--- happy playing ---

Why would anyone want to do that?

Did you check out the link? It gives the reason why some might want to use the mod.

Yes there is but the point of this particular mod is it gives the player

"an option to turn off some of the monsters which deliberately hinder [the player] when trying to concentrate and listen to an audio log or read notes. There is the safe mode, but you still get hit or have to endure noises."

I guess I just have a hard time understanding why someone would play horror games and want the horror removed, but to each his own.

---

Jump-scare horror vs. atmospheric horror.

Just watched a playthrough of "safe" mode. It's fucking garbage. The game is completely ruined. If someone thinks I am exaggerating I am not. At the beginning it's kinda weird, but later with the harder encouters it just gets seriously stupid. The monsters just stand with you in the room and look at you. It's more stupid than scary. I usually supported and recommended SOMA where I could. This is now over. It's awful how devs can ruin a perfectly good game. Thinking twice before supporting them ever again. This is now real horror how devs ruin a great game.

And before some clown tells me, that I don't have to use babby mode. People don't know what babby mode is. They start it, and even the most whiney babbies start noticing how stupid it is. I just watched a playthrough, where one of the most fearful ladies on the internet tries the game, and near the end the monsters get so stupid all immersion is out the window... this is just garbage... it's even worse than minecraft...

Seeing how you didn't mind chiming in so long after the last post, I think you're fine with me chiming in on yours. Everyone else, heh, hi there, GoG forums sure are slow, ain't they =D I'd say, try "interesting" instead of "stupid". If I had known about it, I'd totally have used that mode here and there, if you can switch midway, that is. I had really hoped for a good horror game with a great story, and a great story I got, just... not so sure about the horror part of it all.

I mean yeah, sure there were a few, even very well timed good scares that really got me when the game had creeped me out sufficiently by atmosphere before doing so. Inspecting the weird massive robot body standing lifelessly in its bay at the start, for example. Such "curiosity killed the cat" moments, those worked great on me.

Only once, though - because while I did sneak around trying to avoid being detected, very, very soon that was more a habit for avoiding super annoying setbacks by monster attacks, rather than actual fright. Most of the time, the "monsters" were more of a massive annoyance to me over anything else, as they already had lost their effectiveness. I wasn't scared, I was annoyed of what was supposed to pass as "gameplay", like hiding and waiting for what amounts to about an entire hour or more of gametime, if you sum it all up. Sitting there, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the stumbling thing to, well, go stumble elsewhere so I could finally continue on.


Then again...
Even in Alien Isolation, which to this day is the best true "horror" experience I had, I eventually began to get ballsy against the alien, and play more agressively - but there, I knew that the effectiveness of doing so would run out the more I did it, and I had to weigh that course of action against the consequences that it would increase the alien's resistance to my pushbacks over time, until it'd be game over for good.

But no such thought had to go into playing - or sitting around bored, waiting - in SOMA. I kept going because the story and the whole philosophy behind it is the real drive, to me.

The horror elements are ultimately too shallow to sustain themselves over the entire length of the game, for my type at least. They even drove me away for a few months, where I stopped playing completely, out of repeated and painfully boring "no, you don't get to move now" encounters hindering my progress too much. Returned, and played the remaining half to completion now.


As for... Well, it's no masterpiece, as a game. Even I was muttering to myself, in another one of those annoying situations, that they could've just made it a movie or a book, if that (constant hiding and waiting) was all they could come up with for "gameplay". Sitting and waiting, staring at the screen is not interactive, which is what a game is supposed to be. That mechanic has been overused to hell and back here - with no other options to at least consider and carefully weigh while you're in hiding, it's just too shallow.

Actually, I regularly had more interest in getting a good close look at the "monsters" to learn what happened to them, rather than playing the same stupid hide and seek game over and over. If I had known there was a safe mode (and if I could've switched to it anytime), man that would've made the experience much more interesting to me.


However, I'd still absolutely recommend the game. For its story alone, though.

If these monsters do seriously frighten you and the constant hiding and waiting continues to be thrilling for you, then yeah - using safe mode, or mods, definitely would take that away then. So then, don't use those. But, they wouldn't have taken anything away for me and probably many others - if I even had known about them before completing it.

So... just to explain a different perspective on the matter, instead of downvoting.

"Frictional Games forums are now closed"

Can any of you upload the mod somewhere, please?

Here's an archived copy of the thread with intact downloads: https://web.archive.org/web/20200414164501/https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-56175.html

Hmmm, not seeing it there....

I've just checked and it's there. As with all web.archive.org links you have to cut and paste the link into your browser otherwise it goes to the wrong page if you just click the link. Hope this helps.

Thank you. Cut/paste worked. I got 'em.