SOMA

I almost gave this game a 9, but reeled back a little when I thought about Dead Space 1 & 2, or any of the Bioshock games, which are all 9's or 10's. This game is really really good if not great though. It started off a little questionable (Visit to the doc for the brain scan had some weird aspects to it - why didn't the doc ask him how he got in there? Just strange) but quickly gets very interesting once Simon arrives in Pathos II, where you spend the rest of your hair-raising adventure. What Soma does great is combine an interesting and original story with some really good horror/stealth game play, and a simply beautifully realized world to do it in. This game has the best underwater graphics I've ever seen, so real at some points I swore it must have been screenshots of a real ocean floor. The game truly keeps you on your toes, and you are always watching out for some type of monster around the next corner, which they switch up here and there so you're not always facing the same type of foe, and they are truly different and horrifying in a way in this game than any other I've seen before as well. I do agree with some of the other reviews I have read, that the stealth game play can be frustrating at times. For example, there were times I threw an object to distract a monster, and instead of it going to where the sound was from it crashing against a wall or something, the monster would come straight for me...didn't make sense. Why would you give me the option to throw something if you can't use it to distract the monster? Also, some of the puzzles are not very intuitive, and although their not super difficult, at times it's also not very clear what you did to solve them. Other than these couple of things, this game is a very interesting, very scary, dive into a frightening world and very much worth the time. Very cool game.