Man, I'm so on the fence. Loving what you said about the story.
I'm curious, however, about your distinction between standard horror scariness and SOMA's "generating scares through thought, ethics, and philosophy." Sounds interesting, but is that really similar at all to what I'm probably looking for in a horror game?
Additionally, the promise of incoming custom stories / mods doesn't mean too much to me since I didn't like most of the Amnesia custom stories that I played.
You've got me thinking about it again, but I'm still not there.
The story is pretty interesting, I admit, though as things go one, you really do begin to feel terrible about things going on and how things went down earlier.
But I disagree on the 'scary' part being more atmosphere, due to the events and psychological aspects. Oh, they are certainly there! And very good. But the game does have several areas that are dark, to the point of being nothing but black, and having the 'monsters' running around and roaring, with jumpscares off and on.
Less of the latter, more of the former, for me. As said, the psychological aspect is there... but it still relies on making the player feel unsafe and scared by making things dark. (ie no proper lighting)
I think the ending is the best part of it. There's just something about it that leaves the player... I dunno, it leaves me to wonder how I'm supposed to feel about it. It's not just one emotion, it's several. Like, you're kinda happy, but also really sad, on another level you're horrified and then there's also a melancholic sense of... homesickness.
I never played Amnesia or so, though I always heard good things about it. (But I don't think my PC is good enough to play horror games like that - at times, it still had difficulty playing Sims 3)
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Soma or: How I Learned to Stop Comparing It To Amnesia and Love the Plot
Soma is the latest from Frictional Games, and for me personally their best game yet. Many people remember their hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and due to its immense popularity, many are thinking of Soma as "Amnesia 3" (Or Amnesia 2 if you didn't like Machine for Pigs). This is a flawed perception because Soma is highly successful on generating scares through thought, ethics, and philosophy, as opposed to relying entirely on flight or fight reactions in Amnesia. If you can get past the common consensus that this game is not as scary as Amnesia on a standard horror level, you should be able to find great value in this game, because the story and the choices that it forces you to make haunt you and make you think about them much more than anything in Amnesia. Amnesia would give you nightmares, but Soma can plague your thoughts in the day. Themes such as identity, personality, the soul, life, and humanity are all brought up, twisted, and most importantly questioned within the story, and the game is able to make an impact since you, the player, and behind all these acts that raise these questions. Its definitely worth the money currently, as $30 for a 8-10 hour game is decent, but when you contemplate how many mods are going to be made for the game since Amnesia had hundreds of well made custom stories, you can count in this game to at least deliver in the long run. It should be noted, however, that on the PS4 version that I played, I had the occasional crash during a loading screen, 3 times over the course of 4 playthroughs. A patch has since come out, but I do not know if this remedied this exact problem. If you liked Amnesia and have a good PC, get this game now. If you want a great story with great horror, get it on any platform.