Carrion
#3
PC - Steam
Beaten January 27th, 2022
Carrion is a metroid-lite puzzler about a freakish monster attempting to escape an enclosed facility... but YOU'RE the monster this time! It's a very very cool premise that is unfortunately let down by some meager gameplay. There is combat but it is incredibly simplistic and wonky, there are puzzles but they're either straightforward or exasperating. So yeah, interesting game overall, held up mostly by its premise and 'feel'. While it is fun to rip through silly humans and be the bad guy, the actual GAME here of gaining new powers and moving between very samey hallways, military bases and water pipes gets old pretty fast. It took me 4 hours to finish Carrion and I was ready for it to end at about half the time.
Pros:
Awesome premise. Being a shapeshifting monster is super badass and watching yourself 'grow' and gain new powers as the game goes on is satisfying as HELL.
Sound design for the monsters and people. Ripping apart metal grates, roaring in bestial fury, the human crew screaming in terrror... it all sounds great.
Artstyle is pretty great for the monster at least. Bits of flesh glooping off, pounding through doors, nomnomoming scientists... good stuff. People and backgrounds are more "average", or at least don't stand out as strongly as the monster.
Cons:
Where to start....
The Puzzles are dumb 95% of the time. The solution is either right in your face and you progress (this generally has a nice momentum to it at least) or you realize what you have to do but now have to backtrack to either gain or lose some 'mass' to get different powers.
No map. Often not a problem as the game funnels you from one area to the next but it often returns you to old "hub" areas and you have no fucking idea where it means you to go. So then you just wander around looking for something unbroken/inactive that you now have powers to interact with and go from there.
Combat is bad. You basically auto-kill regular enemies but others have weird shields that have no counters and enemy AI is telepathic meaning setting traps is difficult at best, irksome at worst.
Meh
The Story. Again, great premise. The story as it is told however seems like its trying to tell something interesting (there's some 'flash sideways' to human characters you control) with this creature's escape and what humanity is up to but.... it goes nowhere and has no weight to it whatsoever.
Level design. There are a few cool levels (one that looks like you're in space!) but the others are just generic military bases. Not a lot of variety in where you're tearing through.
Metroidvania elements. You occasionally get new powers that let you traverse the map or fight differently but they are rarely used actively. They don't add much.
Hmmm
Different forms of your body have different powers. Neat differentiation but then it leads to several points where you're just hunting for dead bodies (need more mass) or looking for a spawn pool (need to drop some mass) so you can use the right power to progress. Sometimes this leads to interesting puzzle situations, sometimes not.
Final Grade: C
#3
PC - Steam
Beaten January 27th, 2022
Carrion is a metroid-lite puzzler about a freakish monster attempting to escape an enclosed facility... but YOU'RE the monster this time! It's a very very cool premise that is unfortunately let down by some meager gameplay. There is combat but it is incredibly simplistic and wonky, there are puzzles but they're either straightforward or exasperating. So yeah, interesting game overall, held up mostly by its premise and 'feel'. While it is fun to rip through silly humans and be the bad guy, the actual GAME here of gaining new powers and moving between very samey hallways, military bases and water pipes gets old pretty fast. It took me 4 hours to finish Carrion and I was ready for it to end at about half the time.
Pros:
Awesome premise. Being a shapeshifting monster is super badass and watching yourself 'grow' and gain new powers as the game goes on is satisfying as HELL.
Sound design for the monsters and people. Ripping apart metal grates, roaring in bestial fury, the human crew screaming in terrror... it all sounds great.
Artstyle is pretty great for the monster at least. Bits of flesh glooping off, pounding through doors, nomnomoming scientists... good stuff. People and backgrounds are more "average", or at least don't stand out as strongly as the monster.
Cons:
Where to start....
The Puzzles are dumb 95% of the time. The solution is either right in your face and you progress (this generally has a nice momentum to it at least) or you realize what you have to do but now have to backtrack to either gain or lose some 'mass' to get different powers.
No map. Often not a problem as the game funnels you from one area to the next but it often returns you to old "hub" areas and you have no fucking idea where it means you to go. So then you just wander around looking for something unbroken/inactive that you now have powers to interact with and go from there.
Combat is bad. You basically auto-kill regular enemies but others have weird shields that have no counters and enemy AI is telepathic meaning setting traps is difficult at best, irksome at worst.
Meh
The Story. Again, great premise. The story as it is told however seems like its trying to tell something interesting (there's some 'flash sideways' to human characters you control) with this creature's escape and what humanity is up to but.... it goes nowhere and has no weight to it whatsoever.
Level design. There are a few cool levels (one that looks like you're in space!) but the others are just generic military bases. Not a lot of variety in where you're tearing through.
Metroidvania elements. You occasionally get new powers that let you traverse the map or fight differently but they are rarely used actively. They don't add much.
Hmmm
Different forms of your body have different powers. Neat differentiation but then it leads to several points where you're just hunting for dead bodies (need more mass) or looking for a spawn pool (need to drop some mass) so you can use the right power to progress. Sometimes this leads to interesting puzzle situations, sometimes not.
Final Grade: C