Scorn was one of very few games that I got excited for from the day of announcement and purchased immediately on the day of release. At the time, I felt my money would be well spent to simply see the haunting, surreal art of Giger and Beksinski come to life in a 3D interactive environment. In that aspect, Scorn delivered. The monstrous architectures forged from flesh and bone by some merciless, uncaring force completely captured my imagination. Bekskinski’s desolate, poignant hellscapes stretching across my screen had me stunned with awe.
All I wanted was to be fully immersed in these otherworldly environments, to traverse and explore at my own pace in contemplative isolation. Unfortunately, while Scorn was a brilliant experiential piece of art, it was also a bad video game. The combat was terrible and the puzzles were uninspired, but my biggest gripe was that these things existed in the game at all. Pistols, shotguns, keys, health stations, and puzzle minigames all felt like such contrived, gamey intrusions upon this exquisitely crafted universe.
Why were these eldritch, biomechanical fortresses designed to sculpt life from dead flesh being operated with simple block puzzles and maze puzzles? Did blasting shots into the tortured creatures really add anything to Scorn’s themes and story? The artists tried to camouflage these video game features with a Giger-esque aesthetic, but grafting some fleshy knobs and phallic frills to these gizmos didn’t really make them feel any less contrived. In this era of gaming where “walking simulator” titles such as Firewatch and Soma are celebrated, I don’t see why the devs couldn’t just cut the stale checklist of mechanics and let Scorn’s true strengths shine.
My biggest disappointment came after I had finished the game, when I was looking up information about Scorn’s worldbuilding. Google turned up an array of fantastic concept illustrations, bits of deep lore that were only mentioned in the artbook, and a variety of grotesque creature designs. Such imaginative ideas, all forever trapped in those pages, never to meet their potential. I’m glad I got to see some of that madness in this iteration of Scorn, but it’s disheartening to realize that something so beautiful was here on the cusp of emerging, only to perish during its molt.
All I wanted was to be fully immersed in these otherworldly environments, to traverse and explore at my own pace in contemplative isolation. Unfortunately, while Scorn was a brilliant experiential piece of art, it was also a bad video game. The combat was terrible and the puzzles were uninspired, but my biggest gripe was that these things existed in the game at all. Pistols, shotguns, keys, health stations, and puzzle minigames all felt like such contrived, gamey intrusions upon this exquisitely crafted universe.
Why were these eldritch, biomechanical fortresses designed to sculpt life from dead flesh being operated with simple block puzzles and maze puzzles? Did blasting shots into the tortured creatures really add anything to Scorn’s themes and story? The artists tried to camouflage these video game features with a Giger-esque aesthetic, but grafting some fleshy knobs and phallic frills to these gizmos didn’t really make them feel any less contrived. In this era of gaming where “walking simulator” titles such as Firewatch and Soma are celebrated, I don’t see why the devs couldn’t just cut the stale checklist of mechanics and let Scorn’s true strengths shine.
My biggest disappointment came after I had finished the game, when I was looking up information about Scorn’s worldbuilding. Google turned up an array of fantastic concept illustrations, bits of deep lore that were only mentioned in the artbook, and a variety of grotesque creature designs. Such imaginative ideas, all forever trapped in those pages, never to meet their potential. I’m glad I got to see some of that madness in this iteration of Scorn, but it’s disheartening to realize that something so beautiful was here on the cusp of emerging, only to perish during its molt.