This review contains spoilers
I have a lot of thoughts about Scorn, but some of them genuinely feel hard to put to words. The world of Scorn is a depressing nightmare, while simultaneously being one of the most visually stunning, well realized worlds I've ever seen. It makes you feel disgusted, while also staying intriguing enough to make you want to learn more. Working your way through the game trying to figure out what happened to this civilization that has fallen by piecing the few scraps it gives you together is incredibly engaging. There is little direct story telling, with the few cutscenes having no dialogue, and there only being one character, that being the player. Most of the story, and the game's themes as a whole, are things left for the player to infer from the incredible environmental art.
Now the thing that seems to be turning off most people is the gameplay, but I find that hard to understand. The combat isn't great, its mediocre at best and frustrating at worst, but there isn't really much of it in the game at all. This is a puzzle game that makes you shoot things occasionally. The challenge of the combat is the fact that the ranged enemies can be very cheap and for about half of the game you only have a terrible melee weapon, its not fun, its just aggravating. The most it challenges you is at the end of the game where you have to fight a boss, but at the end of the day that is still just a puzzle that you have to solve, just with a gun. The boss fight isn't skill-based, you just have to solve the fairly simple puzzle that you are provided.
Now the other part of the gameplay, the part that seems to be incredibly divisive, are the puzzles. I've seen people who say the puzzles are boring and brain dead, and I've seen people who say the puzzles are too difficult and frustrating. I've seen tons of people who love the puzzles, and I've seen tons of people who really hate the puzzles. Me personally, I really love them. They are perfectly in that sweet spot where they aren't simple enough to be boring, but they aren't difficult enough to be frustrating. The biggest filter seems to be the slide puzzle at the start. For some reason they thought made for a good first puzzle even though it'll take most people more time than they've even spent in the game up to that point. It took me about 20 minutes, and I had only played the game for 10 maybe 15 minutes when I found it.
So the thing that I've had to spend the most time gathering my thoughts about is what the hell does it all mean? It seems like it should be a very simple question, but in reality there's a lot more to think about than one might think. The obvious answer is parenthood. There's a lot of symbolism about sex and the ending literally has you being carried by a pregnant lady towards a giant vagina. You can also read the parasite as an overbearing parent, it keeping you from moving into the next stage of life and "sheltering" you from it by turning you into a giant tree. The player at the beginning starts as something that looks very similar to the parasite, which could lead you to believe that it this is a cycle, the cycle of abusive parents leading to more abusive parents and so on. You could also read these things as a metaphor for being stillborn, the player dying in the womb right before they're born. There are many ways to interpret the game, which means there really can't be a "correct" way to interpret it, I just think its a fun thing to talk about.
Overall, I really like Scorn, but it seems like a game made specifically for weirdos like me who love playing weird and obscure adventure games that can be overly cryptic. I don't understand all the hate for it, but I can't blame someone for feeling that way about it. If Microsoft hadn't marketed this as a big Xbox exclusive, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It was a game meant to be a weird little niche game that people would stumble upon randomly, not a game that should have been put in front of the average gamer the way it was, but that's not the game's fault, its Microsoft's. For a small team in Serbia, they did a damn good job.
Now the thing that seems to be turning off most people is the gameplay, but I find that hard to understand. The combat isn't great, its mediocre at best and frustrating at worst, but there isn't really much of it in the game at all. This is a puzzle game that makes you shoot things occasionally. The challenge of the combat is the fact that the ranged enemies can be very cheap and for about half of the game you only have a terrible melee weapon, its not fun, its just aggravating. The most it challenges you is at the end of the game where you have to fight a boss, but at the end of the day that is still just a puzzle that you have to solve, just with a gun. The boss fight isn't skill-based, you just have to solve the fairly simple puzzle that you are provided.
Now the other part of the gameplay, the part that seems to be incredibly divisive, are the puzzles. I've seen people who say the puzzles are boring and brain dead, and I've seen people who say the puzzles are too difficult and frustrating. I've seen tons of people who love the puzzles, and I've seen tons of people who really hate the puzzles. Me personally, I really love them. They are perfectly in that sweet spot where they aren't simple enough to be boring, but they aren't difficult enough to be frustrating. The biggest filter seems to be the slide puzzle at the start. For some reason they thought made for a good first puzzle even though it'll take most people more time than they've even spent in the game up to that point. It took me about 20 minutes, and I had only played the game for 10 maybe 15 minutes when I found it.
So the thing that I've had to spend the most time gathering my thoughts about is what the hell does it all mean? It seems like it should be a very simple question, but in reality there's a lot more to think about than one might think. The obvious answer is parenthood. There's a lot of symbolism about sex and the ending literally has you being carried by a pregnant lady towards a giant vagina. You can also read the parasite as an overbearing parent, it keeping you from moving into the next stage of life and "sheltering" you from it by turning you into a giant tree. The player at the beginning starts as something that looks very similar to the parasite, which could lead you to believe that it this is a cycle, the cycle of abusive parents leading to more abusive parents and so on. You could also read these things as a metaphor for being stillborn, the player dying in the womb right before they're born. There are many ways to interpret the game, which means there really can't be a "correct" way to interpret it, I just think its a fun thing to talk about.
Overall, I really like Scorn, but it seems like a game made specifically for weirdos like me who love playing weird and obscure adventure games that can be overly cryptic. I don't understand all the hate for it, but I can't blame someone for feeling that way about it. If Microsoft hadn't marketed this as a big Xbox exclusive, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It was a game meant to be a weird little niche game that people would stumble upon randomly, not a game that should have been put in front of the average gamer the way it was, but that's not the game's fault, its Microsoft's. For a small team in Serbia, they did a damn good job.
SPHETE
1 year ago