called Silent Hill. The highly curated nature of films, and uncertainty of whether or not the main character will be here the next second will always trump the knowledge that, whatever happens to me next, I’ll be fine. That isn’t to say I haven’t been thoroughly terrified by games, by the way. PT still gives me actual anxiety whenever I think about it.

But horror isn’t just about the immediate experiential side of whatever you’re watching/playing/reading. At least for me, more often than not, it’s the themes and topics that stick with you after the credits roll, and after the PC or console is turned off. The imagery and story aspects that linger on in the back of your mind even after you haven’t touched the game in months. Of course there will always be people that will do everything in their power to not be scared by horror media, for whatever reason they may have. Maybe they want to prove to themselves or others how tough and rational they are, and that nothing ever scares them. But even those people ARE afraid of things, and even if it doesn’t come up in the immediate moment of playing or watching something, it will come up eventually.

In my opinion, there are few - if any - games out there that show this off as perfectly as SOMA.

SOMA is, in my opinion, not a scary game. Not once did I ever feel threatened, tense, anxious or even just mildly spooked during the runtime of the actual game. And yet, when I think about its story, I can’t help but shudder at its implications, and when I remember its ending, it makes me realise that perhaps no piece of fiction I’ve ever consumed quite touched on just how fundamentally bleak this story’s outcome is. This game truly is equally as much of a blazing triumph with its story and themes, as well as a mind-boggling failure, gameplay wise.

The average horror game puts all on its chips squarely on the second to second gameplay. Be it Resident Evil’s focus on surviving being trapped somewhere with nothing but barely-killable zombies keeping you company, Silent Hill’s spiralling levels that drag you deeper and deeper into hell, Outlast’s obnoxious tendency of barraging you with jump-scares, and even Frictional Games’ other, seminal horror-series Amnesia, which popularised the now widely utilised “No fighting, only hiding” type of gameplay.

I bounced off Amnesia pretty hard when I played it back in 2018 or so. Apart from the frankly irritating puzzles that completely obliterated the barely existent pacing here, I find hide-and-seek mechanics to be fundamentally opposed to the experience I’m looking for. More often than not having to repeat a certain section because I failed to recognise a single glance from the enemy, or getting impatient while having to wait for the enemy to finally look the right way, so I’m allowed to progress quickly turns whatever little in the way of tension I may have felt into pure tedium. To me, this isn’t scary, it’s exhausting.

SOMA is, as far as gameplay goes, sadly not all that different. The general gameplay-loop here is mind-numbingly boring. Around 90% of its gameplay consists of you aimlessly wandering around with minimal instruction until you find some banal puzzle to do. And I’m not gonna sugar coat it, sometimes they are so bad I genuinely wonder how on earth Frictional Games were comfortable with putting them in the game. From the top of my mind, I can only think of a single puzzle that actually demanded you think about the solution in a manner that didn’t simply require whatever obvious solution could be found in the immediate vicinity, and if you’ve played the game, you know which one I’m talking about.

What’s even worse, and by far the weakest part of the game is the aforementioned Amnesia-like stealth horror, in which you are completely defenceless against whichever deadly abomination may roam the area. Apart from restricting the player to one single option they have to abide by for every single encounter in the game being a highly questionable design choice to begin with, SOMA’s enemies simply aren’t scary or threatening. And this isn’t even just my opinion about their design - I am saying, they literally do not pose a threat, gameplay wise. There were only 2 instances where I died in this game. First, simply trying to fuck around with the AI of a single enemy because I found it hilarious how easy it was to confuse them, and second during a mid-game encounter where I simply didn’t fully understand how exactly the enemy could see me.

What’s worse than how trivial and unnecessary these encounters feel is the sheer quantity of them. The game relies on them way too much, and they absolutely kill the pacing of the game’s story whenever they happen.

So far all of this has been fairly negative, and not without good reason. As far as this being a horror GAME goes, it’s a disastrous failure as far as I’m concerned, and one of the worst I’ve ever finished. There is exceedingly little I’m willing to give this game as far as it’s actual second-to-second gaming experience goes.

That is, unless we’re considering story as part of the gameplay. You may be asking yourself; “Djyunghoxha, how come you even finished the game if you hated it so much?” Because of this game’s story, that’s why.

SOMA’s story is, in many ways, exceptional. It is the exception to this game’s general experience of tedium and boredom. It is the exception to horror games often featuring some of the worst stories, acting and writing you could imagine. It is the exception in so far that the TRUE horror of SOMA comes not from its gameplay, but its story implications.

[MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE ON OUT].

[I will not go into every single detail concerning the story, but I will talk about the beginning and ending in detail, and some other story aspects that are best experienced first hand.]

I’ve talked around SOMA’s story a lot by this point, but now we should get into why I still regard this game as one of the better ones I’ve played in the genre. Let’s begin with the set up.

SOMA’s story begins with a dream sequence. The player character, Simon, is in the driver’s seat, having a conversation with his girlfriend / friend (it’s not really clear tbh) Ashley. Ashley comments that Simon’s head is bleeding, to which he replies that it’s just from “the accident”. She hands him a liquid, to which he replies that he needs it later for the scan. Simon wants to tell Ashley something which seemingly weirds her out, but in this very moment, his phone rings. “Why is there never enough time?” Simon asks before suddenly crashing his car and waking up.

The phone has been ringing IRL, not just in his dream. On the other end of the line is one Dr. Munshi, reminding Simon to drink a tracer fluid for his brain scan later today. Why does he need a brain scan?

We learn that the car crash that Simon just dreamt of actually happened. In this crash, Ashley, who was in the seat next to him, died immediately, while Simon sustained a grievous head injury which resulted in permanent brain damage, giving him only a few more months to live. It also causes his forehead to bleed profusely. Already, the imagery of the dream we just witnessed becomes clear. Simon is blaming himself for what happened.

