SOMA

It's really hard not to spoil anything about the game since all of its strong points are in the narrative. So, I’ll try to pimp it as deliciously as possible without spoilers. I’ve rarely been into games solely for the narrative, and I've rarely found games that can stand-out with just the narrative, but the narrative here gave me one of the most engaging stories I've delved into for sometime now.

The story is told through the game in dialogue between the protagonist and the usual woman-voice-on-the-other-side-of-the-intercom. The dialogue, voice acting and characters are very well written and the performance is delivered with superb voice acting. A notable point about the protagonist is that he’s pretty much a vanilla character made by design to easily be relatable to most people. More of the story is told through letters, pads, computer screens and other characters all fitting very well with the pacing and act as a part of the atmosphere making it all a very engrossing experience.

As an example of how much I found myself involved in the story: I found myself many times during the game in the protagonist's shoes asking myself the same questions. The game builds more on that by offering you to be part of a survey; the survey is mostly about your state of mind and how you feel about choices that can be taken in the game’s world which helps as tool that gets you even more involved personally in the story.

Many games have tried previously to challenge the players on a moral level with a choice so critical you have to pause and think about it, and then the choice will have its impact on the narrative. in Soma they introduced a couple of moral choices, the choices were completely optional. for some reason that is beyond me some of the choices was way harder to make than other games; elements of the story that I thought my mind was decided on came back again and the question became more critical because it was time to take an action based on your decisions, the impact of it wont grow you a horn or make flies fly around you, you will just have to live with the choice and what it would say about you.

The least interesting aspect in the game, that I would prefer they remove entirely, is the enemies. They fit the narrative and add to it even, but from a gameplay point I found them pretty dull and more like obstacles that prevent me from progressing through out the interesting story. All and all the enemies don’t take a big chunk of the game, the encounters are few and far between.

I can easily recommend this game for anyone looking for a really well imagined and delivered story. This game really affected me on a personal level and I highly recommend it to anyone who had experienced depersonalization/derealization disorder. I can safely say this game became one of my all time favorite narrative-driven games and goes under my personal category of (Short and Sweet).