Thanks Cirus - downloading it now.  Apparently it will only take 6 hours on my poo pooty connection!

I'll try and play it this weekend and maybe take a screenshot or two

well, at least I tried

Nice Saying

SOMA - REVIEW (SPOILER FREE)

8/10

In case you didn't realise, this is a psychological horror game in the same vein as the Penumbra series and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  Took me 15 hours to complete it.  It's largely set in an underwater facility, but I won't say more than that.

You have the usual puzzles and "dodge the bad guy" gameplay similar to the other titles I listed above, but where Penumbra relied more on mazes filled with "bad guys" which made gameplay repetative and sometimes frustrating, SOMA has much less of that (I can only remember one such area like that, which was easy to get past).  The puzzles are also easy, so no need to refer to wiki pages or whatever, but you still get some feeling of accomplishment after completing them.  The enemies are varied; some can both see and hear you, but others cannot, which changes how you approach those parts of the game.  They don't follow pre-set routes either; they move randomly, which adds to the tension.  Sometimes it's best to hide and sneak past them, perhaps throwing an object elsewhere to distract them; othertimes it's best to just run like crazy, hearing them scream and lumber after you as you blindly run through dark corridors desperately looking for an escape route - those were some of the best bits of the game for me.

There are a number of moral choices you have to make throughout the game, and there is a reocurring theme as the story progresses, which questions the very nature of life and existence, and what makes a life worth living.  I was a little disappointed with the ending - one thing your character says is pretty naive and stupid at that stage - however the ending sequence was good overall, all the loose ends are tied and there are no questions left unanswered.  There's an epilogue after the credits roll, where you get to walk around a new area.

Controls are basic and easy to grasp, and there's no messy inventory sorting.  Some parts of the game you travel underwater; there was a large framerate drop on some of those bits, and the game crashed at one stage for me - it might have been because i'm using a 5-year-old graphics card (1.25Gb DDR5).  Otherwise the graphics are great, and I especially liked the underwater physics.

So yeah, it's definitely worth playing.   

Good Morning

SOMA DEEZ NUTS