Not sure how an animated series would work with Soma (the OG game has a clear beginning, middle and end), but I will agree with the subject of the article that Soma is a top 5 / top 10 best game of all time type experience.
You mean the live action web series? Yea I don’t understand how that series had better visuals than many blockbuster scifi movies rofl. It was extremely well done.
I have a confession to make, in the early parts of the game (before things got all psychedelic) I was almost a little bit disappointed due to my expectations from the web series, just a bit, the intro is also great.
There was something really unnerving about the web series. Even though there was nothing explicitly, it created a sense of dread, like something really wrong was going to happen.
Yea. It was really well done. I think it could totally be a TV show or a game. Idk if you feel this way but literally no game or movie or anything has ever made me feel as fucked up (in a good way) as SOMA did the first time I played it. I mean horror, philosophy, anger, sadness, denial. It had it all. I even made the same mistake that Simon makes where I totally didn’t want to believe that he would never really make it to the Ark (because copy paste, not cut paste.) It was just so good. Omg also the part where the guy is talking about killing yourself right after getting the scan…to obtain “continuity.” Absolutely crazy, even if the theory doesn’t make sense lol. I can see how in a moment of desperation that it could make sense to you.
I am right with you, Soma is easily a top 10 if not a top 5 gaming experience for me. And my top also includes games that I enjoy from a pure gameplay perspective (e.g. SimCity 4) which IMO aren’t comparable to Soma.
It was really well done, in the late game once I started figuring out what was going on I was like " Oh no, no, no! This can’t be happening!". A real sense of existential dread.
The ending was great too, a measure of positivity and hope, but very very far from a happy ending. A depressing ending with a possible ray of hope, depending on how one looks at it.
I just wish more people who aren’t into video games could experience Soma.
And the cool thing is that what Soma delivers cannot be done through a different medium. It has to be a video game, a book or even a movie wouldn’t really work in the same way. You have to be in control of your character.
Idk how much you dove into the lore, but have you ever read about the Carthage theory? There were some hints that Cathage Industries (who owned Pathos 2) were still around (they had other underwater facilities) and responsible for creating Simon and were monitoring the situation, sort of like Resident Evil Umbrella Corp style. Personally I’m not a huge fan of that theory as it takes away from the mood of the game, but it’s interesting and has a lot of merit.
Lemme know your thoughts. I see how it has merit and is possible but yeah, it totally kills the vibe. Maybe it was something the devs put in but ultimately abandoned, but kinda didn’t scrub it all out prior to release.
There’s audio logs in theta of someone trying to reach carthage for instructions. It’s obvious. What’s unclear is if she’s doing it out psychosis or actually knows they’re still around.
Nah. Riven’s in it for sure. Literally zero chance otherwise. They say Katarina was cut but they for sure want that skin money so she’s either launch or first DLC.
Since Arcane is a thing and Jinx is confirmed you can bet Vi’s there too.
10 characters, in my experience, is about as small as a roster can be in a fighting game before it feels like you’re seeing the same matchups over and over again. That might be a bit worse in a 2v2 game, but there are other reasons, like Vanguard, that I’d argue are more compelling reasons to avoid 2XKO.
The entire series really peaked with civ 4 and 5. 4 was the more complicated, less streamlined but still really fun game, where each game kind of felt like a dnd campaign where tons of random things could happen and you had a lot of flexibilty with your Civilization. And Civ 5 was streamlined, simplifed to be easier to learn, and while choices were reduced, the more streamlined nature made it easy to jump into a game, and civs still had uniqueness about them, and its also great fun.
Civ 5 is also a beautiful game. The artstyle has this epic, renaissance painting quality, and every world leader looks badass and awesome. Even the portraits of the units, like the worker and scout looked like something out of an italian paimting. The artstyle felt more authentic and mature, at least to me, and they haven’t really recaptured that epicness and beauty since.
As always the best route is to wait for first expansion and buy it then for like $40. Most of the bugs should be worked out by then, and the first expansion usually has all the original planned content that they ran out of time and rushed the game out before it was ready to go.
I haven’t tried civ7 yet but I really like humankind, the only 4x game that I actually finished thrice. If only Humankind didn’t die, maybe it would have had more content added.
I’m sure I’ll move on at some point, but I’m currently running maybe 30 mods on civ 6, and they are mostly QoL. Parts of both gameplay and UI are just poorly thought out even to this day. So I was expecting the new game to be released in a state I’d dislike. It might take longer to improve than I thought, though.
Isn’t this the rule with every civ launch? They’re all somewhat half-baked on launch (although 7 admittedly looks quite a bit less baked than the others).
That said, I feel Civ formula seems to be in decline. To me Call To Power was peak civ ( yeah, fight me ), but while 3,4 and 5 were great “second-bests”, I couldn’t really get into 6 and I’m not really planning on playing 7 ( not with this 3-age format anyway ).
Yeah releasing an unfinished game without any exciting new changes and adding more dlc each iteration has been killing new civ releases and burning many long term fans who get hyped for a new civ. Paradox, Ubisoft, MicroProse, etc pull the same predatory monetization shit and when the price tag is 70 USD their half baked, missing ingredients cake just doesn’t look appetizing to most.
At a certain point they’re beating a dead horse. Outside of graphical updates (which I thought the cartoon-y look of the leaders in civ 6 was a huge downgrade), the core gameplay is still mostly the same throughout the series.
I watched a video on civ 7 and it seems like they really tried to shake up a lot in the game, I think for this reason that they needed to try something fresh to stay relevant. But really this is to its detriment rather than benefit.
I’m not sure if the three age thing is to “even the playfield” on those marathon long sessions when one civ runs away with the ball so to speak, but really that’s one of my favorite parts of the series. Like it’s awesome to take out some cavemen with navy seals or launch nukes when everyone is cowering in fear. If everything gets massively reset, then why even try to get ahead? I’ve not played the game so there could be more nuance but that’s my general impression.
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