SOMA (Frictional Games)

[Jick Magger]

Perhaps she's uniquely comfortable with the idea because of her work?

Spoiler

I felt as though she comes off throughout the game as being at least partially in denial or at least is refusing to be as introspective about it as Simon is. The way she treats other brain-scanned robots in the game, i.e. justifying everything awful they do to them because they're 'not human' or 'not like us', despite the fact that there is pretty much no objective difference between Simon, Catherine, or any other brain-scanned robot at PATHOS-II, really said that to me. Pretty much all the other robots you encounter in the game who're willing to talk to you are fairly lucid, just deeply in denial about their current situation, I'd imagine Catherine's not that different, and the fact that she essentially stops existing every time you take her out of a console stops her from thinking on it too much.

EDIT: Plus there's a good chance she's aware that she'll overload herself and 'die' if she's put under too much stress, which'd be bad for obvious reasons. So not thinking on her current situation and focusing on getting the ARK shot into space'd be a good way to keep herself focused.

 

[Barbarian]

Man this was less game than Amnesia actually. I found it easier to sneak on monsters and you didn't actually have to hoard anything(in Amnesia lightsource was something to administer at least). You know, I still think they should have kept the ideas from the first Penumbra. The game should be somewhat difficult and you should be able to kill enemies(albeit it should be very hard). At this rate the next game will be just a movie where you push a button every couple of minutes.

I did like the story though.

 

[DeepOcean]

I'm tired of corridor simulator games, if people want to walk on creepy places go walk on some muslim slum at midnight, at least the monsters have a better Ai.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

Just beat SOMA last night.

I liked it a bit less than Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

If Amnesia is a 9, then SOMA is an 8.

The game didn't seem all that original, maybe it's because the setting is almost identical to BioShock, minus the retro theme.

SOMA also reminded me of System Shock 2, The 1989 Sci-Fi movie The Abyss, and the Alien franchise.

I didn't like the enemies as much as those in Amnesia.

While creepy, the hostile NPC's started to become very annoying after a while since their AI has a tendency to crowd your avatar, even if their pathfinding doesn't make sense to.

Like in other Frictional games, enemies cannot be killed.

A good deal of interactive items are haphazardly placed in the game world and do nothing to advance the plot (much like the PDA's in Doom 3).

The story is not as strong as Amnesia but is better than the Prenumbras

Overall, SOMA is an enjoyable experience and it didn't exceed nor fail my expectations... 8/10.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

there is only one thing i want to say

and its fuck that goddamn zombie diver cunt

The shrieking turd monster is a lot more annoying.

 

[Ivan]

Did you like Amnesia more than Penumbra?

 

[Obama Phone 3]

Did you like Amnesia more than Penumbra?

Yep.

Penumbra 1 & 2 are great games but Amnesia #1 won me over with the Lovecraftian setting and torture devices at the end that are lifted straight from world history.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was a terrible dissappointment though.

It was subbed out to Dear Esther developer Chinese Room.

 

[sexbad?]

I don't remember which, but some of the torture devices were fictional, actually.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

The puzzles were too simple too, but I noticed this same thing with Amnesia as well.

Penumbra's puzzles were the hardest IIRC and forced me to look up Youtube walkthroughs.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

I don't remember which, but some of the torture devices were fictional, actually.

You talking about Justine or the main campaign?

 

[Jick Magger]

I don't remember which, but some of the torture devices were fictional, actually.

The ones in the six main torture chambers were historical, with a majority of them coming from the Medieval period (which was a lovely time for execution devices that were made specifically to inflict excruciatingly long and humiliating deaths). Only exception was the Brazen bull, which was from the Hellensitic era. That one has a bit more dubious, we have sources that said they exist and were used, but those were written by a Greek historian who's work is a bit spotty, and from tales of Christian Martyrs during the reigns of Hadrian and Diocletian, which inherently must be taken with a grain of salt. Admittedly, there are plenty of torture devices that Historians believe were actually unusable, and were kept primarily as an weapon of intimidation, meant to scare people into confessing just by threatening to use them.

