Three years in the making, SOMA is a unique continuation of Frictional Games' signature style of explorative horror, provocative storytelling, and unfathomable tension, free of distractive cut-scenes and combat. SOMA is coming to PC and PlayStation 4 in 2015.
I'm seeing not much transhumanism explored in this or the apocalypse, so the context of the situation is left very vague. There is hacking but its very repetitive, so I think they could have done more with that. It would have been good if there was a way to replace your limbs with new tools, or switch bodies to solve puzzles. So you don't know where you are and where your going and it lacks weight, like these dying half robots half humans but you don't know or care whether they die or not, and if it really means anything. The whole touching the weird glowy holes. Voice acting is quite average and there is no real antagonist which hurts the game more because of the other issues with gameplay/lack of context/weight of actions.
The story takes awhile to uncover which is also an issue. I think it could have fleshed the world out more way sooner.
The thing it does have going for it is the atmosphere, which I always know that Frictional Games delivers on. I will have to give it a more concrete review once I reach the end but overall, it feels like a step down story/gameplay wise from Amnesia. And I thought Amnesia was a step down story wise from Penumbra, but was slightly better gameplay wise in terms of userfriendliness, puzzles, monster design, level design for hiding/sneaking and players sense of purpose. So overall I feel like Soma is probably the weakest of them all.
I can say however that Soma is slightly better in terms of body horror, as its kinda of trying to blur machine and alien/man but it doesn't really take that far enough IMO nor the transhumanism and end of the world potential for story or gameplay.
I'm pretty sure that Soma is not meant to be as scary as Outlast and Amnesia. Its supposed to feel alien, disgusting and confusing more than anything else, so you feel detached from your surroundings and not absorbed in them. Its a mindset change to get into this game. Your there to uncover who these robots are, alien technology, whats happened to the world and what is happening to you. You are here to figure out what is going on primarily, not as revenge story like in Amnesia or trying to defeat a ghost or record everything like in Outlast, so there is no antagonist. But you have someone helping you so a hint of Penumbra there. The fact that its not as absorbing/atmospheric/oppressive is not a good criticism because we can tell right away that its a completely different environment, timeline, story which produces a different themes and its own feeling.
You have to go into the game with a different mindset. My criticisms of the game are a little different, there is not enough done with the gameplay to change things up considering the transhumanist element and hacking thing it has, body horror is there but they could have taken it further. Essentially the gameplay feels rather disappointing.