SOMA’s Getting a ‘Safe Mode’
I dislike most horror games, but only because the fear eventually boils down, leading to anger, hate, suffering and the Dark Side…(oops wrong franchise). Removing the horror can detract from an experience though. SOMA, the Sci-Fi horror game by Fractional Games, is adding a safe-mode — that removes the “scary monsters” from the game.
Yes, the mode will be optional, but I don’t think you should enable it. At least not initially. For those that aren’t familiar with SOMA, you play a character who goes for a routine check up, and wakes up in an unfamiliar station, not knowing how they arrived there; it full of decrepit robots and is falling apart. To begin with, I spent a lot of time ducking behind objects and hiding from whatever it was in the darkness…even though I hadn’t actually seen anything yet.
It’s the unfamiliarity, the state of decay and uncertainty of what’s happening that helps create the atmosphere. Knowing that nothing is hiding in the shadows. Nothing is ready to pounce out at you. And nothing will hurt you, would dilute the tension. Only at the beginning though.
I can however see a use for safe mode after the initial few sections. Once you start understanding what’s going on, and what’s trying to kill you, the fear melts away — especially after dying in the same place multiple times — and this leaves only frustration. There’s only so much running away from un-scary monsters one can take, especially when they’re taking you in the wrong direction. The monsters are relentless in places. They can teleport and appear in the next room, despite having crawled through every air vent possible, to get away from them. While SOMA isn’t completely ruined by these sections, I wish I’d had safe mode for them.
Of course, not everyone enjoys horrors either, so safe mode will make SOMA more accessible to those just wanting the story. Apart from the vast, near pitch-black areas, without maps, SOMA’s drip fed story is engaging; the monsters just distract you from it.
While the horror made the first half of SOMA, for me, I feel the story carries the latter parts. If you can hack it, and SOMA allows you, I’d recommend leaving safe mode off — at least until you start down the path to the Dark Side and hating everything.
