From what I can gather the Wau was just another attempt at preserving humanity - a parallel project to the Ark. The undead scientist intended it to keep people alive, but the criteria for 'life' as seen by the Wau was stupidly open ended, resulting in the monsters you're escaping from the entire time plus all those gigery people/machine mashups on the bunks towards the end. That was what it did to healthy people to keep them alive without food, whilst the monsters were partially recovered people with only fragments of organic, or wholly machine parts to work with - or just scans it stole from the pilot seats / black boxes. Which is why the dead scientist ultimately wanted to destroy it. Although wanting to then kill you and then him getting mashed by that worm thing was hammy and pointless.

That's my interpretation anyway.

I enjoyed the story but found the gameplay very patchy. Lots of level design was really poorly done; far too many case of 'wait until monster looks over there'. There was pathing that id1 has better. Also lots of dead ends without any real point to them. The infamous sunken ship sequence for example - it's almost like it wasn't playtested. The monster would teleport around when it got stuck, often glitching you to death. The way forward in one bit was a ladder you could easily walk past to hit a series of dead ends. There was a dead end beyond the reactor area for no other reason than to confuse you. If someone posted that map layout here we'd consider it a beginner's effort.

BUT!

Despite all my gripes I'm glad I paid full price instead of waiting for the inevitable Halloween price drop. The story and ambiance are great and I want to see them continue making games. In terms of narrative in games they made most AAA titles look idiotic. 

I read the top user review on Steam, which seems to spoil major plot details in the second paragraph. Serves me right I guess, but argh...

So, don't read any steam user reviews of SOMA! 

I watched half of Daz's stream and then bought it - kicking myself the whole time for watching so much X( 

<spoilers>


I got that much about the WAU, yeah. But...

Who was the dead scientist? Is he actually physically real?

Why did he in particular want the WAU dead?
Surely if the remains of humanity are getting ARKed into orbit, it's fair enough to leave Pathos II to the WAU?

Why does the choice of killing / not killing the WAU have no effect on the remainder of the game nor the ending? (This is one of my main criticisms with the ending, yes I did play it both ways and nothing changes).

Why does Simon not realise that there will be "two" of him once he transfers to the ARK? Why does Catherine not give him an option to suicide tied into the launch switch? (This is my other more minor gripe with the ending, it could have been given a bit more depth).

How is the guy in Delta who went crazy tied into the WAU and stuff?

</spoilers>


To me it felt like there were two concurrent plots going on: Simon waking up on Pathos II, discovering Catherine and what had happened to the global world, and trying to help with the ARK, AND then the story of what had happened to the base, the disaster that befell it in particular, and the mess the WAU had created. And those two plots didn't really conjoin meaningfully at the end as I expected...

Having said all that, the other 95% of the game I really enjoyed, I didn't have any problem with the sunken ship, I thought that bit was quite gripping (I like the escher-esque stairs) and actually had me shaking a bit as I finally escaped the WAU creature. I've seen people critising the slow and linear underwater sections, I thought they were a highlight of the game, beautiful and mesmerising.

It is fair to say it's not really a game and there's not really much gameplay. It is an interactive movie game that I usually decry, but that's usually because it's shallow generic toss like Call Of Wankfare 18. In this case as you say the narrative and themes piss all over most other games, to me it felt like a slow, dark sci-fi film with me being in control of the protagonist. I also thought the technical aspects of the game (graphics, sound, and physical design) worked pretty flawlessly to create the atmosphere. I often get slagged off for being a GFX whore with modern games, but this is a good example of why modern GFX can make a difference. 

The dead scientist was the guy who led the Wau research effort, I think. It seems that when he went into the trench and saw how the Wau was mutating the creatures he decided to kill it.

The scientist being real or not... my theory is he was a ghost. Not in the traditional sense, but something more like an afterimage stored on the various base servers which can project itself into what passes for Simon's brain. This came to mind because the containment tank was physically empty and just had those Fight Club style technicolour flashes while you explore the base. I was disappointed that there wasn't a further reveal that he'd somehow latched onto to either Simon or Catherine's hardware in order to journey into the trench.

As to killing the Wau or not; there are lots of other decisions which had no impact on the game - do you delete the copy of yourself? Or kill Simon2 before he wakes up to realise he's been abandoned? Even the multiple choice questions about your experience. I don't mind these so much though, they add a bit of depth to the game and make you engage with what is going on in a different way.

For example - deleting your file could have affected if you'd even be able to get a copy on the Ark, and then maybe Catherine would survive (cos why not). Killing Simon2, or not, could have had you do some solo coop activity later on to unlock an area so that Simon3 could continue in an easier way or even allow you to sacrifice Simon2 so that 3 can get past a monster without having to do something more complicated.

Not killing the Wau could have been a major deal on the rest of the play - if you kill it, no more monsters, but the base systems begin to die.

These branches in the story could have been awesome, but would probably have delayed production another year.

The main character was pretty dumb overall. His whining about the situation was constant (although to be fair, he's on the bottom of the sea and surrounded by monsters). He's so well acted and written though that I suspect that he was willfully not understanding that each time he went to a new body it was a copy.

The Ark/Wau story overall I liked. Both projects were intended to save humanity, but both fail. Then through the malfunction of the Wau project, Simon is produced and the Ark project eventually succeeds.

I've criticized the game a lot for its play. But if it was bad then I wouldn't bother. With a few small tweaks it could have been much more potent an experience. Then again, most people tell me I'm missing the point and it's an interactive story, not a game. But I'm still not convinced the two are mutually exclusive. 

