SOMA Review

SOMA is a first-person science fiction survival horror game developed by Frictional Games and was released in September 2015. 
The game starts when a character called Simon Jarrett goes to a clinic in Toronto to have a brain scan because of a car accident leaving him with brain damage. During the scan Simon blacks out and when he wakes up he is in some sort of underwater research facility in the future. Everything is not as it seems. Without giving to much away something has happened to Simon’s mind and something catastrophic has happened on earth.

There is no combat in this game. The only way to protect yourself from creatures is to run, hide or distract them to go past you. There are not many situations in this game where you will be attacked. The game is quite short. Most of the gameplay involves solving puzzles, reading clues and exploring. There is no hint system to tell you what to do and sometimes you have to work it out yourself. I found myself using a walkthrough a couple of times as I was stuck. 
The story is good, there are not many characters to interact with. I played with both a keyboard, mouse setup and a controller. I found the keyboard setup better. Graphics wise the visuals were not stunning but they achieved what was intended. It is not really a horror game as I did not find it scary at all. The only scary parts were hiding from the creatures and that was not a regular occurrence. The environment and music does do a good job of setting the mood and ambience to make you feel unsettled as you progress.   

The ending is both sad and happy depending how you look at it. (I suggest watching the credits as the game does not fully end before the credits). It took about 13 hours to complete this game but you could remove one third of that from being stuck or lost. 
Overall I found it a good game with an interesting and original premise. SOMA is not a triple A title and it costs less than half to buy than more popular games. At the lower price I found it to be worth playing.
I give it 7/10