Scorn (Zero Punctuation) 

P

If he doesn't mention how every character in Plague Tale 2 emotes like they've had half a pint of botox injected from the nose up, I'll be surprised.

Man, all these Boomer Shooters coming out; trying to copy Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, really brings my back to mid-90s when all the “Doom Clones” were coming out, trying to copy Doom from 1993 Sorry about the bad punctuation

Halloween is derived from an Irish tradition. Pretty much the exact opposite of what is posited in this video is what happenend. Immigrants kinda just inserted the tradition into American culture when enough of us moved in.

My beef with the game is basically the same as Yahtzee's: the marketing team marketed this as a game, when it's more like an experience; and a FPS, when it's more like a puzzle game. It's trying to be both in multiple domains, and accomplishing neither with any great skill; which given the near decade long development time is bunk.

In order to write the most objective review possible, Reasonable Horse must be consulted.

He's gonna kill this horse when it's comically convenient.

i didnt know it was called that, but remembering it, I can see why...

@@holdenhodgdon3756 i forgot about him...

I approve.

Ya you nailed it. Like I get the idea there be guns in that world, but what was there BEFORE all the shit hit the fan that needed them? If it was a factory or production line, why have armory's at all? And the ending? It truly felt forced. Don't get me wrong, the puzzles and even that end fighting bit were excellent as there were no rescue of old junk like you see in alot of games but it felt like direction was off. Like people would say, "yes this is the style" but not say "no, why do we need to have all these corridors here of all places"

@@warlockd idk i liked the ending and worldbuilding, just didn't like the combat or puzzles lol

@@warlockd the whole deal with the story as near as i can tell is that we follow someone making a pilgrimage to the place where this sorta biomechanical hellscape started, sort of a factory whose goal was to allow people to transcend their physical form altogether and join a collective consciousness (hence the people with their brain connected to the bigger brain in the ceiling at the end.) you being prevented from completing the ascension is due to the fact that this place has been abandoned by the physical forms of the people who ascended for so long - the parasite that immobilizes you evolved during that time - and thus the process no longer works. way i see it, it's a commentary on the fact that the goals of society can lead to stagnation and decay once achieved. didn't feel forced at all to me

@@warlockd that's not game design, that's lore and requires a writer.

I'm with you other than, what writer?? There's no dialogue. There's a vague premise of a world....that's it. Hardly needed a Tolkien to flesh out the script to this one.

Even if the dude just... walked into the big glowy portal and it cut to credits. I'd be left with "well that was weird, but I guess I accomplished something. Good for them." But cutting it off with LOLNOPE U DIE NOW makes it so... lame. Despite everything, I WAS invested in this weird dude and their desire to reach the big glowy thing, and the things they did to reach it. "All for nothing" is a legitimate feeling to aim for, but not for THE PLAYER'S ENTIRE INTERACTION WITH THE GAME. Things like Spec Ops, or The Stanley Parable, make it work by separating the player from the narrative, letting us think about how choosing to continue playing IS a meaningful choice, and that putting the game down is a legitimate option in the metanarrative. And maybe that's intentional. But the problem is that it makes me not want to buy it after watching a stream of it, and that is objectively a failure. Congratulations game, you're so unpleasant and vibes-focused at the expense of every other aspect that you successfully drove away a once-interested customer. Yippie.

Yeah I agree, whilst I’ve experienced endings that subvert your expectations before, Scorns ending felt cheap and coy. Happy endings aren’t naive (mostly) and I was looking forward to Scorn having one. I felt like the character had done enough to earn it anyway. The guys guts were hanging out after self-surgery, let the man through!