Still, we don’t really understand the purpose of the brain scan just yet, but we will. For now, the game takes us on a little journey from a cozy but slightly off apartment building in Toronto, to an eerily quiet subway ride, to a seemingly-abandoned doctor’s office. During the subway ride, Jesse, a friend a coworker at the book store we work at, calls us to wish us good luck with the scan and hopes we can “reverse the whole dying thing”. They both also briefly talk about Ashley, and how her old position has been filled in. The casual manner in which both talk about both Ashley’s and your approaching death struck me as a little odd, and I’m wondering whether there’s a story detail I’m missing. But more on that later.

Arriving at Dr. Munshi’s “office”, we are met with a completely empty doctor’s office. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this is where things go awry. The tone here is a little strange. Dr. Munshi now explains to us what he’s trying to do: Simon’s brain is to be scanned, rebuilt in a computer simulation and then bombarded with stimuli. The idea is to come up with a mode of brain reconstruction that doesn’t involve potentially invasive and harmful procedures, specifically for people like Simon, who are about to die from brain damage. According to Munshi, this could potentially extend Simon’s life for decades, if it works out.

Simon sits down in a chair with a big brain scanner on top. “Will this hurt?” He asks. “Only about as much as having your picture taken.” Munshi replies. Simon then retorts that “[Native Americans thought that cameras would steal their souls”, not understanding the sheer weight of this quote. The brain scanner goes over our eyes. An electrical noise is heard. Everything goes black.

We wake up in a cold, harsh and mechanical place. Dr. Munshi is gone. Everything is dark. What happened? Simon is afraid. Turning on the light, we see metal walls, complex electronics that seem too advanced for our time period and a bunch of weird suits. Immediately, we assume that Dr. Munshi fucked us over, that he must’ve tricked us. This is a horror game after all. Maybe Dr. Munshi is secretly an evil genius who wants to experiment on us? Or alternatively, maybe this IS Dr. Munshi’s treatment plan? Maybe this is all a simulation? It feels too real though. Like, something’s not how it’s supposed to be.

This is where the actual game begins, and I have to compliment the game for how well this gets set up. Knowing this is a horror game, most people will probably have mistrusted everything from the get go. Maybe even the apartment seems kinda weird when you think about it. And yet, this moment still hits extremely surprisingly. You feel the exact same way Simon does. Confused. Alone.

Walking around the place, we slowly put together that we’re trapped in some sort of research facility called “Pathos-II”, and that this research facility lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. More specifically, we’re currently in Station “Upsilon” of Pathos-II. While walking about the early areas, we catch a small glimpse of the types of creatures we’ll encounter here, although we can only hear it for now. We also discover that we can somehow see the memories of other people before us. There are numerous locked doors everywhere. Everything seems to be covered in some black, blood-like goo called “structure gel”.

Simon then meets a robot. Only - that robot doesn’t think of it as a robot. In fact, he is extremely adamant that he is a person. He insists that his name is Carl Semken, that he is hurt and needs assistance, to which Simon incredulously replies that he doesn’t see a human, but a machine. But he won’t hear it, no matter how many times we insist that he’s not actually human. And this is where I come back to SOMA’s story and themes being many times more terrifying and scary than any of the monsters/enemies you have to deal with. Just imagine. How long has he been lying there? This research facility hasn’t been properly kept up in a while. How can he not realise he’s not a person? He’s been here, lying in pain potentially for years. What kind of mental prison is he in?

We’ll get back to this question in a bit, but I want to highlight something else first. To progress the story, we’ll have to get a door to open. However, that door needs auxiliary power to open up. To do this, we have two choices. We can either divert power from the room Carl is in, or we can go to one room over and divert the power from the reactor there. If we do it in the room Carl is in, we will cause him extreme pain, causing him to scream in agony. Needless to say, when I did this without thinking about it a lot, his screams felt like a needle in my chest. It felt fucking horrible. This really is a person after all. If we pull the lever back up quickly after initially pulling it down, Carl will still be in pain, but he’ll forgive us. If we do it again, however, this time it fries his brain for good, leaving him in a catatonic state, without killing him. Naturally, most people will not want to do this.

So, instead we go to the reactor room, and divert power that way. However, this solution wasn’t much better. Where you previously caused Carl pain by diverting the electricity necessary for his upkeep, now you’ve shut it off entirely, effectively killing him. Not only that, but the power surge attracted the attention of the creature you’ve previously only heard, making the current section harder to deal with.

So you’ve been presented with a choice without realising it: Causing a person unimaginable pain, but making the next section easier to deal with for you, or killing that person and making the area harder to deal with. As far as gameplay goes, as already discussed, this barely makes any difference. But it’s the emotional horror of it that really gets to me, and this is perhaps the strongest gameplay element in SOMA. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the game presents you with ACTUAL choices here. There is barely any actual in-game consequence for your choices and actions. It’s more about story context. About how these choices make YOU feel. How it feels to be presented with an impossible choice that will result in suffering either way. This is going to be a running theme in the entire experience.

Back to the plot. After reactivating the reactors or diverting the power from Carl, a female voice speaks to us via the intercom. She introduces herself as Dr. Catherine Chun, and asks us which station we work on. After realising that we have no fucking clue where on earth we even are, she tells us to get to the communications centre to meet her there. When we’re finally there, Catherine again speaks to us via the intercom. But, unnervingly enough, she seems to be almost as confused as you are. At least she knows where and who she is, but she seems just as clueless as to why everything is fucked and why the robots are going mad. Just as the conversation is starting to get interesting, the entire station threatens to collapse. Just before the connection cuts, Catherine pleads with us to come to Lambda station. The station collapses, and we’re buried by millions of tons of sea water.

Simon wakes up. How can this be? He should be dead. He looks at his arms - where there were previously two human arms, they are now black, metallic arms. Simon realises he’s been in a diving suit this whole time. What the hell is going on?

This is where the plot of the game starts in earnest. From this point on I won’t be going into as much detail, and instead will talk more about why and how these plot elements work so well for me.

Over the course over the next hours, we learn that Simon isn’t REALLY Simon. The Simon we’re currently playing is, in fact, a copy of the original Simon. THAT Simon died in 2015, a few months after taking the brain scan at Munshi’s place. The actual current year is 2104, almost 90 years later. Earth has been struck by a massive meteorite some time in the past, killing all humans. All humans except for a small contingent of scientists and technicians that were stationed in this very underground research facility.

