Soma

Genre: First-Person Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

Soma is a First-Person Graphic Adventure and Horror game released in 2015 on PC and PlayStation 4, ported to Xbox One in 2017, then to Nintendo Switch in 2025, and then to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026. In this game, players take the role of Simon Jarrett, a man suffering from a recent terminal brain injury caused by an accident who’s trying an experimental treatment before his brain damage claims his life. Sitting down and putting his head in the machine, Simon passes out, and when he awakes he finds himself in a deep-sea underwater laboratory, falling apart and stalked by dangerous machines. Simon struggles to find out what happened to cause him to be in this place, and how to escape the dangerous robots and failing structure of the laboratory to get somewhere safe.

If this were a lesser game, the answer to the “what’s going on?” question would be glaringly obvious. Simon is suffering from a brain injury, and in the beginning of the game his apartment had books and movies from the horror genre, including at least one about underwater monsters. So this is clearly just a dream or hallucination brought on by his failing brain, or the treatment to fix it, right? As it happens, Soma is a bit more contemplative than that, and without spoiling things, I’ll say that this game’s plot gets into questions about existence and identity, both on a personal level and a society-wide level.

The gameplay here takes a page from developer Frictional Games’ most well-known series, Amnesia, with players unable to fight the enemies that threaten him, and instead only able to hide from them or, failing that, run. Between confrontations with killer robots, you’ll also have to solve environmental puzzles, trying to figure out how the underwater lab’s technology works in a way that’s at least semi-realistic. And it can be pretty nerve-wracking to try and find the switch or device you need in a room while actively being hunted by a mechanical monster, which is all great stuff.

Unfortunately, what is mostly a great experience is ruined for me with some pretty nasty slowdown on Nintendo Switch. This is particularly frustrating because this is a game from 2015, two years before the Nintendo Switch was released. This game should not be having these issues. To be fair, this game’s detailed 3D environments are messy and have a lot going on in them, but even so, it’s frustrating to see. I suppose I should note that this game’s “glitchy” presentation leaves the possibility that this slowdown is a deliberate part of the presentation, but I don’t really think that’s the case.

It’s a shame because the other half of the presentation, the audio, is absolutely phenomenal. Some has some truly exceptional, evocative environmental noises, creepy enemy sounds, and great voice acting.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Soma is a great Horror game, but its greatness feels hampered by performance issues on Nintendo Switch. If you have some patience for these issues, I think you’ll still find this to be a truly great game in the genre, but for most players I would urge you to play this on a different platform.

tl;dr – Soma is a First-Person Graphic Adventure Horror game that has players stuck in a derelict underwater research laboratory stalked by hostile robots. This game has a strong plot and impeccable sound design, but performance issues on Nintendo Switch really mar the experience. This is still worth playing for fans of the genre, but you’re definitely better off playing on another modern platform.

Grade: B-

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Soma – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

Genre: First-Person Graphic Adventure / Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

Given that my biggest issue with Soma on Nintendo Switch was its performance issues, I was really eager to see how the game performed on Nintendo Switch 2. Thankfully, this game benefits from a free Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade. Let’s have a look and see what sort of difference it makes!

Well, the good news is that Soma runs much better on Nintendo Switch 2, with more stable framerates. The bad news is that those framerates still aren’t great, and certainly not what we would expect from Nintendo Switch 2 running an 11 year-old game. Still, the improvement is enough to keep this from being something just this side of intolerable.

Another improvement here is higher resolutions, which definitely make the game look better and clearer, and this is further helped with improved textures, something that’s particularly noticeable with readable objects in the environment.

This version of the game unfortunately doesn’t make use of Mouse Mode or add any other features or content – this is purely an upgrade in graphics and performance.

Finally, the game does have improved loading times now – on Nintendo Switch, it took me 52 seconds to load to the title screen, and an additional 47 seconds to load a game save. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times were reduced to 30 seconds and 24 seconds.

Overall, this is a solid improvement that makes Soma far more playable on Nintendo Switch 2 than it was on Nintendo Switch. However, I admit I’m a bit disappointed – given how old this game is, I really expected more from this upgrade. Still, I’ll take what I can get, and I can’t complain too much about a free upgrade that makes a game that felt to me barely-playable at times and turn it into something much more tolerable, especially when the game itself is excellent. If you’re a Horror fan who hasn’t played this yet, or who played the Nintendo Switch release and was disappointed, you should definitely check out the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of this game.

tl;dr – Soma is a First-Person Graphic Adventure Horror game that has players stuck in a derelict underwater research laboratory stalked by hostile robots. This game has a strong plot and impeccable sound design, and the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition definitely helps with the performance issues this game had on the original Nintendo Switch, but it’s still not quite up to what I feel it should be given how old this game is. Still, this is an excellent Horror game, and one well worth playing on Nintendo Switch 2.

Grade: B+

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