My only complaint here is that when you do get stuck (and it’s usually on something simple that you missed) there isn’t any system of hints or previous saves to give you an out. These are puzzles, in a sense, but none are terribly difficult. Meanwhile, you have to guide Simon through the underwater maze of doors and ladders and tramways to his destinations. Each entity offers a different way to skirt around it-maybe you can’t look at it directly, or maybe you have to avoid the darkness. Monsters aren’t there for you to fight, but rather to avoid. The gameplay is much like the original Amnesia: the Dark Descent. (I would also offer that if you’re impatient with hiding, like I am, some sections get dull fairly quickly.) Not that there aren’t any heart-pounding moments, but the horror is always entwined with the overall sadness of it all, and the point isn’t constant fear. There’s nothing wrong with the mechanics, though I’d say if you’re looking for a truly scary horror game SOMA isn’t that. But suffice it to say, the story is why you play. In the interest of not spoiling the entire game, I’ll shut up about the plot. Which, fittingly, is the question behind all of SOMA: what is a person? She isn’t a Strong Female Character by any means, but she’s strong in the original meaning-she’s a person. She may not be the player-protagonist, but she’s a far more interesting and well-rounded personality than Simon.
Catherine is the woman in the marketing, the one who I had hoped would be the main character. It took me a while to get there, but at a certain point I realized that Simon was important to me.Ī lot of that is largely thanks to Simon’s interactions with Catherine Chun, who at first is simply a voice over the intercom dictating instructions. I’ll never be able to relate to a straight male protagonist the way straight guys probably can, but making a character likable enough that I want them to succeed regardless is something surprisingly few games manage. I think I was supposed to see myself in Simon, but the game managed to do something more useful for me–I wanted to protect Simon. As he wanders through the horrific, empty (well…mostly empty) underwater PATHOS-II station, you get little bits of empathy from him. In this new place, it doesn’t matter that Simon throws things around, because he’s mildly panicked, and who wouldn’t be? His confusion is more relatable than the take-out in his refrigerator. And, the occasional blood stain, just in case you were under any false impression that things are a-okay. His brain scan seems to have catapulted him into an unknown place and time-there are no other humans, and the claustrophobic environment is filled with dilapidated machinery dripping with black ooze. The game truly begins when Simon wakes up for the second time. My disappointment was short-lived, though. Simon blunders through his apartment Surgeon Simulator-style, and we don’t really get enough of his personality via personal affects to make it worthwhile. My main complaint about this opening sequence is that, while it did a good job of setting up the game’s mechanics, it immediately broke immersion. Simon didn’t seem fazed by the mishap, which could be commentary on the difficulty of doing daily chores with a brain injury, but also ended up making me recoil at his ambivalence toward his own lack of hygiene. Unfortunately he can’t really put things back where he found them-I was sort of put off by the fact that I could pick up his toothbrush but couldn’t make him brush his teeth, and then in my attempt to put it back I ended up tossing it in the toilet. You can pick up photographs and notes and just about any object, and sometimes Simon will make a comment.
#We broke surgeon simulator how to#
Here you find out how to interact with the world. The opening scene has him waking up in his bland apartment, in the present, and preparing for a brain scan appointment. Simon has suffered some kind of brain trauma due to a car accident that he still has nightmares about. I admit, I didn’t like Simon Jarrett at first. I was initially a little disappointed that the protagonist wasn’t the Asian woman I had seen in all the marketing, and instead seemed to be a generic-brand 20-something white guy.