There are few software houses that can boast a career without holes in the water or unconvincing titles, Frictional Games in our opinion is one of them. Since 2007 with Penumbra: Overture up to 2010 with Amnesia, the Swedish development house has always known how to innovate and offer horror adventures of the highest level, without ever being sucked into the vortex of entertainment horror that is so fashionable in these years on platforms like YouTube. They will have managed to do the same with their youngest child as well SOMA? In our opinion, yes.
What happens?
The cornerstone on which it is based SOMA is the plot. In fact, this will be enough to keep you attached to the screen for all the hours sufficient to complete the adventure. The story will initially be very confusing, despite the fact that the game gives almost immediately (in a very veiled way) the means to understand what is happening around us.
The protagonist of this story is Simon Jarrett, comic shop clerk with a not so lucky story. Following a car accident, he suffered a severe brain hemorrhage and lost what appeared to be a girl he felt something about and was about to declare himself shortly before the accident. After the car crash, his life changed completely, this hemorrhage did not allow him to make great brain efforts and prevented even the simplest actions such as watching television.
Our adventure will begin on the day Simon made an appointment with Doctor David Munshi for a brain scan. The latter is in fact developing a non-invasive method to treat brain pathologies: through a scan it can in fact recreate a very faithful model of the brain in question to test what it wants without repercussions on the individual. Once we get to the office and scan it, everything around us will change. Removed the helmet used by the doctor we will find ourselves inside, what looks like a military base, but a hundred years later in time.
Realization that we are no longer in our time, looking around it will not take long to understand that something has gone wrong inside this underwater station where the only forms of "life" present are semi-destroyed robots and strongly convinced that they are people in flesh and blood. It will all start to make sense when we meet Dr. Catherine Chun, who will explain to us that the presence of these machines with a human conscience is completely normal, as she herself had created the ARK project years earlier, a system capable of guaranteeing eternal life (or rather, survival) for mankind. This project consisted of creating scans of human people and inserting them into a computer, creating real clones that lived forever in an infinite simulation, while the original individuals continued towards their "mortal" life.
This is what SOMA is based, the title is nothing more than a great reflection on life, as well as on the identity and importance of it. What are we really? A collection of experiences and memories trapped in a mass of flesh? Or maybe we are also that pile of meat? These are all questions that the guys at Frictional Games will try to make us ask themselves, providing us with continuous ideas and materials to arrive at our personal answer which, as we can also see from the choices made by the characters of the game, will be different for each of us.
Less horror than expected
Let's start by specifying that if you are looking for a horror game full of jumpscare and monsters you are on the wrong track, but if you are a fan of the work of Frictional Games this information will only make you happy. SOMA is a very special horror title, it will be able to scare you only thanks to the atmosphere and the story, both very well done.
As in all previous titles there are, of course, real threats present. In fact, it seems that the entire base has been infected by an artificial entity intent on controlling and driving all the machines in the structure crazy. The latter, however, seems to be just an AI without any consciousness and moves similar to a tumor. The presence of this entity has in fact created wandering machines throughout the base.
While these creatures may seem threatening and dangerous at first glance, it will take little to understand that in reality there is not much to fear. It will be very difficult to feel a real sense of terror at their sight, also thanks to a not excellent management of the artificial intelligence of the enemies combined with the choice of the developers to insert relatively few of them.
As if all this were not enough, the game has a mechanic that on the one hand manages to make the gameplay fluid and never frustrating, but on the other hand it annihilates the sense of fear that one feels towards the enemies, the latter will not be faced and it will not be possible. kill them in any way (like previous titles), but once they reach us they will not kill us, but they will leave us unconscious on the spot. In fact, it will take two or three fights to get to Game Over.
As for the duration, the adventure will require at least ten hours to be completed. They are not many, but they are absolutely sufficient and once completed the game will not leave the feeling of being neither too short nor too long.
Grab everything but don't pick up anything
The gameplay of the title will be familiar to anyone who has ever played an old Frictional title, in fact, we will have a first-person view (which will be very immersive, also given the total absence of HUD) and the ability to collect and interact directly with virtually any object in the scenario. This is a winning formula that the Swedish team has been carrying around since the first projects, but something here seems to have gone wrong. In the old titles it was possible to interact with many objects present in the scenario, but in the junk chaos there were also some useful objects that ended up directly in our inventory (batteries, oil, etc.), so ravaning among all the objects in the game was not a mechanical end in itself. In SOMA, on the other hand, has no inventory and therefore in the levels it is not possible to find any object really useful for gameplay purposes and it is really a shame if we think that in this title the interactable objects are really many. There will obviously be the classic documents to read to fully understand the lore of the title.
Graphically, the game does not scream a miracle, but it is extremely clean and overall it offers not indifferent glimpses especially in the underwater phases. The game uses HPL Engine 3, a proprietary engine that certainly does well if it weren't for some drop in frame rates, especially on the PS4 version.
Nothing can be said about the sound sector which, as per routine for Frictional titles, manages to immerse the player even more in an atmosphere almost perfect in itself. Perhaps some sounds may be too loud for someone, but they too help to give an incredible sense of restlessness.
In conclusion
SOMA is definitely not the Frictional title that shines the most under the gameplay side but it is probably the most interesting from a plot point of view. This title is an example of how a video game can transcend its nature as a pure object of entertainment and become a concrete food for thought on what we have most ours: our identity.
