{"id":31756,"date":"2016-04-21T17:43:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T21:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31756"},"modified":"2016-04-21T17:43:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T21:43:46","slug":"soma-ep11-a-monstrous-waste-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31756","title":{"rendered":"SOMA EP11: A Monstrous Waste of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fOoHWvWBMjw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fOoHWvWBMjw'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Watching Josh play this sequence confirms my suspicions: The monster is scripted to make a beeline for you when you approach the panel, logic be damned. Even if it&#8217;s locked in a room on the other side of the level. And even though it&#8217;s supposedly blind, slow-moving, and making tons of noise itself. Yet somehow walking near the panel will cause it to know where you are and magically escape the room and cover the distance.<\/p>\n<p>So then you think, &#8220;Since his hearing is so good he can detect me looking at a panel over his own gargling from fifty meters away, maybe I can distract it with sound?&#8221; But once again, no. You can toss trash cans and paperweights all over the place and it won&#8217;t come to investigate. The only thing that attracts it is approaching the panel.<\/p>\n<p>The game tells you he&#8217;s &#8220;blind&#8221; so you assume it&#8217;s all about managing sound. But then the game brazenly breaks that rule. Great. So what ARE the rules? Maybe the game is saying I need to deal with the monster before I can repair the panel? Maybe I&#8217;m supposed to stay in place but STOP working on the panel when the monster approaches? Maybe I&#8217;m supposed to solve this puzzle quickly, before the monster reaches the door? <\/p>\n<p>I want to solve this door puzzle, but instead I end up working on this meta-game puzzle of trying to figure out what the designer is thinking. It&#8217;s a safe bet that if the player is thinking about the game designer, then they are no longer immersed in the world and thus aren&#8217;t likely to be very scared. The fact that the monster hangs out for a good minute or so and prevents you from making any progress makes it pretty likely that this whole section will turn fear into frustration.<\/p>\n<p>This game has some moments that are, if not <em>scary<\/em>, then at least chilling or disturbing. But all of them happen when the actual &#8220;dangerous&#8221; monsters piss off and you&#8217;re able to think about the ideas the game is presenting. <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, running from monsters was a huge part of the cultural appeal of Amnesia. And Amnesia was one of the games that originally launched jumpscare streaming culture as we know it. It&#8217;s entirely possible that if it wasn&#8217;t for shrill teens screaming into their webcams, then there would be no Five Nights At Freddy&#8217;s. No <a href=\"?p=28146\">Spooky&#8217;s House of Jump Scares<\/a>. None of the hundreds of jumpscare-based games on Steam designed not to be fun to play, but to act as fodder for the streamers. Amnesia wasn&#8217;t the only game to launch this fad, but it was certainly one of the major contributors.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like SOMA is torn between the really interesting Sci-fi the developers wanted to make, and the same old thing they assumed the fans expected<span class='snote' title='1'>And maybe they were right? I dunno. I don&#8217;t follow streamers much.<\/span>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) Watching Josh play this sequence confirms my suspicions: The monster is scripted to make a beeline for you when you approach the panel, logic be damned. Even if it&#8217;s locked in a room on the other side of the level. And even though it&#8217;s supposedly blind, slow-moving, and making tons of noise itself. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}