 

Simon's other micro-decisions only either affected "him" or a singular entity in the world. The WAU decision implied that it would affect a lot more (i.e. the gameworld as a whole), and it would have been nice to see some evidence of that.

I liked his panicked rant at the end. Also some of Catherine's chat cracked me up, she seemed all too comfortable with her situation. 

Religion wasn't mentioned in the story, probably because it's a bad idea to go around kicking wasps nest, but I bet Catherine was a Buddhist.

The Buddhists I know are all annoyingly calm and unfazed by anything, and my reaction to their calm demeanor probably sounds a lot like Simon's rant sometimes XD 

While bathurst was on I went through and made a list of all the 2013 games I'll play. If anyone is interested, in case you missed something, here's the list: www.electricescape.com/etherealhell/2013toplay.htm

These are all freelook games, no isometric top-down stuff. They're all action games, or survival, adventure, stealth etc but they all pretty much fall under action. No racing, sims, strategy, oh there probably are a couple of platformers but only very good ones. And they're all single player. Metacritic pc rank next to each one. There's not really any puzzle adventures in there yet, I'll do those later, plus work out if any mmo is worth playing that year.

Of the list itself, 2013 was a decent year actually. Just as much to play in 2013 as 2012, though the indie games are growing in volume, they're not at an AAA level yet. Quite excited to play Rise of the Triad, I didn't even realise that had a remake. There's a massive lack of rpg's though, particularly fantasy rpgs. There's none. Every year prior usually at least a couple good ones.

At the top of the ranking Bioshock 3 will be good, the rest not so much. I don't care much for GTA or Asscreed or the 90s looking indie adventures like Gone Home or The Stanley Parable. Definitely doesn't have the great releases 2012 had. 

So this got such a high ranking from media because it was made by Rockstar, and everyone will spooge their pants over a Rockstar game because of GTA, much like they do with Bungie. or maybe the publisher buys reviews I don't know.

It's just a standard third person cover shooter. Bullet-time is reduced to being a waste of time and you're better off going into cover and doing the bobble head thing. Diving with bullet time is ludicrous as you flap around on the floor like a fish trying to get back up. The enemies are bullet sponges that require headshots, but that's okay with a mouse. Not sure how consolers would have done it.

Story is good, graphics and art is great, although it is extremely linear. The Favela levels were fantastic, visually. Not quite as exciting as when COD did the Favelas, but close. Combat is really no different from any other third person cover shooter that ranks in the 70's/100. EXCEPT MP3 has goddam unskippable cutscenes every 20 secs. I can't even open a door on my own without a cutscene doing it for me. Then it countlessly puts me into said room, with door locked shut, and I'm behind the flimsiest cover it could find with either my guns all taken off me except the handgun, or I've still got my guns but it's the handgun equipped. The end of the game was seriously stupid as every 30sec cutscene would put me back to the handgun which had no ammo because no enemies carried handguns! I ragequit the last level. Watching the moron Max idiotically diving around while getting shot to pieces and not going into cover when I pressed the cover key was enough for me... perhaps 1 chapter too long.

7.5/10 

In the last few months I've bought several good games I haven't played in years and some old, but new to me, games cheaply enough to not feel bad if/when I don't like them.

Today's purchase (less than $10):

F.E.A.R.
Dungeon Keeper
UT 2004
Gemini Rue 

is a decent enough service and the games are reasonably priced. However I prefer the features that steam has and the steam releases tend to be less reliant on DOS Box (which I hate with a vengeance). 

Is there some other way to run really old DOS games on Windows 7 or newer without DOS Box?

It seems much better than actually running DOS with special boot disks just for games like we did back in the early 90s.

One thing I don't like about GOG is their install program brings a bit too much junk with it. I'd much rather just have a zip file I could unpack and run.

I don't like stuff mucking around in the registry for no reason, so with GOG I usually create a restore point then just revert after installing the game. Followed by cleaning the unnecessary crap out of the game folder.

Steam smells just a little too much like spyware to me, I keep it shut down as much as possible. An interesting fact is that many games sold on Steam don't actually need it to run. The new Shadowrun series and Fallout 3 for example. 

what junk? i thought it was basically a self extracting zip file.

what registry keys are being added other than the ones that the game originally required to run? 

It varies from game to game. I couldn't tell you exactly because I move stuff out of the games folder a few files at a time and check if it still runs. Once I get it down to the minimum number of files, I delete all the unnecessary stuff.

It's not that it's a lot of stuff really, maybe 10-15 files. The GoG uninstaller, some icons, a zip file with jpegs (probably used by the uninstaller), That kind of stuff. I really don't have much need for an uninstaller.

Usually gameuxinstallhelper.dll is included. It has something to do with Games for Windows I think, useless to me.

Part of why this stuff irritates me is that I reinstall Windows frequently and I prefer things to more or less run from whatever folder on whatever drive I put them and not be tied to a particular Windows install.

Games that put their saves in weird locations really annoy me. 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/93321-SOMA-Review 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/360950/

Descent 1, 2 and 3 really captivated my imagination as a kid, they're still compelling, really. This could be sweet 

That has got to be the cheesiest trailer I've seen in a looooong time.

ALPHA ZULU VICTOR COME AROUND ON HIS 6 AND BREAK COVER ON MY GO. IMMA SPRAY MILITARY LINGO IN YOUR FACE EVEN THO I SOUND LIKE A 12 YEAR OLD.

BUY MY GAME!

Descent is cool. This trailer wasn't :( 

 

I didn't watch the trailer. 

Sorry, which part of that was meant to be cool? 

Which is basically Descent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmpsy8aML6c 

I suspect all of it was meant to be cool 

Fail 

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