 

[sexbad?]

Oh wait, I thought the iron maiden was never actually used. Are there any accounts for it?

 

[Jick Magger]

Oh wait, I thought the iron maiden was never actually used. Are there any accounts for it?

There are, but none older than 1793, so it's pretty unlikely that they were ever actually used as a torture device.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

The ones in the six main torture chambers were historical, with a majority of them coming from the Medieval period (which was a lovely time for execution devices that were made specifically to inflict excruciatingly long and humiliating deaths). Only exception was the Brazen bull, which was from the Hellensitic era. That one has a bit more dubious, we have sources that said they exist and were used, but those were written by a Greek historian who's work is a bit spotty, and from tales of Christian Martyrs during the reins of Hadrian and Diocletian, which inherently must be taken with a grain of salt. Admittedly, there are plenty of torture devices that Historians believe were actually unusable, and were kept primarily as an weapon of intimidation, meant to scare people into confessing just by threatening to use them.

The one torture method that I believe to be the worst that was not included in Amnesia is Scaphism.

Binding a person to a hollowed out log and force feeding them milk and honey which would cause them to defecate all over themselves.

The Persians would set these contraptions adrift each morning in a swamp and all the flies and wasps would be attracted to the honey, milk, excrement slather and literally eat the person alive.

Whatever was left of the victim at the end of each day would be hauled back to shore, refed milk and honey, and set adrift the following morning until death.

This would be the grossest and most terrifying way to go.

 

[Name]

Perhaps she's uniquely comfortable with the idea because of her work?

Spoiler

I felt as though she comes off throughout the game as being at least partially in denial or at least is refusing to be as introspective about it as Simon is. The way she treats other brain-scanned robots in the game, i.e. justifying everything awful they do to them because they're 'not human' or 'not like us', despite the fact that there is pretty much no objective difference between Simon, Catherine, or any other brain-scanned robot at PATHOS-II, really said that to me. Pretty much all the other robots you encounter in the game who're willing to talk to you are fairly lucid, just deeply in denial about their current situation, I'd imagine Catherine's not that different, and the fact that she essentially stops existing every time you take her out of a console stops her from thinking on it too much.

EDIT: Plus there's a good chance she's aware that she'll overload herself and 'die' if she's put under too much stress, which'd be bad for obvious reasons. So not thinking on her current situation and focusing on getting the ARK shot into space'd be a good way to keep herself focused.

I think it's because Catherine has

Spoiler

mental disorder.
(1) She admitted that she's a difficult person to work with.
(2) She doesn't have any friends in PATHOS-II, not even Imogen Reed who she considered as a friend for an instant but then realized it should only count as being nice for normies.
(3) She admitted later the most intimate human connections and belonging she felt was when she went up roof to look at the crowded city of Taipei...
(4) She has no clue how to verbally comfort Simon at various times.
(5) During various mission objectives she's oddly apathetic to robots despite her being a robot as well, which inform about her views of other people...
(6) Simon was dense but Catherine was also very bad at communicating the end goal of hers.
(7) Just as Simon didn't get the way brain copy works, Catherine probably didn't get why Simon were so obsessed about all those "deep" questions...

Anyway I like her... a very atypical female deuteragonist for your male protagonist.

 

[Silva]

Playing this right now and having a blast. Its one of the most unique games I've seen in the way it makes everything ambiguous and gives you a hard choice at every corner to force you to deal with its transhumanist themes. Whoever is disappointed by lack of more scaries or inventories is looking at it from the wrong angle. In fact, if there is one thing that undermines the game is the formulaic monsters. The game would be much better with a more subtle use of them, perhaps as a means to reinforce the narrative just as they did with the puzzles.

Did someone find out how that disco-head monster works ? I've seen some theories that he do not actually teleports, but uses EMP pulses to disable you briefly so you perceive him like that. Seems plausible to me. But then that Ross fella seems to have the same properties but he seems to stay invisible /shifting in and out of phase while inside that glass room. Oh and he also interfaces with computers at distance. So wtf ? There must be some other explanation here.