@@Shadewaltz I do not agree with the idea that spec ops' idea of "lmao ur evil u played the game shpuld have dropped it" is somehow the pinnacle of meta writing. This opinion has become super common. But the game offers zero choice, then blames you for it, and the choice of "dont play lul" isnt a choice. If so, the devs also had the choice of not forcing the white phosphor scene, but they did so anyway. Are they heroes now? It's a meaningless prod in the grand scheme, just a feel good moment about how meta and smart the game thinks it is. For all of kojimas faults, death stranding did it better. You can shoot your sister who is about to genocide mankind, but if you took the games mesaage, you can also hug her. Course the game never really implies this is a possible mechanic so i still think its sorta ass, but it was a better meta execution than spec ops by far.

Reminds me of Environmental Station Alpha where the normal ending feels like a bad ending and is unsatisfying. What the hell is the point, if the little robot guy & humanity is doomed anyway? That game does have other endings but they are crazy hard to get without a guide so the average player is gonna' end up feeling miffed. A story has to have something resolve, otherwise it is unsatisfying as "rocks fall; everyone dies lol". Even some of the most grim dark, nihilistic and depressing stories tend to have some resolution. Even if it is one character gets away to live another day.

@@pickyphysicsstudent201 Mate, I completely agree. People think you don't need a resolution or some kind of hope at the end of bleak stories bc 'that's reality bro'. Like you said, it can even just be the lead surviving eg: Norman in Fury, Chris in Platoon. I've also found games with multiple endings irritating bc it feels incomplete and diluted. I thought I was being smart/contrary in the supposedly "morally grey" Witcher 3, got the bad ending, felt robbed. Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone!

So what you're saying is that the devs need to scare Squidward in order to get back into their groove.

You need juxtaposition because humans will become desensitized to almost anything. It's the one really good thing Dark Seed did. It had Gigar's nightmare fuel art, but also frequently flipped between a normal small New England town and the Giger hellscape.

hey hey hey WHAT?

It reminds me of Yahtzee’s review of Agony all over again, if you keep things at a 10 the whole time it’s like keeping things at a 1 the whole time

I don't quite get it

Me neither. Please help?

Its a gamble normally on whether I'll remember to watch the end for that, but I paid attention today. Holy hell lol

For those that don't get it: the hall he wandered down has a familiar bell shaped end. He is then thrust out and stuck in a clear bag, where a large demon flushes him down the toilet. It's a penis and condom.

@@jjvagnar1 For context look again at this part: 2:30 . From here use your imagination.

I just wish you weren't so weak before you get the first actual gun. Even dying just once sucks how far back it sends you.

@@BillyAltDel I don't think I have come across a creature that I have actually had to outright fight, and I'm almost done (I know there is a boss fight coming up at some point).

I initially did not realize I could heal myself. Died like 4 times in the same spot until I tried stealthing around enemies. That’s when I realized nearly all of them can be avoided or just run past. The game is so short I did a second play thru, and enemy encounters were much easier knowing I could skip most of them. With that in mind you actually have plenty of ammo. Assuming you only use it when you have too. Save shotgun ammo specifically for the bulls and the bulls you encounter before you get the shot gun can be trapped an stabbed to death with your first weapon

@@BillyAltDel you're intentionally weak. You're supposed to avoid most of the enemies. The game doesn't give you enough resources to actually kill everything

the Stanley parable of gore horror

At first I was afraid it was gonna try and vore me or something (getting vored wouldn't have been out of the blue for this kind of game), but then I got the vibes that it was like a sad bulldog that didn't know what it did wrong. "Why are you doing this to me? I'm not a monument to your sins: leave me alone!" As for the combat, it's probably just me and how my brain works, but I didn't find it as teeth-pulling as others felt it to be. Though I will say that a quick sidestep or backstep would have made things less "awkward".

@@GmodPlusWoW combat is usually fine but that specific area with the its cramped hallways full of big chargers brings out the absolute worst in it. Despite the long development combat feel just a bit unpolished, like it just needed a few more balance iterations to really shine.

@@callmetony4399 Indeed. And speaking of the chargers, I feel like it was particularly dickish to spawn one in front and one behind in that one area. I walked right into that trap, and while I was able to take them out with 2 shells each on the second try, it wasn't a great encounter to say the least. If nothing else, there are lessons to be learned from the experience.

