This review contains spoilers
This game reminds me in many ways of The Last Guardian. It took a very long time to make, from announcement to release. The common opinion of the game is "good but flawed, and beautiful visuals". The games are very light on dialogue; Scorn has none at all. And let's not even mention the strange creature that accompanies the player character through much of the journey. The one in Scorn is...not quite as cute as Trico, though they do both try to kill you sometimes...
The most interesting comparison between the two games are their approach to mystery, and it's in this area where Scorn, by most people's metric, actually beats Fumito Ueda at what, throughout his career, he has shown to be his game.
See, many Ueda fans like myself have been somewhat disappointed to hear that the ancient, mysterious, abandoned places in his games like Shadow of the Colossus are put in with, if we believe the man's own words, not much care for what they may actually have been used for in the game's world, and only for how they work as game levels, and facilitate the platforming and puzzle-solving. Ueda has said that so much of his games take place in ruined areas not because there is a deep history to them, but because designing levels around random outcroppings of broken stone is easier than designing them around complete objects, like stairs, pillars and arches. A pillar is too high to climb, but a broken pillar that has fallen against another one is a ramp to walk up.
Comparatively, Scorn's levels have more thought put into them, not much of which is revealed in the game itself, but a fair amount of it is expanded on in its artbook. The opening area is a factory with an assembly line for a very disturbing product. The final area is a both a place of worship and a sort of laboratory. Of course, these areas have gameplay in them, the game isn't simply a walking simulator, but they're also not similar at all to human designs, they're completely alien and almost fully biological in some way. The game sparks your imagination in a huge huge way, for the flaws it does have it's absolutely successful in that. There is mystery while still having rhyme and reason to it. That's Scorn's best feature. The setting has been so painstakingly designed, literally every inch looked at, that it's easy to imagine most of its long development time was just spent on that.
As a die-hard Ueda fan I need to say, his intention is one thing and what the games actually make you feel is another thing. If the settings are beautiful, if they are mysterious, if they seem like they must have been used for SOMETHING, even if you don't know what, it doesn't really matter if the devs were more gameplay-minded than story-minded. If you have to HEAR that they designed it that way in order to be disappointed, then the game did its job. But I know that there are people who do take stock in that intention, and that difference between Ueda and the Scorn devs; I can't deny caring a little about it.
But also...which game would I say is more engaging to play? Which would I say has better level design? Ueda's. So....there you go.
So because of that dogged focus on Scorn's setting, yes, it falls off in other areas. It feels sort of unfinished, and leaves you wanting more, especially with how it ends. It was ballsy to go for that ending, that's for sure. But part of the reason it leaves you wanting more is because there are so many good ideas and fascinating creatures & devices (sometimes - okay, OFTEN both in one) that you feel like the devs must have had more ideas there. They did, according to the artbook. The combat is...interesting, I get why they wanted to include flesh weapons, but it's not exactly fun, especially when my PS5 version spammed me with errors on death, then corrupted and deleted my save and made me start over. That was the most horrific part of my Scorn experience.
But, like with Ueda's games, I'm very willing to forgive a flawed game if it excels in some areas. So willing to forgive that I'd much rather talk about where it excels than where it's flawed.
Scorn, like The Last Guardian, was victim of the hype cycle, and it doesn't help that the game is fairly short - people are NOT kind to short games. But don't let those bad vibes keep you from playing it, if you're someone who likes HR Giger's art, or the films of David Cronenberg and Clive Barker. Scorn has such sights to show you.
The most interesting comparison between the two games are their approach to mystery, and it's in this area where Scorn, by most people's metric, actually beats Fumito Ueda at what, throughout his career, he has shown to be his game.
See, many Ueda fans like myself have been somewhat disappointed to hear that the ancient, mysterious, abandoned places in his games like Shadow of the Colossus are put in with, if we believe the man's own words, not much care for what they may actually have been used for in the game's world, and only for how they work as game levels, and facilitate the platforming and puzzle-solving. Ueda has said that so much of his games take place in ruined areas not because there is a deep history to them, but because designing levels around random outcroppings of broken stone is easier than designing them around complete objects, like stairs, pillars and arches. A pillar is too high to climb, but a broken pillar that has fallen against another one is a ramp to walk up.
Comparatively, Scorn's levels have more thought put into them, not much of which is revealed in the game itself, but a fair amount of it is expanded on in its artbook. The opening area is a factory with an assembly line for a very disturbing product. The final area is a both a place of worship and a sort of laboratory. Of course, these areas have gameplay in them, the game isn't simply a walking simulator, but they're also not similar at all to human designs, they're completely alien and almost fully biological in some way. The game sparks your imagination in a huge huge way, for the flaws it does have it's absolutely successful in that. There is mystery while still having rhyme and reason to it. That's Scorn's best feature. The setting has been so painstakingly designed, literally every inch looked at, that it's easy to imagine most of its long development time was just spent on that.
As a die-hard Ueda fan I need to say, his intention is one thing and what the games actually make you feel is another thing. If the settings are beautiful, if they are mysterious, if they seem like they must have been used for SOMETHING, even if you don't know what, it doesn't really matter if the devs were more gameplay-minded than story-minded. If you have to HEAR that they designed it that way in order to be disappointed, then the game did its job. But I know that there are people who do take stock in that intention, and that difference between Ueda and the Scorn devs; I can't deny caring a little about it.
But also...which game would I say is more engaging to play? Which would I say has better level design? Ueda's. So....there you go.
So because of that dogged focus on Scorn's setting, yes, it falls off in other areas. It feels sort of unfinished, and leaves you wanting more, especially with how it ends. It was ballsy to go for that ending, that's for sure. But part of the reason it leaves you wanting more is because there are so many good ideas and fascinating creatures & devices (sometimes - okay, OFTEN both in one) that you feel like the devs must have had more ideas there. They did, according to the artbook. The combat is...interesting, I get why they wanted to include flesh weapons, but it's not exactly fun, especially when my PS5 version spammed me with errors on death, then corrupted and deleted my save and made me start over. That was the most horrific part of my Scorn experience.
But, like with Ueda's games, I'm very willing to forgive a flawed game if it excels in some areas. So willing to forgive that I'd much rather talk about where it excels than where it's flawed.
Scorn, like The Last Guardian, was victim of the hype cycle, and it doesn't help that the game is fairly short - people are NOT kind to short games. But don't let those bad vibes keep you from playing it, if you're someone who likes HR Giger's art, or the films of David Cronenberg and Clive Barker. Scorn has such sights to show you.