Existential Horror is one of many branch of the horror genre, instead of using jumpscares or monsters to scare a person, Existential Horror inflicts terror through doubting our existence, making us question ourselves what makes us human in the first place or the sense of identity. SOMA begins with Simon Jarret, he suffers a car accident, because of this, he´s only a few months left of living, he goes to the doctor to see if there is some way to try to enlarge his time, they do some kind of experiment where the protagonist falls asleep, once Simon awakens, he realizes he´s now in an obscure and dark place, he finds that he is all alone by himself now.
SOMA is a first person game, funny thing is...we won´t have a way to defend ourselves, we can´t even hide, our only option is to be as sneaky as possible, there are weird and creepy monsters that will chase us, so better be careful. There is another thing we can do but it´s pretty useless to be honest, you can pick up things and then throw them, I mean, I only found one useful use of this mechanic and that was because I needed to break a window with certain object but that was once, I mean it, it´s useless, it doesn´t even help agains´t the enemies.
I mentioned earlier the definition of existential horror and I did it because the game implements this kind of horror and let me explain you why. When Simon awakes from his sleep, he finds out that he´s into a dystopian future where mankind is extinct, he´s not alive either, he is inside of a machine, said machine behaves like Simon because it´s integrated with a chip full of his memories and stuff, so you could say he´s not Simon...because it´s not his body, but at the same time, he really is Simon because the machine is using his mind, but that fact breaks with what is supposed to make us feel human, I mean, Simon could be inside that machine, that makes him Simon but he´s not using a human body, so you could say he´s not human anymore, but Simon is human, his mind is human.
Simon meets a girl which is called Catherine, so Cathetine doesn´t have a body, she just exists through data as Simon, it´s known here that there is some kind of Ark which is the last hope of humanity, said Ark contains a digital world constituted by our own identities, I mean, all mankind had to do a brain scan so their identity could be inside of the Ark. Our main mission will be launching the Ark into space with Catherine´s help and that seems okay but again what makes you say all of the consciences inside of the Ark are human? They are identities or consciences formed of data, it doesn´t mean they don´t exit because they do exist, but could you say they are even human now? SOMA goes further and makes you think in all kind of stuff I can´t mention because of spoilers.
Soma does a splendid job in making you feel insecure and claustrophobic becuase of the enviorments, they are really small and most of the times you´ll have to do black magic in order to evade some enemies, the atmosphere from SOMA is genuinely very well build, even if sometimes you can talk with Catherine, you´ll feel alone and vulnerable all the time. The game has a cool way to scary you sometimes while showing you weird things that couldn´t be considered gore at all but they tend to be pretty creepy and let you with a bad feeling, sometimes you´ll find corpses along the way, which strengthens the idea that you are all alone by yourself.
In SOMA, there is main tool we´ll use through all the game, said tool is called Omnitool. I like that SOMA really feels like a videogame and not just a movie or something else, we live in that kind of time where videogames these days are so obsessed being cinematic experiences, I just love that there is one cutscene at the begining of the game and after that you are not bothered by that at all, if you want to do something, you´ll do it by yourself, if you want to reach some place, you could do it without experiencing a cutscene along the way which can be annoying, I don´t know, maybe I´m becoming into a boomer.
SOMA is a pretty cool game, still there are things I didn´t like that much, but instead or just criticize the game, these are things I think they could do better if there is a sequel or something like that. I like how SOMA makes you feel way too vulnerable and that´s good but you know, when you quit a map in this kind of games, I think we have a problem. There are no maps in SOMA and that can be annoying, many sections of the game feels like a labyrinth and can be confusing, I´m pretty used of having a map in horror games so when there is no map I feel lost, I understand why they decided to not include a map and maybe it´s because of immersion stuff but I don´t know, please just give me a map. The environments in SOMA are not that big, so this is not that problematic as it sounds and maybe it depends on the person but I really felt lost without a map, it was frustrating, but again...I think that´s how you are supposed to feel in real life if you were in a situation like that.
I don´t understand why there is a stealth mechanic in the first place, I mean, the game tells you to use that stuff, I mean, to crouch and making no sound, this way you are supposed to evade monsters but that didn´t help me at all, no matter how hard I tried to be sneaky, they just always found me, it doesn´t help that the IA is a little weird, sometimes they followed me until the very end and sometimes they just let me free, I don´t know, it was weird, I played all the game without being sneaky because of this, it´s better when you do it that way, one last thing could be the monsters which are pretty lame in both design and what they do. These are the things that I didn´t like about SOMA that much, but everything else to me is pretty cool.
All of the screenshots were taken by me