@@GmodPlusWoW for me it was i would make progress, get killed and then put back to the start of act 3 i think it is, or get far enough then find it saved at a point where i had one health and needed to go through a corridor where there was a spitty sausage that i couldn't avoid - instant death over and over and over, very tedious

You can avoid it you're just either bad at the game or only watched playthroughs of people who were bad at the game.

i think it understood it just fine. because getting away from all this, was the number one motivation for me to keep goin ^^

That's why Dark Seed was so unsettling.

yeah nah, also it's like a 4 or 5 hour game

Idk, games are immersive, if everything I see is a weird mechanical penis and vagina, eventually I won’t even recognize it as weird, if we never see anything besides this shit, how do we even know an escape from it exists? How do we know that’s what we’re working towards and our protagonist is actually like “yeah this isn’t fucked up enough” or “OH NO, THIS IS A TERRIBLE AND BACKWARDS WORLD! HERE THE MEDKITS LOOK LIKE PENISES INSTEAD OF LIKE DISEASED VAGINAS! I gotta get out of here!”

Exactly, turns out his art gets really old, really fast, if all you see is that. It also turns out it makes every room and corridor exactly the same as every other one, which is really bad design.

well it felt like more of an artistic piece rather than a game i was just disgusted and felt bad because obviously ur walking through the fall of a civilization , idk the promotional material for the game but alot of people were expecting something that i dont think the game tried to be lmao

Games just overall have this problem with horror in general. The ambience of Amnesia is great until you realize it's just really that bad to die. Then it's just a boring slog if you can't get yourself back into caring about death. Books and movies have control what's happening the entire time so they can craft an intricate story with stakes but still get through the actual story. With games, you have to create stakes for the player but you also want them to be able to finish the game. So they need to fail otherwise the stakes don't actually exist, but repeated failure also makes the stakes pointless. Making a hard horror game is just asking for players to give up on either your story or your atmosphere.

It seems different players had different experiences. I died twice throughout the entire game - once, because I panicked, and once because I acted really dumb. Up until the last quarter of the game, I was able to avoid all combat - to avoid combat is actually far easier than to engage in it, as most threats just go on their merry way, if you leave them alone. I was highly engaged by the game, but I was apparently playing it for a very different reason. I wanted to see its art. I found it scary at times, but throughout all of it, I found it incredibly interesting. I loved the biological mechanisms, and I felt wonder as I entered new sets - how they play with lighting, the sounds that can be heard all around you. Which are mechanical, and which come from creatures? Hard to say. This uncertainty, and all these questions about the society that left behind these ruins... I found it very intriguing.

@@Beakerbite Ahh, ahhhh don't forget about one of Yahtzee's all-time favorites Silent Hill 2

The trick is to treat the monsters like part of the puzzle and avoid them

yeah personally i was thinking everyone would give this game a better score if it simply featured a "dodge" button and slightly more eldritch undertones.

There's lore to the game that isn't in the actual game for some reason. But every creature in the game just wants to be left alone. Just avoid them and wait for them to pass and they'll fuck off.

@@2Quick4You100 i eventually figured that out, but there were still some of those spitting sausages you first meet that you cannot avoid (or i never worked out how to) i rage uninstalled it ¯\(°_o)/¯

Honestly I like the idea that you are simply traveling through a normal sex toy factory located somewhere in Serbia. Maybe I should take a trip

"I have no mouth and I want one for... Reasons. Mind your own business."

@@kevingriffith6011 I relate heavily to this sentiment.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Puke?

that story was so boring at least in my opinion

I loved the evil within. Awesome game, bit silly but who cares

Bruh what? Scorn is filled to the brim with underlying themes in all of its levels

intentionally plays like one too. if you can afford it and you like pretty art, this game's a good fit.

psygnosis

They're not aliens. They're genetically altered humans in the distant future. The art book clarifies that the game is set on Earth.