It turns out that the project that Dr. Munshi was working on really turned out to be an incredible technological leap forward - basically, he invented the technology to copy and paste a human consciousness into a digital environment, where it could exist indefinitely. However, it could not save the original Simon’s life, despite the Doctor’s best efforts. A few months after the scan, the original Simon dies in a hospital. But not before giving Munshi express permission to use his brain scans in any way he sees fit for the purpose of research and science. Simon’s copied mind thus becomes the prototype and prime object of experimentation, and thus becomes a sort of “legacy” scan for engineers in education to practice on.

How or why exactly Simon (let’s call him Simon-2 for clarity’s sake) got activated and put into this robot body in this exact moment is never really explained, and I suppose it’s purposefully left to the imagination. There is the popular fan theory that the WAU - the AI control system responsible for running Pathos-II - forced Simon to wake up the second it realised there were no more sane humans around. I personally always liked the idea that it’s just a malfunction of the system and has no real reason. Like a sick joke with no punchline.

So, remember Carl from earlier? Remember thinking “How does he not realise he’s a robot?” For the same reason YOU don’t realise it. As far as you’re concerned, you’re still the very same Simon from 90 years ago, even though he died. The most important part that seems to go over seemingly every character’s head is the fact that it’s COPY and paste, and not a simple transferal. The new, copied consciousness has no way of knowing it is separate from the original. Simon in particular seems at times to be downright incapable of understanding this concept, but more on that later.

For now, Simon needs to make his way to Lambda station, where we go on the first of many underwater walking sections. I really liked those, even though once again, there is not much to do here, and even less to be afraid of. While there are hostile robots inhabited by humans who lost their mind, they are once again not very threatening, neither in design nor behaviour. I like these sections because of how atmospheric and beautiful these underwater sections are. The lighting and scenery is phenomenal and I can think of only very few games that nail the feeling of being down in the deep sea this well. The visual FX and sound design do a lot to further immerse you into the experience, and that remains true for the entire duration, not only the underwater sections.

Atmosphere is obviously always an extremely important point in horror media. If the atmosphere isn’t there, it’s simply not interesting. But imagery and visual language in general often make or break the experience in a horror story for me. Luckily, there obviously was quite a lot of thought that went into how the concepts are relayed to you.

Let’s take the general enemy- and art design. While, again, not very scary, they certainly look interesting. The whole game seems to be enamoured with the idea of a split between body and mind (or soul) and how these concepts might function independently of each other. “Soma” means “body” after all, and the question of whether a soul can truly thrive outside of its designated body appears as central to the experience. The WAU, as previously established, is the AI that governs Pathos-II, and it has evidently gone insane trying to follow its most important directive; to keep humanity alive, no matter the cost, and no matter the form that human life takes. The WAU clearly prioritises the idea of the human soul being the most important thing, and that it needs to be kept alive no matter what. Throughout the story we can actually find the corpses of humans, and even a single live human fused to a sort of black, cancerous mass of flesh and technology, and this is also reflected in the design of the stalker enemies. They are fusions of flesh and machine in the most violent, grotesque way possible. The one live human we meet is herself fused to what appears to be a giant mechanical lung. “It won’t let me die. Nothing is allowed to die.”, she says. Again, THIS is where the true horror happens. It’s in the implications of an existence that goes on like this for god knows how long. The imagery of this sort of “forced life” taking the form of cancer cells is extremely fitting. Cancer grows uncontrollably. It clings to life, violently, mutating everything it touches. They ignore the signals that tell them to self-destruct, and are forced into immortality as such.

Back to the story once more. We finally made it to Lambda, and we’re excited to meet another human for the first time since the start. Only - you’ve guessed it - Catherine, like all the others, is just another copy-pasted consciousness trapped in a robot body. Upon our audible disappointment, she asks us to think about our own predicament a little harder, pointing out we’re literally a robot ourself. Catherine transfers herself onto our Omnitool (our handy little device with which we do most things in this game) and asks us to take her along. This is where the overarching goal of the game reveals itself to us.

Catherine was the lead scientist on a project called “The ARK”. Basically, the ARK is a mini version of the Matrix, a simulated reality in which the same type of copy-pasted human minds could live on forever, in an environment much less bleak, depressing and hopeless as being buried under miles and miles of water, while the surface world is still actively burning. While this seems to have initially been more of a passion project for her, it quickly became the sole source of comfort and hope for the remaining population of Pathos-II. One day, Pathos-II WILL fail, and all of humanity will be lost. Hundreds of thousands of history, simply gone, scattered into the cosmic wind. This way, if at least a handful of people actually manage to get copied onto there, and they manage to launch the ARK to outer space, humanity could theoretically persist indefinitely. The people on Pathos-II, emotionally and mentally scarred by their existence as the last survivors of the apocalypse, forever trapped in the pitch black deep sea, begin to see this as their only flicker of hope. And the illusion of hope, as you might know, can be the most dangerous thing in a truly hopeless situation.

Catherine began to scan all the people who were still on Pathos-II, accumulating a data base of their minds. However, they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the ARK. They think of it as an escape, when it really isn’t. They don’t understand the distinction between a copied mind that lives on independently from them, and their own lived experience. Frustrated that they’re still trapped, they begin to develop the belief that, if they kill themselves quickly enough after the scan, they will be functionally transferred over, escaping this reality. This is, of course, not how it works. Moreover the WAU, as established, has one all-important directive: to preserve human life no matter the cost. Those very humans now begin to commit suicide one after the other, so it does the only thing it can; it forces them to stay alive by any means necessary.

This will be our goal from now on: to copy ourselves onto the ARK, and leave Earth behind for a life among the stars. Perceptive players will likely immediately notice the fatal flaw with this plan, but let’s continue for now.

The next couple of gameplay sections see us descend further and further down, from one station to the next. Our ultimate goal is to reach Phi station, where the Omega Space Gun is located. This “gun” is really a humongous, kilometres-long launch apparatus that’s supposed to shoot the ARK straight into space. This journey gets quite lengthy and involves various distractions and characters we’ll meet along the way, but I want to highlight two story moments in particular.

