# Thinking About Playing SOMA Again
February 17, 2023
In which I discuss my thoughts on the video game SOMA (2015).
Written on a MacBook Pro while listenting to nothing XD
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I should try finishingS SOMA (2015). I really adore the story and
the general atmosphere of it; but it's the only game I stopped
playing because it scared me too much. It's very well executed but
the scariness isn't exclusively because of that, it's more the
weird biomechanical creatures and the philosophical themes of the
game.
I very rarely get scared of horror media, mostly because
99.9999999% of it is absolutely awful and horribly done. Like the
"old people or children doing something really w e i r d and
c r a z y" trope that scares ~stupid babies~ apparently literally
everyone other than me. But even the well-done media, weird
psychological stuff can make me introspective but rarely actually
scared; I don't find machines particularly scary, they're at most
intimidating because they're arbitrarily stronger than you; and
biological monsters I typically have the opposite reaction the
designers expected.
But SOMA uses the perfect biomechanical creatures, plus the
philosophical themes throughout the entire story, capped of with
the fantastic execution: great sound design and visual effects,
excellent setting and atmosphere.
The whole game is fantastic on top of actually being scary, the
writing and story in particular really shines (haven't finished the
game so can't speak for the quality of the last act). I would like
to point out that all of Frictional Games' games that weren't
written by Mikael Hedberg are generally bad.
Also because not enough games do this anymore---or possibly because
I haven't been paying attention---SOMA had a really fantastic set
of teasers prior to the release of the game:
http://somagame.com/files.html
Especially "Mockingbird" which is a full live-action video that
explores stuff in the game, ever so slightly spoiler-y but it's
really enjoyable. Apparently there's also a miniseries called
Transmissions that I haven't seen but that explains why they had
sets and props for the teaser videos.
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