Update One Hundred and Twenty-Four: 18 February 2018

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

I’m really happy I get to play video games with my girlfriend. I used to be more social with playing games - I can fondly recall playing through games with friends as a child and then again in college - but after I graduated, games began to become more of an isolated experience. Luckily, no more! And because of this, I get to play through games I would not have been able to get through on my own.

SOMA is one of those games.

I’ve had SOMA for a few years now, and it had so many things I loved - science shit, robot shit, a bunch of ladies in it. Video game photographers were going nuts with screenshotting its gorgeous, spooky, and goopy environs. I was interested - but too scared to visit.

Now, with the advent of developer-implemented safe mode, us two wussies can enjoy our time on PATHOS-II as much as anyone else.

And we did! We both had a fun time with this one. I wish I played it a little bit sooner - unfortunately, the story felt less unique than it would have if I hadn’t watched four seasons of Black Mirror before diving into this. I can’t quite blame the game, it’s not its fault that since I’ve experienced a lot of narratives in this vein, I could kind of guess most of the mid-to-late game twists. I enjoyed the roller coaster of a beginning very much, and thought it was very effective.

On the one hand, the narrative kind of beats you over the head with the themes of the game in a way that felt a little exhausting - on the other hand, I liked Simon a surprising lot as a character. His voice actor was great, and I was glad he got to be the emotional one next to the more-analytical Catherine. I liked Catherine’s character a lot, and how she felt flawed and real and despite the fact that in normal life she’s not particularly likeable, she showed tremendous strength of character to achieve her goals.

I asked my girlfriend what he favorite part was, and she said it was this:
In safe mode, the monsters walk around, and scream and hit you, but you don’t die. Mostly.
Near the third-quarter point of the game, when you’re running around in Tau, the dive-suit monster follows you SUPER CLOSELY in safe mode. When my gf took her turn playing, she noticed that the monster would take a step back if you looked at it, but otherwise would stick right to you. When exploring one of the labs, she picks up a beaker, asks me how to throw things, and then turns and throws it right at the monster. It bounces off, the monster steps back, then stepped up and choked her right the fuck out. It was a bit of a startle but made the both of us laugh very hard - safe mode won’t protect you from antagonizing the monsters!

I’m going to keep this brief, I don’t have a lot of time - we’re leaving momentarily to pick up a friend and then we’re going to see Black Panther! I can’t wait. c:

Next up: We’re going to play -

See you soon!