The first comes in the form of our next immediate goal - to construct a diving suit that can withstand the pressure of the abyss. The parts for it are located in Omicron station, where we can also find an elevator that takes us down almost 4000 metres. What’s interesting about this section is what happens when we finish constructing the suit. Catherine informs us that we can’t just wear the suit, we’ll have to copy-paste our consciousness into it to use it. Simon is very unsure about this. He still hasn’t really understood that he isn’t really him. He has doubts of swapping his body yet again. So, Catherine scans and “transfers” our consciousness into the new robot… only, this isn’t what happens. As we learned, it’s a copy and paste situation. As he gains consciousness in his new body, Simon slowly begins to realise what this so called “transferal” entailed. It’s not a transferal at all. The old Simon, aka “Simon-2” is STILL here. In fact, he’s still in the old diving suit you were wearing the whole time. We’re really “Simon-3” at this point.

Simon is furious at this and lashes out at Catherine, calling her a horrible person, despite having everything thoroughly explained to him, but it’s hard to really fault him. He’s in an extremely demanding situation and it’s understandable he’s on a short fuse. Also, it is kind of chilling how unperturbed she feels about copying a consciousness into another body without giving a lot of thought to what that means for the old consciousness. On the other hand, Simon’s outburst and severe scolding of Catherine for what she does here feels somewhat unwarranted.

Over the course of the game, Catherine tries to explain to him again and again how this all works, but Simon seems to not be able to comprehend it. So Catherine, knowing that Simon likely subconsciously refuses to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth, eventually lies to him. She tells him that it’s all like a coin flip. She claims that there’s a 50:50 chance concerning which body you’ll end up in. She explains that it’s like a coin toss. This is, of course, completely wrong. You’re ALWAYS the one stuck with your old body. You’ll ALWAYS lose the coin toss.

So once again, a choice. Simon-2 will wake up in a couple of hours, and when he does, all of this will happen again. He’ll once again be alone, and even more confused since Catherine will be gone alongside Simon-3. So we can instead choose to shut him off right there. He’ll die, but he’ll never know. This is where Simon’s view of Catherine begins to shift, and where he’ll begin to view her as a heartless monster. And while Simon’s perception of Catherine is evidently tainted by his own inability to even fully comprehend what’s going on around him, she definitely strikes me as quite a callous person to say the least.

Catherine - at the very least, this version of Catherine - does not seem to regard human life with a lot of weight. Apart from the previous incident, there are other situations where we can catch glimpses of the type of person she is. In one of the many memory-hologram-space-time-things we can listen in on, Catherine informs Peter Strasky else that their colleague, Guy Konrad, just killed himself. “What?? How!?” A shocked Strasky asks, to which Catherine calmly replies “Maser tool. What should I do?” It’s obvious that Catherine is more concerned about how this will reflect on her project than she cares about the fact that one of her colleagues just killed himself. This gets even worse when you consider that Konrad killed himself because of the ARK project, and the previously mentioned idea that, if you kill yourself immediately after the brain scan, you’ll get to live on as the copy. To be fair, Catherine did not propose this idea, and seems to have explained to the others that this isn’t how this works. It’s still shocking to see how little she actually cares.

Another such instance comes with one of the better puzzles in the game. The gist is that we need a certain password, but only one single employee named Brandon Wan, who died a long time ago is supposed to have it. So we do the only thing we can do - we boot up his brain scan in a simulation. Only, if we boot him up inside a simulation, he is weirded out and immediately develops a panic attack. If you think about it, he is in the exact same situation you were in a couple of hours ago. To him, it’s the same as for Simon. He got his brain scan taken and next thing he knows he sits in a chair and gets interrogated by an invisible Catherine Chun. Naturally, he can’t deal with this and we have to shut him down again - effectively killing him just as quickly as we resurrected him. This is some dark shit, and what’s even worse - we’re going to have to do this as many times as it takes to get this password from him. The actual puzzle involves determining what exactly we need to say and do to make Brandon feel comfortable enough to share this password. Ultimately the solution here is to assume the appearance of Brandon’s wife/girlfriend and get him to believe he’s still in physical reality for the time it takes to get him to spill the beans. This will take different players different amounts of tries, but for you’re going to resurrect and kill this man a couple of times at least.

There are 2 things that make this whole ordeal even worse. First, the fact that Catherine really just does not seem to care a whole lot about what she’s doing to that poor man, over and over again. To her, the fact that a copy of him does exist effectively means she can do whatever she needs to do as long as the original scan still exists. How many times has she done this before? What kind of a person was the real Catherine, exactly? Secondly… just how many times has this been done to Simon? As we established earlier in the text, Simon’s mind was some sort of legacy practice model for engineers and psychologists to perform experiments and tests on. Just how many times has poor Simon been awoken from the dead only to experience the most panic he ever felt and then be killed again just as quickly? I said earlier that we’re Simon-3 at this point. If we’re being technical, we’re probably closer to something like Simon-239923. It’s been 90 years, and our brain scan was the fundamental building block for this entire technology. Once again, the true horror of SOMA lies in the narrative elements.

The final big story moment I want to touch on is the elevator ride that follows Simon’s temper tantrum after getting copy-pasted into the suit. Despite Simon just saying that he thinks that Catherine is disgusting and that he doesn’t wanna speak to her anymore, he begins burying her in questions again. I haven’t mentioned it until now but Simon constantly asks Catherine all kinds of questions throughout their joint adventure. To an extent this makes sense, as he was literally born yesterday, or more like, a couple of hours ago. Towards the end this gets a little excessive though, and it becomes flat out strange during this elevator ride. And he comes in swinging with the big questions no less. “Where do we go when we die” “Is my place in heaven taken”, and others of similar calibre. I think this would’ve felt a lot less awkward if the two of them didn’t just have the biggest fight of their lives. Simon supposedly despises her but yet can’t stop himself from asking her a whole bunch of questions again. He begins to despair at the thought of having killed himself just a few minutes ago. He still does not understand how to process all this. But then Catherine, in a surprising display of humanity, begins to comfort Simon by telling him of her memories of Taipei, of what life there used to be like. Of her memories of how she was little, of how she climbed the roof of the massive apartment building she lived in, just to catch a glimpse of the masses of people working their way through the streets below. It’s honestly really touching and, after the previous things we learned about Catherine, a direly needed piece of characterisation that prevents the player from outright hating her. Simon again questions whether or not this existence is even a life worth living, and that no matter what we do down in the depths of the sea, that humanity will never regain its former glory. Catherine replies with the only sensible thing one could say in this moment: We are still here. And right during that moment, the elevator stops and the power cuts. A quick repair on top of the elevator, and we’re good to go. Simon and Catherine quickly discuss her experience existing inside the Omnitool, and how time kinda just stops whenever she’s not powered. Suddenly, an unexpected guest makes his way onto the elevator. One of the WAU’s monsters stands before us and… speaks. It tells us it will make preparations and that it will await us.

