Scorn

As much as I want to be charitable to Scorn, it certainly stands out, it just doesn't have as much as it should underneath the surface. I was expecting a walking simulator-esque puzzle game, maybe with survival horror elements, but basically all of the expected conventions within each genre are watered down possibly in service of the simple brilliance of the game's art design. And while it does have many stunning moments, vistas worth spending a couple of minutes just gawking at, its inspirations can be too obvious, especially by the end of the game when statues are just fucking each other. And if there is a broader meaning to its biomechanical and psychosexual setting, it's lost under having no context whatsoever. There might be some themes of Hell and failing to move on; the game starts with a quasi-time loop where you see your protagonist at the beginning and end of their transformation, yet the game ends with a real I Have No Mouth moment. But emotionally I get nothing out of it. It's not antitheist like Blasphemous, it's not regretful and roiled like Returnal, and it's not a complete gut punch like Signalis.

And that's basically it, because the game has nothing beside its art design. Combat is a joke, with limited ammo and health but too clunky controls to make enemy avoidance a practical option in many cases. The final boss is as rote and lame as it gets, and considering how much punishment the player character takes without dying, I'm surprised combat is even a thing; feels like it would be more thematically appropriate for death not to be an option. And the puzzles, while not terrible, usually resolve as finding a key item on one half of the map and carting it to the other end, and the maps are so big that you have to go through so many sub-levels of the facilities just to access single switches for single parts of single doors. When you put the pieces into a step-by-step walkthrough, Scorn seems like the shortest and easiest game around, but even at four hours it is just padded due to the expansive maps, which in the end do little to hide the game's linearity. The puzzles themselves tend to be basic logic or timing puzzles a la The Witness, or they're old school adventure game puzzles where you pick up one key item and try pressing everything until you get through. There is some internal consistency to the alien world and you'll eventually spot certain recurring motifs, but again, the lack of context makes solving these puzzles a lot limper than they should. A lot of the alien machines seem to exist just to be puzzles rather than have some in-world significance.

I didn't hate it, but I was never wowed, and "wow!" is about the only emotional response I can see Scorn getting. It's a far bloodier take on slow-paced first person adventure games, but it's still just another first person adventure game, and in an age where other gore filled indie games are packed with meaningful story content and actual gameplay alongside their bloody vistas, what this game offers isn't enough.

This game is scarier to me then Silent Hill, and at the same time, more beautiful then Breath of the wild. I've never had imersion on this level displayed in any other video game I have played and I dont expect to find many more. The whole point of the game is that you survive and explore an alien planet as a spectator almost to a dead/abandonded planet. You learn using the technology (the puzzles) and fight off or hide from wild beasts that have taken over the structures in a sort of doom meets the talos principle. And while the game play its self is very realistic and fun what truley brings this game above others is its imagery and themes. Who ever desinged scorn deserves a medal of honor. You have to see it for yourself but every twist, every turn, every hallway makes sense has feels like it had perpous to its former inhabitants. Its not just "It looks cool like this", there are no pointless dead ends, everthing feels like a factory line perfectly constructed for maximum efficiency. And I dont want to spoil the ending but it's perfect for the game, it fits the themes of rebirth and rot like a latex glove.


A master piece

One of the coolest looking games. The atmosphere is creepy as hell. The story was fine for me too.

Some of the puzzles were a bit annoying.

Playing through the game a second time you become an instant speed runner. There's very little replayability except just to have another look around.

Scorn is difficult to describe in words, only emotions, although the word “F*ck” is very suitable here. At first, the game feels like something from the 90s, the first act here is drawn out and tedious: you walk along strange corridors, trying all possible mechanisms and do not understand what to do and even elementary what to press. Further it will be better, but the game will never lead you by the hand and explain something (well, excuse me, you woke up naturally in hell, what else would you like to take a tour of?). And if it were otherwise, Scorn would probably not work properly. You need to focus a lot to move forward or just survive meeting another creature on your way. Such a deep involvement in the gameplay, in which you understand how the game exists and works, gives a unique and powerful experience, Giger's biomechanics visual literally drives you crazy, and hyper-realistic surround sound twists the atmosphere to the maximum. The world of Scorn turned out to be so natural and “alive” that you identify the game as a real portal to another world, frightening to the point of trembling with its oblivion, which now exists somewhere beyond the cosmic limits.

BB#18
First-person Sci-fi / Horror puzzle game
PC

- The art direction of this game is top notch: the devs managed to create beautiful yet threatening and disturbing biomechanical scenarios heavily inspired by H.R. Giger;
- The atmosphere is just perfect: the level design constantly makes you feel lost in a alien world, the excellent sound design and the minimal HUD in first person keep the immersion as high as possible.

BUT

- Puzzles were a bit disappointing: not utterly bad but nothing memorable or fun to solve;
- Anything related to "action" is unbalanced: rhythm is too low, no dash to escape enemies attacks, the first weapon has no range, reload time of all the guns is just unfair, enemies damage is too high and yours is too low, there's no enemy variety (= 3 aliens in the entire game) and no AI, not enough bullets & health machines, etc. It feels like they wanted to add the action parts with no clue on how to do that, and it ended being boring, unbalanced and unfair;
- The checkpoint system is trash: no manual saves, some checkpoints had like 20 to 30 minutes of progress between them;
- A few technical issues: bugs (= I got stuck in a section just before a cutscene and the guy stopped moving, so I had to manually load the previous game, lost progress and had to redo it), audio glitches, freezes when firing;
- A bit too cryptic: no dialogues to hear or words to read for the entire game. Is there really a story in here?