Reviews - TheUnbeholden

A highly original FPS shooter. I fully recommend this to anybody who loves the classic shooters but also want an immersive game.

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.

As a whole, its alot more grounded than Hotline Miami 1, but instead of being a whole "fun games don't need story, they just need to be fun", fast flowing tactics, violence as a puzzle kind of thing, this game feels more so like that and it seems to flow better but it can be more of a unfair puzzle at times. Enemies shoot you off screen alot making you use that move screen key, masks take a whole new direction in gameplay (theres less masks but each one feels way more fresh than what we had before).

However certain bugs weren't fixed. Dogs spin, doors get into a infinite bouncing into enemies to knock them out, enemies don't hear you or see their friend get killed ect Some levels are frustrating like Beards war scenarious (where he can't pick up new weapons and only some crates open to give him ammo, allowing you to reload instead) making it a very strategic but also a guessing game. The nightclub level was painful to see with its flashing lights from light to dim and mobsters in dark clothes.

The story here is more of a focus but it answers every single question we had about the first game instead of allowing the players to make our own meaning, it makes some parallels between its own history and reality, it gave us something we thought we wanted with Martin's psychotic break (weird scenes where he imagines camera crew during his first kill), Richter's, Pardo's, and Evan's storylines. It’s still weird (particularly the ending) but its not interestingly weird (or interestingly ambiguous on the concept of violence and player motivation like the first game). Mostly its still the awesome music, more violence, alot more. What the game ends up doing is pushing every single piece of its own backstory and seeing how far it can take it before moving to another thread (mostly the story comes in snippets towards the end of levels). Then as people and stories are dropped its almost as if its trying to break down its whole universe, until finally it literally does destroy everything in a climactic finale like it all didn't matter. So its still rebellious towards the need for story as player motivation, or 'anti-story' in that way. That doesn't stop it from being uninteresting though, still very fun and that I think is what makes it worth playing.

Its quite short unfortunately. 2-3 hours. It feels very unfinished, it feels like a Early Access game (eventhough its not listed that way). Its artificially lengthened with lots of walking around in the dark (can go around an hour without any real threat, where it then chases you once and ramps up the difficulty towards the end unfairly the creature appears in front of you). Costs $20 for what should be a $5-7 title.

It has some nice ideas though, claustrophobic and tense at first. Not being able to see whats at the end of corridoors until you find the hidden flashlight can make the initial part of the game quite tense (although some may find this annoying if they don't ever find it). Pills pushing back the voices, wobbly vision serves to heighten the urgency but generally you never run out after finding the first few. No hand holding, and a story that you figure out on your own. Graphics are fairly nice. And that screaming prisoner you find was scary at first, but then you find them later on which ends up annoying me (screams are the exact same sound file & lacks the tension it had the first time around). The story is somewhat obscure but this I find makes you work that much harder to get every note. At the moment I don't think its worth the time or money but theres alot of potential here, SCP, Penumbra, even a little Twin Peaks, in the end the game just isn't scary after you realize your not in any danger. Theres just noises and dark hallway simulator. Slightly odd how the levels randomly change as you progress which makes sense as you are going crazy but it makes you feel like your not in charge of your progress which is frustrating, combined with a realization of a lack of danger you are left with only appreciating the ambiance and left wondering what was the point?

It's not really innovative or interesting mechanics-wise. The "Stress Meter" is exactly Eternal Darkness' sanity meter, just inverted to have a numerical value tick up as you play through the level instead of down. The only thing here that feels fresh & valuable is how unique characters get with all their mental traits they gain over the course of the game. The risk vs reward of letting darkness increase difficulty but give more loot is essentially like difficulty settings of any RPG out there like Diablo, Morrowind, Path of Exile (except its usually geared towards more XP). The RPG system itself isn't that in-depth strategic and you can figure out some neat optimal strategies very quickly that will get you through most dungeons if you're well-equipped and know how to manage class abilities and upgrades. It also has a last-stand "magic pixel" system that stops your party members from dying too easily. So it's not a challenging game, but what makes this game engaging is that failure, however sparse, can be very punishing.

The punishment for losing is actually in stark opposition to the system of Dark Souls. When you die in Dark Souls, you lose all of the souls you haven't spent yet and spending souls is the only way of saving them, so having the opportunity to spend souls felt like a huge relief. In Darkest Dungeon, when you lose a high-level party-member, you lose all of the upgrades you spent on them as well, which means spending money to upgrade your party feels like a huge gambit, especially when you march them into a high-level dungeon. This is the most engaging part of the game for me: the tension of sending my precious high-level heroes in to face a difficult dungeon that one or more may not return from.

Otherwise, all of the mechanics are robust, despite lacking depth. They're discrete enough not to cause frustration and the multiple classes and abilities allow for fun experimenting with different playstyles. I personally love the Plague Doctor and Occultist classes.

The Lovecraftian theme works well too. A very dungeon keeper like narrator, although some of his lines can get repetitive. I will never get tired of him saying, "Executed with impunity!" though. But I do think that more will need to be done to the psychological system in this game before the full release, because at the moment it's kind of bare bones. It's tense as all hell, and a hero reaching maximum stress has a potential to ruin your dungeon crawl. But it needs more, I think, considering it's one of the key selling points of the game if the trailers are anything to go by.