I don’t think you’re supposed to perform your own spinal surgery, right?
If you’re not familiar with Stasis, I wrote about it a little while back. It’s less ambitious than SOMA, but it’s worth playing for any horror (or adventure) fan.
Warning: There are spoilers for Stasis ahead!
This device isn’t merely a chip hidden beneath the skin. It’s wrapped around your spine, which means not only does your back need to be peeled open, but several careful incisions need to be made to remove it.
It all begins by, uh, carefully removing the suit you’ve been wearing around and using a laser to, uh, tear apart your flesh.
No, wait, there’s more.
Did I mention I was playing this while riding the train back from the airport yesterday? Did I mention how I had to hide my laptop’s screen from people?
And, look, I didn’t say it was over yet. Not even close, sadly.
Every step of the way, my skin was crawling. It’s far worse with the player’s character screaming in agony. One assumes you’d usually be asleep for this!
You eventually have to solve a little puzzle to complete the surgery, by removing the tracking nodes in a certain order. When done right, here’s how it goes. (I recommend turning on the audio and putting on headphones for the full effect.)
It’s possible to mess the surgery up, of course. When that happens, um:
I’m so glad that section is over!
UPDATE: As pointed out by a commenter, Dead Space 2 had a similarly upsetting scene:
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.