oh god, here we go.
on the one hand, i wish there were more games like this. darkseed but now first person with all the glory of unreal engine and a sickening tendency towards obtuse puzzles - i love that shit. I love how goopy and gross everything is, i love how your character has to physically carry every item and even gets a little guy who occasionally tries to disembowel him to act as an extra pair of hands, i love how the game isn’t afraid to throw you into the deep end with very subtle but effective tutorialization, i love games that aren’t afraid to just treat you like a lil sack of worthless flesh.
on the other hand, the combat is enough to make me want to never touch this goopily glorious game again. its god-awful and the entire thing would have been so much better had it just stuck to the adventure game it clearly wanted to be. I followed the development of Scorn since its initial announcement and my perception is that the game went through a pretty rough dev cycle; the combat seems to be a vestigial organ left behind by the initial, more shooter-ish reveal trailer (to be fair, vestigial organs are pretty on-theme here) as such, the combat is clunky and unintuitive and not in the Penumbra way where it works to disempower the player, more in the “what the fuck are these hit boxes and why does my melee weapon only have two hits before recharging and also how the fuck does recharging work and why can’t they just make these ugly ass ammo and health bars diagetic” way
I’m in love with the concept and art and sound and visuals on display here but the game’s frustrating inclusion of clunky combat that harms the experience’s thematic cohesion is really turning me off. here’s hoping someone does the Soma mod thing and just deletes all the enemies. otherwise, it’ll probably be a while before i come back and finish it.
2.5/5 could have been amazing, remove the combat or rework it and I’ll gladly overdose on benadryl and play this game all night (or at least until the hatman gets me)
on the one hand, i wish there were more games like this. darkseed but now first person with all the glory of unreal engine and a sickening tendency towards obtuse puzzles - i love that shit. I love how goopy and gross everything is, i love how your character has to physically carry every item and even gets a little guy who occasionally tries to disembowel him to act as an extra pair of hands, i love how the game isn’t afraid to throw you into the deep end with very subtle but effective tutorialization, i love games that aren’t afraid to just treat you like a lil sack of worthless flesh.
on the other hand, the combat is enough to make me want to never touch this goopily glorious game again. its god-awful and the entire thing would have been so much better had it just stuck to the adventure game it clearly wanted to be. I followed the development of Scorn since its initial announcement and my perception is that the game went through a pretty rough dev cycle; the combat seems to be a vestigial organ left behind by the initial, more shooter-ish reveal trailer (to be fair, vestigial organs are pretty on-theme here) as such, the combat is clunky and unintuitive and not in the Penumbra way where it works to disempower the player, more in the “what the fuck are these hit boxes and why does my melee weapon only have two hits before recharging and also how the fuck does recharging work and why can’t they just make these ugly ass ammo and health bars diagetic” way
I’m in love with the concept and art and sound and visuals on display here but the game’s frustrating inclusion of clunky combat that harms the experience’s thematic cohesion is really turning me off. here’s hoping someone does the Soma mod thing and just deletes all the enemies. otherwise, it’ll probably be a while before i come back and finish it.
2.5/5 could have been amazing, remove the combat or rework it and I’ll gladly overdose on benadryl and play this game all night (or at least until the hatman gets me)