Down there, we need to make our way to TAU station. There, we will find the last actual, real, flesh and blood human alive on planet earth. Only, she does not know she is the very last one until we tell her. The woman is strapped to life support machinery, meaning she is barely holding on as is. But what’s interesting for us is that she actually has the ARK in her possession. At first, she is protective of it, but as she realises how unbelievably unlikely it is that an actually sentient being just happens to stumble across her here, she relents and gives us the ARK. And she asks us to kill her. Yikes. This entire encounter is perhaps the saddest and most heartbreaking in the whole game. It’s horrible having to watch this woman just vegetate on this spot, as she must have been doing for years by now. She pleads with us to do it. Simon is, of course, hesitant to kill the literal last human on earth, but seeing her in this state, he realises that this isn’t living. She makes the point that the ARK is all we have, and implies that humanity already IS gone. What good are the vestigial remains of humanity if they cause the last living soul unfathomable torment and pain? So we decide to shut off her life support. She asks us to stay with her during her last moment. Jesus fucking christ, this entire scene is so gut wrenching. She tells us of her home, Greenland, the capitol of which, Nanoq (not sure whether or not this is supposed to be an entirely new city or a misspelling of Nuuk, but whatever) has since become a booming metropolis of 12 million people. She tells us that she’s glad she could die here, and that she liked her colleagues here, even Catherine. Her last words are a plea for us to send the ARK to space. To save what’s left of us.

Now, I’m going to kind of skip over the next section of the story because it concerns what I consider to be by far the least interesting aspect of the narrative, and it’s to do with the WAU and its monsters. Essentially, right before the end on your way to Phi, where the space gun is, you’re forced on a little detour into station Alpha, the home station of the WAU. The same WAU Creature that climbed on the elevator shows himself to you again, this time revealing that he is Johan Ross, who was responsible for creating the WAU. He asks us to destroy it, since we’re somehow immune to it. This, like many other instances in the game, is a choice, and we could also simply not bother with it. This is perhaps the least interesting choice in the game, simply because regardless of what you pick, the exact same thing happens. The WAU gets destroyed, Ross plans on killing you to make sure the WAU doesn’t somehow reconstitute in Simon’s body, but he gets eaten by a big old fish robot monster coming out of nowhere. Yeah, again, I’m really just flying over this but I am of the firm opinion that the entire WAU subplot is by far the least interesting and fleshed out aspect of the story so I don’t really feel inclined to talk about it all that much.

Finally, we’ve reached Phi station, and all that’s left to do is to upload ourselves onto the ARK and leave this godforsaken planet. We’ve reached the end. So Catherine goes ahead and copies ourselves onto the ARK in just the nick of time, just as it launches into space… only, we’re still here. Simon is confused. What is going on? Why are we still here?

You know why we’re still here. We were ALWAYS going to stay here. Simon still hasn’t understood this. And it’s possible he will never understand. Catherine tries to explain to him that they DID succeed, that their copies are now out there among the stars, on the ARK, living the best life they could possibly have at this point. But Simon isn’t satisfied with this answer. Catherine again tries to explain it via the coin flip, but Simon won’t hear it. And to be fair, the coin flip was always a lie anyway. They - their current selves - would always remain here. Catherine always understood this, and understood that, to get Simon to play along, she would have to tell him this lie. There was never going to be a chance that they could escape Earth. She insists that they did the right thing, but all Simon can think about is the fact that he’s still here, while his copy is living the good life now. She pleads with him to think of it as having saved something of the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, but he will not hear it. Once again, he lashes out at her in desperation, telling her to go fuck herself. Just as she is about to respond with what seems like hours and hours of frustration she deliberately held back, the power cuts. Everything goes dark. Pathos-II has finally given up the ghost, and Catherine, who was logged into the system, is gone. All is silent. Simon cries out to her, but there is no answer. There will never be another answer. They parted on the worst of terms, and now everything is quiet. Simon is alone. Forever.

Fuck my life. This ending has got to be the bleakest shit I have ever seen. There is literally no fate I could imagine worse than this. Death would be a million times preferable than this. Imagine the sheer and utter horror of being the last sentient being on earth, and you’re not even allowed the privilege to die. You just have to wait until your mechanical body finally gives in after what might be hundreds or thousands of years. To wander the ruins of a once lively planet, now reduced to ashes and black seas. Poor Simon. He was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve this.

But, there is a silver lining. The ARK did manage to launch into space, and is fully functional. So what about the other Simon? In the very final section of the game we open on Simon-4, who is just coming to terms with finally being on the ARK. It’s a beautiful place, and there seems to be nothing wrong with it. There is no evil irony at play here, and Catherine didn’t double cross him. This really is the best they could’ve hoped for. Not only are they here, but presumably everyone else from Pathos-II that got their brain scanned is here as well. Now humanity can enjoy what little it has left inside this ARK, floating around the universe for many thousands of years from now.

While I do like this ending for the characters, I feel like it undercuts the horror of the main ending for Simon-3 a little too much. It’s too easy to simply forget about Simon-3 when you can tell yourself that Simon-4 is doing fine. It’s not terrible, and it doesn’t ruin the ending or whatever, but I wonder if there was a way to work this aspect into the ending without it feeling too sappy. Maybe opening on the ARK first, only to then reveal that Simon-3 and his Catherine are still on the bottom of the ocean.