 

[Ivan]

Just started and I'm getting mad stuttering. Audio hiccups. Anyone experience this?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

So I finished this yesterday night, and I was floored. Best story-fag/walking sim since Life is Strange and Stasis. It's also the kind of a rare story that actually benefits from the interactive game format. A novel couldn't have pulled this of as effectively because all the walking makes actually sense, given the story's "bodily" theme.

A true testament to what a small, dedicated and smart team of professionals can achieve. The game just oozed with attention to detail, beauty, perfect pacing and awe. The end really gave me the sadz, twice.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Playing this right now and having a blast. Its one of the most unique games I've seen in the way it makes everything ambiguous and gives you a hard choice at every corner to force you to deal with its transhumanist themes. Whoever is disappointed by lack of more scaries or inventories is looking at it from the wrong angle. In fact, if there is one thing that undermines the game is the formulaic monsters. The game would be much better with a more subtle use of them, perhaps as a means to reinforce the narrative just as they did with the puzzles.

I thought the monster placement wasn't overbearing. There was basically just one unique monster for each level/station to deal with, barring perhaps an additional potato man here and there. There's a mod that actually allows you to disable all ingame monsters, and the game would still be tense. Some of the best marriage of level design, environment- and sound design I've ever seen.

One important subject however was missing from being adressed:

What about the Sex?

 

[1451]

The monster in the ship, where you had to destroy the generators to free the mini sub marine vehicle gave me nightmares. I lost many times because there was only one route I could follow to escape. Even the slightest misstep caused the monster to catch up to me and kill me by yelling obscenities and showing me pixels.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...-games-expands-scope-to-two-new-projects.aspx

In the last six months the company has sold a little more than 250,00 copies of the game. If it stays on its current pace, Frictional anticipates being in the black "well before the year is over." Given the overabundance of indie titles proliferating digital storefronts like Steam these days, this is no small feat even for a studio with the pedigree of a game like Amnesia.

Perhaps more exciting for Frictional fans, the studio also announced it is expanding its operations to develop two games at once, each in a different genre to keep their game projects from blurring together and perhaps undermining the sales of each other. "A problem with Soma is that it lies between two genres," Frictional wrote. "Not only has this probably led to lost sales, it's also most likely the reason why Soma cannibalized the Amnesia sales. The moment that SOMA came out, sales of Amnesia: The Dark Descent went down too, and has stayed down ever since. We saw the same happening when we released Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, but since Soma is in many ways quite different from Amnesia, we thought it wouldn't happen this time. But it did, and the reason seems to be that people lump both titles under a 'Current Horror From Frictional Games' label."

"A problem with Soma is that it lies between two genres," Frictional wrote. "Not only has this probably led to lost sales, it's also most likely the reason why Soma cannibalized the Amnesia sales.""

I disagree with this assessment. It's just a matter of visibility/games oversupply that is running rampant today and of course the fact that games with subtle and thoughtful themes simply don't sell well.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Compare and contrast: Firewatch: One Month Later

In short: people’s response to Firewatch was overwhelming and amazing.

How’d it go? Firewatch’s budget, while huge for us, was modest for a game of its quality and scope, but we made our investment back in about one day. Firewatch has sold around 500,000 full-price copies in its first month.

Fuck ambition, fuck talent, just slap a layer of hipster paint on a Unity turd and count your money.

 

[GrainWetski]

It's because the clickbait clique advertised that game to no end.

 

[AN4RCHID]

They also lied and said it would be twice as long as it actually was - http://wccftech.com/firewatch-to-last-56-hours-on-average-no-vr-support-planned/

It’s pretty hard to say since there’s actually quite a lot of “off the beaten path” areas in the game that players won’t have to visit. On average, I’d say maybe 5-6 hours … ? When I play it, it feels comparable to the length of a trilogy of movies or a TV mini-series.

 

[Metro]

Great, more not-games on the way.