#SOMA FOR PC SERIES#

Instead of accepting the dichotomy between exploration and challenge, Soma just turns up the pressure, until you almost wish you could take a break to stack boxes and mix chemicals. With virtually no interface or items to pick up, half the difficulty involves figuring out where you are and where you need to be, then getting there without alerting one of the eerie, robot-like creatures that appear to be the stationвЂ™s last remaining inhabitants. Set at the bottom of the Atlantic, the demo alternates between labyrinthine gunmetal corridors and the empty ocean floor, between bloodstained grating and the bright, encroaching flora and fauna of the sea. My tastes have probably shifted a little, but Soma also just seems more comfortable in its own quasi-walk-em-up skin. Soma rejects the idea that exploration games can't have challenges In Soma, it lets the environment itself become the puzzle.

Its kind of stripped-down gameplay is exactly what I didnвЂ™t like about FrictionalвЂ™s last game, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs - at the time, it seemed to lower the stakes and encourage linearity. But that doesnвЂ™t capture how well itвЂ™s negotiated the balance between 'walking game' and 'adventure game.' SomaвЂ™s demo doesnвЂ™t have physics puzzles or sequences of picking up and combining objects. Enter a room, read a thing, flip a switch or switch-like object, maybe flip another switch to activate that switch, go to a new room, and run away screaming if something tries to kill you. Based on a roughly 3-hour preview, though, it might also be the studioвЂ™s most mature and sophisticated game yet.ДЄ play-by-play walkthrough of Soma doesnвЂ™t sound all that original.

#SOMA FOR PC SERIES#

It feels slightly like a callback to the Penumbra series that Frictional published throughout the late вЂ00s, but set in a creepy, abandoned underwater lab instead of a creepy, abandoned underground mine. And they usually involve a whole lot of Lovecraft - not your basic Cthulhu-and-Necronomicon pastiche, but stories about men and women of science facing entities beyond their comprehension.ДЇrictionalвЂ™s new game Soma, coming this fall, is most of those things. They keep monsters in the corner of your eye until itвЂ™s too late. The Swedish indie studio is best known for the 2011 game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but itвЂ™s also just synonymous with a specific kind of survival horror. Nobody can invoke helpless, frantic fear as well as Frictional.

Soma for pc