So, that was SOMA’s narrative. I’m still processing a lot of this story and I still find myself thinking about it a lot even a good month after finishing this game. I certainly would like to experience this plot again some time in the future, whenever I have forgotten enough to warrant going through the whole game again. The thing is, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll maybe settle for a Let’s Play instead of playing it myself, because the best parts of this game happen whenever you’re simply listening in on dialogue or experience the narrative via the environmental storytelling. I can honestly say that the “gamey” aspects of SOMA are so weak, and the stealth-horror sections so obnoxious that I can’t really imagine playing it myself any time soon. Maybe I’ll get my girlfriend to play it some time in the future lol

That being said, before I finish this review I have to go over a few other individual aspects of SOMA that warrant a critical look or special note.

Let’s begin with something that’s perhaps a little subjective, and may very well be related to the PC I played it on, although I should mention that it well exceeded the recommended requirements listed on Steam. I experienced a lot of visual glitches, and at first the game was barely playable due to severe aliasing to the point where I could barely tell what was happening in front of me. When I turned V-Sync on it suddenly tanked my framerate to somewhere below 20. Playing around with the graphical setting for 30ish minutes, I finally managed to get a decently stable 40ish FPS going with only some occasional aliasing, but my PC is able to run games like the 2023 System Shock remake at a stable 60 FPS at 1080p without any issues what so ever, so I’m afraid this very much seems like yet another instance of terrible PC optimisation, and it’s sad to see that it’s been 8 years since release and it has never been fixed. I also have to point out just how absurdly long the game takes to boot up on my PC. The initial loading screen usually takes upwards of 3-5 minutes, which is completely insane if you ask me. I did not experience a loading screen like that on this PC with any other game I have ever played. So the performance sadly isn’t anything to write home about.

While I have already thoroughly explained my problems with SOMA’s general gameplay, there are some minor issues, or maybe even just nitpicks concerning the narrative as well.

The main cast of Simon and Catherine both deliver fantastic, believable and emotionally rich performances, but the rest are a little more hit or miss. There aren’t any in here that I would describe as downright bad, but there is a notable discrepancy between the main cast and everyone else. It’s more like, Cath and Simon are fantastic, the rest are ok.

I also found some parts of the dialogue perhaps a little too quippy and sarcastic for the situation that both main characters are in. For Catherine it makes a little more sense, since she’s characterised as pretty aloof and perhaps even a little egotistical, but Simon should have no business being as sassy as he comes across some scenes. I understand that they probably wanted to take the edge off some parts of the story and have it feel a little more human, but this just ends up feeling inauthentic.

Finally I want to talk about Simon as a character. He’s kind of weird. Overall, I really like him, and I think that his reaction to most of the things he sees is very relatable and sympathetic. However, I think that his sheer inability to grasp the concept of a simple copy+paste process goes a little beyond what is believable for me. If the writers wanted to make the point that Simon flat out refuses to believe/accept that there are multiple versions of him, they probably shouldn’t have included the scene where Simon-3 is forced to decide where to dispose of Simon-2 or not. So Simon clearly is capable of understanding the process, but he still acts surprised at the end that he’s still here. I know Catherine even says that she can’t do anything against his wilful ignorance before she gets cut off. Some fans have argued that the fact that Simon has to exist in make-shift bodies has rendered his mental capacity flawed, or that his brain injury from the accident in the beginning affected his scanned version as well. Personally I am inclined to believe that he simply isn’t very smart and really does struggle with comprehending the reality of more Simons at once.

Speaking of his accident, I did find it weird how everything to do with Ashley, the accident, his brain injury and even his head bleeding seemingly never comes up again after the beginning. I know that there’s a very brief dream sequence in which Simon is back at his apartment for a couple of seconds and we can see Ashley with her back turned to us. All she says that it’s all over now and we should relax. That is the extent to which SOMA’s story comes back to this and I don’t understand it. I can’t even really criticise it because I feel like I’m simply missing something here. It almost feels like the game itself just kinda forgot about all of that. And it’s so weird because the intro frames all of these events as extremely important. Simon is clearly filled with guilt about the accident, since he was responsible for the death of his friend, whom he also had a crush on. Why does that never come up again? I 100% expected to maybe recognise something about Ashley in Catherine, or something like that. Like, maybe Catherine somehow reminds him of her. Or why does the imagery of Simon’s head bleeding under stress never end up as relevant again? It just feels like all but the fact that Simon died in 2015 is kinda irrelevant to the rest of the story, and I don’t want to believe that’s the case, so I choose to believe that I’m simply missing something.

Well, that’s about all I have for SOMA. Once again, this review ended up a lot longer than I had initially planned, but I realised that I did have quite a lot to say about it after all. It’s definitely an extremely interesting experience, and a must play for all fans of slower paced, emotional and psychological horror - or rather, it’s story is. I firmly believe that this game would be better as a pure walking simulator, free from any pretensions of stealth gameplay or puzzles, because both of these elements border the line to “awful” at times.

It’s kinda hard to rate a game like this. The story is one of the best in the medium, and the gameplay is some of the worst. The story is a triumph, the gameplay a failure. Ultimately, SOMA did manage to make me think about it a lot over the last couple of weeks, and that’s just about the highest praise I can give it.

7 / 10

Toaplan-like vertical shmup that’s a bit barebones. It has a decently neat timetravel gimmick (switching periods per stage), but at only 5 stages long, 3 of which take place in a very similar-looking far future, it feels flat-out unfinished.

I’ve heard it called easy, and it is, sort of… but it’s still an arcade game, and I found myself getting extremely annoyed at its chunky hitbox and quick, basic patterns. Those things are palatable in games of the genre’s late 80s heyday, but a full decade later I want to have moved on.

There’s just nothing here to really grab—scoring is extremely basic; art is aggressively OK; music by Zuntata is at least cool ish, but it feels more like the product of Zuntata understudies. There’s nothing offensively bad, either, but still, for former Toaplan devs to come to Taito—a match seemingly made in heaven for STG fans—and produce something so mediocre is in itself a pretty big bummer.

