SOMA

A profound story told by calmly explorable environments, great dialog and voice acting, as well as several action sequences all tightly bundled into an immersive experience that will keep you thinking and feeling long after you finish the game.

Where SOMA falters slightly is in balancing the gameplay elements. Most of the game is based on free-form exploration. There are no gameplay rewards (XP, loot, etc.) for this: all there is to gain is more insight into the story and its world. There are also some un-skippable puzzle mini-games of medium difficulty, which can be solved by anyone with enough patience. Finally, there are also numerous horror-stealth action sequences. While these fit very well with the story, I found them more frustrating than fun: the AIs are simplistic and seemingly random, while the environments do not provide enough complexity for true stealth tactics. If there were just one or two of these sequences it would not be worth mentioning, but there are a handful, which is too many.

But that's nitpicking: frustrations are overcome quite easily and SOMA will take you on an amazing journey that you won't soon forget.

Finally, thank you, developers, for supporting Linux!