SOMA – Alien: Isolation underwater with robots!

[section_title title=Gameplay]

GAMEPLAY

The game plays just like Amnesia did, except on doors there is a button to open them rather than manually opening any door you wish to go through.  You will have to open things like desks and lockers manually, with the odd door or two being opened manually too, a cool thing in this game is that there is no loading times, other than between cutscenes.  This is really cool as immersion was broken a little bit playing Amnesia when you went through a certain door and were stuck with a loading time for the next part of the game to be loaded up.  In this game you will rely on a tool called an Omnitool, this helps you open certain doors, access computer systems and most importantly, it holds the only companion you will have throughout the game.  The companion is a person who is inside a chip in your Omnitool called Catherine who designed something that is important to the story of SOMA, and together you go on the journey to do what Catherine believes needs done.

Monsters in this game are infuriating to go up against, but damn are they not the coolest I’ve seen in a while.  You will find you don’t generally go up against the same monster twice, I believe I faced the same one twice at one stage and that was it though, it makes a big difference having more than one type of monster in a horror game plainly because of how it changes everything. Compared to previous monsters from Frictional Games, these ones seem far more intelligent and will hunt you down if they hear a door close or just hear your footsteps, which makes for a tension filled ride.

You will get something called Data Buffers in the game which is something kind of from Amnesia.  It will allow you to find out something that happened where you are before you got there, and can sometimes be a big help in getting yourself out of places you may find yourself stuck in.  A bit of a spoiler, but you will get to go underwater in this game, and it was handled really well, because while going underwater is a beauty to look at, you’re also in danger there too, especially when you go into deeper depths of the ocean floor…