Pro tip for anyone wanting to dive in in spite of the above: Player 2 type C ship is OP.

The NieR of Sonic games...? What?

I never played a Sonic game before, but after reading Phantasm's review and having heard Wheatie advocate for this game for quite some while now, I decided to finally check out the series with Sonic Adventure - and I'm glad I did!

To make sense of the weird opening one-liner, Sonic Adventure is a game told through the eyes of six different characters - which means you need to play through the story six different times to fully understand what's going on. Each character comes with an unique gimmick and win condition, ranging from collecting Emerald Shards as Knuckles to catching a pet frog as Big the Cat. The narrative itself is nothing groundbreaking, it's fairly standard fare with Eggman trying to use an ancient evil named Chaos to destroy the local Station Square and rebuild it under his management. Chaos is an interesting villain though, since he functions basically the same as Resident Evil's Nemesis and you fight him several times with different characters in different power levels, as he grows in power each time he consumes a Chaos Emerald (you see, the name is as straightforward as it gets). As for the individual character stories themselves, you're free to approach them in any order you'd like, as long as you met the character in Sonic's story and the game will notify you when a new story is available. Only after completing all six story modes, you'll gain access to an epilogue and be able to fight the true final boss.

The levels themselves have some interesting mechanics, and they especially get to shine in Sonic's levels (as he's not a gimmicky character), I'll take the Lost World level as an example. While Knuckles can just crawl up the walls here with his moveset, Sonic has to rely on switches that allow him to walk on certain anti-gravity tiles on the wall or use mirrors to shine light on mirrors to illuminate a dark path. But it doesn't always have to be so complex, sometimes snowboarding down a giant mountain with an avalanche in the background is all you need. Even if I had a fun time with most of the levels, one of my biggest complaints is still the rebellious auto camera, which especially hates Sonic zooming through the zones at lightning speed and then jumps to some nonsensical angles, causing you to have no clue what's going on and miss your inputs. I'm not particularly mad at those camera shenanigans (would be lying if I told you it wasn't funny), but there are times where the jank goes from charming to annoying territory. Another thing I'd like to address is the strange progression sometimes outside of levels in the hub worlds. Thankfully there are red hint orbs in the game telling you where to go when you're feeling lost, but even then, sometimes the hints are so vague that I still found myself resorting to GameFAQs guides in order to locate where to head next. This would hardly be an issue on replays, but I couldn't find the raft for the life of me the first time I had to use it.

Sonic Adventure is a very ambitious game for the time it released and it's not only reflected in the level design, but also in the soundtrack, which covers a variety of musical genres and also uses higher quality instruments as opposed to a MIDI soundfont, which was possible thanks to the Dreamcast's advanced audio hardware. My favorite song is Amy's theme, My Sweet Passion, but I'm also particularly fond of Tikal's Theme and Mechanical Resonance. The Egg Carrier Theme needs a shoutout for itself, just for how catchy it is.

In the end, Sonic Adventure was a nice little departure from all the JRPGs I've played recently and I'm now eager to try the acclaimed Adventure 2 and other Sonic games in general - this includes the Steam version of Sonic Adventure DX, where I'm hoping to go for 100% when I get to it :D

I honestly forget where I got this game, but I remember it was one of the first SNES games I ever played. The first was Super Mario World and I absolutely adored it. Because of that game, I got really into retro Nintendo games and some time after, I bought Yoshi's Island. Part of me thinks I bought this at my local flea market because it always reminded me of going there on the weekends. Yoshi's Island in general, is a big weekend game. I remember just playing it on my days off from school, and because of that it always gave off that vibe. Either way, I played through the game and loved it. I think since then, I only 100%ed it one other time or maybe not at all. So this was only, potentially, my 2nd time fully beating this game. I'm glad I did because just like Super Mario World, it's absolutely wonderful.

The most striking aspect of the game that you'll notice right away, is just how visually appealing it is. Its crayon-like artstyle is super pleasing to the eyes, and it also makes the most of the console and the newly created FX chip at the time. The FX chip was an add on to carts created by Argonaut Games (my beloved Croc developer). Basically, created to enhance the graphics of certain SNES games, and Yoshi's Island was one of the few games to use it. The FX chip, along with the wonderful artstyle, just gives the game this timeless look. Best looking game on the SNES imo, with Kirby's Dreamland 3 right behind it.

The gameplay itself is much more complicated than Mario World. In Yoshi's Island, you can run and jump and all that, but you can also create/throw eggs. Eating an enemy, and pressing down on the d-pad, let's you create eggs. These can be tossed at enemies and items and greatly enhances the regular Mario gameplay. You can have the eggs bounce off walls and based on the angle you threw it at, collect items you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get. You can have eggs skip across water. You can have eggs reflect against or be obtained by certain enemies and then thrown/hit back at you to get collectables. The egg mechanic gets utilized super well. This along with the varied level design makes the game a blast. Cuz yeah, the level design is super good in this game and is always throwing new things at you. Whether its the fuzzy enemies that make the screen all trippy, to the ski slopes in world 5, to the temporary platforms that disappear if you jump on them too much. And that's not even getting into the Yoshi transformations which are all fun too. Never was I bored with any level. Frustrated though? Maybe a little.

This is a good segway into the other half of the gameplay I wanted to talk about, the 100% requirements. See, unlike Super Mario World, you don't just have to beat each and every level and get all secret exits. You have to get a score of 100 in each level. There are three collectables that contribute to a score. Red coins, flowers and Yoshi's health. You must get all 20 red coins, all 5 flowers and have 30 health by the end of a level to get a score of 100. Then you do this in each world, 6 times for the normal levels and two times for each boss level. Then you unlock a bonus game and a bonus level. So why is this frustrating to do? Well, first it depends on the level. The early levels aren't too bad but some of the later levels are quite hard. The red coins appear as normal coins (tho there is a redness to them that is quite visible) so these can be tricky to find. The flowers are very obvious, you just have to be sure to find them. They hide both of these kind of collectables in some devious places sometimes. Usually it's not too bad but rarely, even now after having played the game before, I had to look them up because they're obtuse. This is all fine and dandy but the real hard collectable is the health. It all depends on how easy the stage is and how often they give you health in the stage, but sometimes it can be super difficult to have 30 star points (that's what the game calls the health) by the end of the game. Especially in that last world, hoo boy did I have to use an star point item in almost every one of those levels.

