Forums > Submission Feedback > EmP's SOMA review

Really terrific job avoiding spoilers here. I was careful not to reveal anything that isn't established fairly early on, but I do think SOMA benefits from the player going in as cold as possible. But I do have the advantage in one area:

Avoiding comparisons to the first couple of Bioshocks is going to prove impossible

HA! Got you there!

It was really hard for me not to mention BioShock. I avoided it because the games are really nothing alike, but I kept thinking throughout that PATHOS-II was doing what I'd always wished Rapture had done. I never really felt that BioShock made the most out of being set underwater; all said and done, Rapture could have been in any isolated location, and I don't think the first game even had any playable underwater segments. Whereas SOMA being set at the bottom of the ocean plays hugely into its themes, as we both discussed.

Anyway, great job with this. Not at all a repeat of mine, if that's what you were worried about!

Nice work, Gary. I think I'll pick this game up.

If you can say so without spoiling the game, what 'weaknesses' did you see? I am led to wonder why it doesn't get the 5-star treatment.

Also, how does it compare to Alien: Isolation (assuming you've played that game)? It kind of looks similar on the face of things.

Suskie: It's not a repeat because I rewrote more than I kept! But I think it's worth it to have two slightly different takes on SOMA.

I took out and put back in that Bioshock reference a few times because, on one hand, you're right that the game share little but a setting they both handle differently. On the other hand, some of the early stages might as well have been lifted from 'Shock 1 (like the glass corridor I used as a screen). Mainly though - and I'm wrecking it by dropping it in the comments section below the review, I found I was okay in being a little misleading so that people will still be surprised by SOMA. Sounds dumb now that this thought has left my head. Perhaps I'll revise.

Marc: I felt there was sometimes a heavy disconnect between the horror aspects of the game and the philosophical thrust it wanted to drive harder the further into the game you got. Most of the time this wasn't the case; the two aspects married up very well but sometimes the scares felt obligatory and the wrapping up of that particular threat, I felt, was handled very clumsily. Also, the protagonist is Canadian. Who wants to play as a Canadian? Keeps harping on about Toronto. Urgh.

For us. For them. For you.

Masters, I think SOMA is very much cut from the same cloth as Alien: Isolation (which in turn was cut from the same cloth as the developers' last game, Amnesia). You're only ever faced against one enemy at a time and you have no defense against them other than just avoiding them completely. There's even one sequence in the game where I'm pretty sure the monster of the moment was using vents in the ceiling to get around, so yeah, it's very much in the same category.

You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.