Soma

Gameplay

Soma offers very intuitive controls, which are introduced to you at the beginning of the game. The controls follow the same principle.

I find the ability to "explore" the entire environment to be a nice addition to the game. For example, at the beginning of the game, you can flush the toilet, turn on the sink, take things out of the refrigerator, or go through emails on the computer.

Thanks to this high level of interaction with the environment, you will immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the game even faster. The game also uses this to solve mostly simple puzzles.

Music

Despite the horror genre, there is a very memorable musical theme in Soma. However, no memorable music plays during normal gameplay. It is more of a background to the current situation.

Memorable themes play during important moments, of which there are many in the game.

The sound, which is absolutely perfect, deserves its own chapter here. Thanks to the visual stimuli, the game will engross you and evoke unpleasant feelings, even when nothing is happening.

The sound then complements everything with underwater creaking, scratching, and other unpleasant things.

Graphics

Personally, I am not demanding when it comes to the graphics of a game. Since the game was released in 2015, it has been quite a while (almost 10 years at the time of writing this post).

Despite the game's "age," it turns out that its graphics are still unsurpassed in some ways. Even today's games that are sold as AAA often have worse graphics.

Story

Unfortunately, the story is very straightforward, and the player has no way of influencing it. Although there are a few decisions you can make, these decisions have no impact on the ending of the game.

The decisions that the developers present to you are there more to make you think about the main theme of the game and what it means to be human.

Thanks to the dense atmosphere and unusual environment, you will definitely find yourself returning to these decisions in your thoughts and wondering if you made the right choice.

Optimization

The current version of the game is in a very satisfactory state. When it was released, the game crashed, but this was quickly fixed.

From today's perspective, I can't fault the game's technical condition.

Content and pace

The game has a fairly fast pace. The story can be completed in 10 hours, during which you will explore every corner of the map and absorb the story, which is told mainly through audio recordings or written text.

It is a linear story that does not allow you to deviate anywhere, but the amount of additional information available, which you can easily skip if you are not paying attention, gives the game greater replayability.