That's another thing the game has, you can get items (and live) from minigames at the end of stages. When you jump through the goal, and the ring stops on one of the flowers you collected in the stage, you can play a minigame. Like I said, it can give you lives but more importantly items. Some of these items suck but 2 of them give you +10 and +20 star points respectively. Seeing as, as long as you're alive, your star count always goes back up to 10. You can get hit as much as you want, get to the end of a stage, and pop a +20 and have full star points before ending a stage. Getting these items can be quite hard depending on the minigame, but the match cards game makes it super easy to grind these items out. You can replay this minigame as much as you want with the world 4 bonus game, so as long as you can 100% that world, going back to 100% every other level will be that much easier if you suck. Overall, I think the collectables are fun to collect and 100%ing the game isn't that bad because of the item system. The game can just be somewhat devious with its hidden collectables and its difficulty near the end game (that world 5 bonus level can suck it) which is why I found it a bit frustrating at points and not as replayable as Mario World. However, once I remembered you could at least cheese the star points in the endgame, this issue lessened a bit.

Something else I really liked were the bosses. Honestly, they're not all winners but they're probably better than any 2D Mario game. They all take full advantage of Yoshi's move set and egg mechanics and are also a treat to the eyes since they're usually so flashy looking too. I can really commemorate how creative they got with them. Like one of them has you getting eating by a frog and throwing giant eggs at the frog from within its stomach. There's a boss where you must use the egg water bounce mechanic to defeat it (or you can defeat it by killing it before the fight even begins, and Kamek has his own unique dialogue for doing so, so it's not even an exploit...it's a cheeseable method the developers put in which is hilarious). Just unique bosses all around. Baby Bowser at the end is one of the best final bosses in the series too I'd say. It takes a little getting used to with the whole change in perspective but its badass nonetheless. Also, the ending after that is so very heartfelt and feels good every time, I love it.

One other thing I wanted to mention was the game's OST. It's incredibly hard to dislike it, it's so happy and upbeat a lot of the time. The entire soundtrack is awesome but my two favorite songs are the Athletic Theme and the Underground Theme. They're my most listened to songs in the entire ost, and the underground theme especially is my absolute favorite in the game. That one always spoke to me and it out of any song in the game, gave me that whole weekend feeling I talked about earlier. I really don't know why, but I love it.

I originally had this game at a 9, and even despite my small criticism of the collectables, I can't help but bump this to a 10. I'd say I love Super Mario World slightly more but this is one of my favorite games ever and my 2nd favorite SNES game now. It's amazing, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Go play it.

Repetendium is a competent-enough bullet heaven game with a side of mining. You pick a character (auto aim or not, mainly) and a weapon from the usual varieties of shotguns, grenade launchers and lasers at the start. The upgrades you get during a run are mostly stand fare and a bit limited right now, so two runs with the same weapon end up feeling very same-y. It's in early access, so I may check back in after some updates and more content is added. It does have a co-op mode, so I may check that out at some point as well.

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS THE EARLY ACCESS

So, as you can tell Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of my favorite games of all time, so I was ECSTATIC when this game was revealed. I was so excited to play it and I finally got around to the Early Access. Unfortunately, the launch was a bit.. rougher than expected, Which I'll get into later, but beneath the Early Access crustiness lies yet another Moon Studios HIT.

In typical Moon studios fashion, this is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, but in a very different way compared to Ori. Ori balances areas of darkness with equally high if not higher areas of serene wilderness, kind of like a Ghibli movie. Here though? This game is dark fantasy to the max, with some great gothic locations and some excellent character and boss designs. The Music also sounds great and the voice acting in the surprisingly well-animated cutscenes sound great as well.

Weirdly enough the sound editing isn't that great, with some attacks not having the weight that the animations make them out to have, and some things like the lock-on sound being a bit hard to discern but most of the rest of it turned out well. I can't comment on the story as we only have the first bit of it, but I am intrigued to see where it goes.

The combat is really heavy and slow, but very satisfying. There's a bit of weapon durability annoyance in there and the balancing of that vs the enemy density and strength is a bit lopsided, but it isn't too bad. It's a little weird how I can spec super hard into defense and yet some enemies can still kill me in one hit so that's a little silly.
Even more silly is the game's inventory management, which, as of now, just straight-up sucks. The UI is extremely crowded, with so much dicking around in these menus, compounded by the fact that there's no auto pickup making it a chore to collect resources which is how you offset the brutal durability system. And if you die too many times, you eventually reach that bloodborne loop where you have no healing items but you need stuff from enemies to get those healing items, which sends you into that familiar downward spiral. It can be a bit too punishing at times.

And that is on top of the multitude of Early Access weirdness in this game. There are a lot of basic QOL options not in the game, like key bind mapping and pausing, the frame rate was pretty bad at launch (though it has been fixed for me) and there are a bunch of minor bugs and features that just aren't here. In my mind, this is definitely an Early Access ass Early Access game.

And that's how I'd describe this game. It is a game that, in all of the areas that count, is spectacular. Great visuals, music, combat, exploration, and an interesting narrative. But the balancing on the game's systems, the QOL, and the polish in terms of bugs and performance could be better. This game is getting patched pretty frequently, so maybe by the next update or two, it can reach that level that the Ori games set out for it. But right now, I'd say to temper your expectations, since it IS early access.

I knew this was a good game when I drew a mustache on that one family’s portrait in the farmhouse, and in response, my friend erased it. This action created a tug of war, which resulted in me adding and him erasing the mustache repeatedly throughout the course of the level.

That was until finally, I trapped him in the middle of a co-op platforming puzzle and made him watch as I slowly walked back to the portrait to draw the mustache on before returning to finish the co-op puzzle, causing the level to end and emerging from the mustache war victorious as he wallowed in a pool of agonizing defeat.

I also got to beat his ass at connect four and fucking kill him at the end of the game.