9 Underrated Horror Games You Must Play Before You Die

4. SOMA

Layers Of Fear
Frictional Games

What it is: As far as Simon Jarret knows, the year is 2015 and he's about to begin the long road to recovery after a severe car crash left him with devastating injuries. Presumably passing out following a brain scan, Jarret awakes, not in the hospital, but on board an underwater research facility devoid of humans and automated entirely by machines. So begins his journey to uncover why the latter are exhibiting human behaviour and how in the hell he wound up on the ocean floor.

Why it's scary: You're the only living 'human' on a station 20,000 (read: not accurate) leagues under the sea populated only by murderous robots and monsters, need we spell it out for you? For the same reasons that Frictional's Amnesia scared the bejeebus out of players, the inability to fight back against attackers and faced with no other option than to hide ramps tension way past 11.

The system isn't as effective as it was in 2010, but combined with a claustrophobic setting, a dread-inducing atmosphere and a genuinely unnerving philosophical spotlight on what it means to be human, SOMA is an altogether terrifying package.

Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.