SOMA (2015)

SOMA (2015), developed by Frictional Games

Horror games bore me. It is mostly because the element of horror they have usually work for the first 60 or so minutes, after which you've become accustomed to the ways the game is trying to scare you. The noises, the sights, the atmosphere. Unlike in the more static experience of watching a movie, being an active participant in playing a game very quickly renders scary things into, well, boring.

The big question I usually ask myself when it comes to horror games is, after the scary things turn into boring nuisances, is the game itself, in other ways, good enough to be played through.  I never bothered to finish Dead Space, as after it had shown all the things it had in store to scare me, it was just a mediocre shooter. Alien: Isolation I've finished twice despite its clunkiness because it is so deliciously atmospheric. So SOMA then, how does it fare, after it turns boring with its scares (far faster than 60 minutes).

As horror often does, SOMA begins mundanely. Simon Jarrett wakes up and remembers he has a doctors appointment. He has severe brain damage and his doctor has promised to take a look-see inside his noggin in order to see if there is something to be done in terms of prolonging his longevity. The operation in question is a brain scan with an experimental scanner, that is supposed to help in finding the best method in approaching his care. Dutifully Simon takes a seat, the machine turns on and then all goes black.

Then he wakes up in a strange room, a place that looks run down and abandoned. It doesn't take long for him to notice, that something is badly wrong. There is a monster lurking around. And there are robots, lying wrecked, thinking they are human. The only voice of reason seems to be Catherine, he contacts with an internal radio, so off to her, he goes.

Simon is deeper into trouble than he originally thought. Literally deeper, as the place, he has woken up in, is an underwater research centre PATHOS-II. Being underwater is not the worst of it, as there are the monsters, mutated, twisted humans, lurking all around. And there is the AI, that is running havoc as well. Not to mention the decaying infrastructure of the place that is now devoid of workers to take care of it.

The real kick in the teeth is though, that Simon has ended up in the future, where the surface of the Earth is unhabitable thanks to a meteor that has done its thing on the surface. The last of the humans' had taken refuge underwater, but the final bell has rung for them as well. There is hope though, for the ARK project Catherine was working on.

The ARK is not about sending physical humans to space, it is about sending their scans. A satellite, drifting among the stars, a home for a sophisticated virtual environment, where the scanned minds of the last humans can live their lives, allowing the human race to exist at least in some form. 

The story itself is about what makes a human. Are the copied personalities of the people saved in the ARK as human as were the people who they physically were. Simon has to question his own humanity as well after he learns, that he himself is a copy of his old self, of Simon who was scanned hundred years ago at the doctors' appointment. Catherine is a copy as well, but unlike Simon, she only exists in a computer that can't walk like he can.

And that story really is the saving grace of SOMA after its horror turns boring. All the lurking it has you doing ducking monsters soon wears out its welcome, but the story and the atmosphere are good enough, strong enough to carry to the end. While the horror aspect of SOMA falls into the same hole as the other horror games, it is a well-crafted game, that manages to carry to the end because of its other strengths.

Frictional Games might have noticed the other strengths of the game themselves as well, as SOMA does have a "safe" difficulty level alongside the normal mode. While I haven't played the safe mode, it should remove at least some, if not all,  of the tedious skulking in corners in trying to avoid the creatures of the deep. The way I see it, the biggest strengths of SOMA are the story and the setting, not the horror and definitely not the monsters, which are not really master class examples of scary monsters.

More than the scary monsters, what stays lingering in my mind of SOMA is the story and the derelict undersea base. It is the question of humanity and its transcendence, the destruction of it or the evolution of it.

What comes to horror, your mileage may vary and you might find SOMA to be scarier than I did. I don't really think it is fully necessary to find it scary though, as it has other aspects in it that work even better than the horror of it. It is recommended gaming tough, whatever the case might be.