@@mrturret01 I know they are people. But their humanity has been reduced so much it’s disingenuous to still call them humans.

the player is the human perspective

@@mrturret01 that's metaphorical, it's not physically Earth, in a distant future.

@@mrturret01 if that has to explained thorugh the art book then maybe they should have reworked their story

I´ve seen a vid about scorn and apparently you can avoid a lot of the combat by staying away from enemies if they havent noticed you and just run away until the monster loses line of sight most of the time. apparently the monsters just leave the area on their own.

I want it to be a slow cart ride at Disney World.

I stuck to a pacifist-style throughout most of my playthrough - not as a challenge, but because I thought it made sense. These creatures look scary to me, but I probably look very scary to them as well - I understand their hostility, so I better just let them be, and back off if need be. I didn't need to use a gun until the very last section of the game. Combat is over the quickest, by simply avoiding it altogether.

Its their first game, of what is a very strained development, from my country - Serbia that is still updating to be on par with 2015. As a first game I say this was amazing. Not because it is from my country but because what these guys managed to present in a place that absolutely hates video games and modern IT.

@@Kserijaro well damn! At least they managed to make the game stable unlike agony

@@Harrier_DuBois still looks scary tho

@@xcellentcreations3312 The fact they managed to get a game out - and the game that looks this good... Its an amazing feat. In terms of IT and 3D we are barely starting to get in business. One of the best VFX/Capture houses in the world are 3Lateral - also from Serbia. A small team that did amazing work for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Resident Evil Village, DMC5, Horizon Zero Dawn and GTA5. Before that anything related to video games was mostly shamed or insulted. That is why the industry never started. That and corrupt government taxing teams for money. Scorn is not a perfect game. It is probably overpriced and too short. But based on what I know its a passion project, made by people that love video games.

Yeah, it's just a tiny step up above "walking simulators".

I knew if we waited long enough, he'd come back with that review!

thats pretty sick though.

That might be the point actually.

I wish I could a pc and/or it was on the Playstation

Same here. I enjoyed it, but it still left much to be desired. It's not worth £30, but I reckon it might be worth getting on sale.

For me that game is and most likely always will be Final Fantasy 14 Realm Reborn.... I love so much of it but then hate so much at the same time.😄

It tends to be less then 8 hours

lmao omg my brother in christ, not every game needs to spoonfeed you lore dumps every 10 seconds. horror games tend to be shorter 90% of the time, scorn would have overstayed it's welcome and us fans would grow to hate it if we had to explore for like 20 hours and fight the same copy-paste enemies. i reccomend you look out for the dead space remake coming out soon.

Of course you can make your own story, but there is definitely lore to the game. The devs had a rather clear idea of what world they throw us into. It's story is only told through visual means though, so you gotta pay attention to your surroundings a lot. Whether you want to engage with the lore or not was ultimately made part of the player's decision, instead of being forced on us, like most other "story-games" do. The only thing left up to the player was the protagonist's view on things, although the devs had an idea of what they wanted the players to think, and designed the actions of the world accordingly. After the "tutorial act", you are born from a wall into a world that you are unfamiliar with. You might think to yourself "What is this place?", and "What am I going to do now?", you answer these questions more or less through exploration, and after a certain point, when you get attacked by the parasite, you might be thinking "I don't want a creature to rip me open - I don't want to have this parasite", and now you have a goal that was both intended by the devs, yet defined by the player. The combat was long, because it is the punishment. You are being hostile, and the creatures around you won't just stay down - it's about life and death. If you leave them be, combat can actually be easily avoided until the last act of the game. It's sad that you got off on the wrong foot with this game, as the game does have its strengths. If approached with a different mindset, it isn't half as bad as you make it out to be.

I found the ending of the game to be really disappointing because it just felt like a nothing ending. *(spoilers btw)* I know endings don't have to be happy or satisfying and that there's such thing as a tragedy, but tragedies don't work that well if you aren't invested in the protagonist and their goal, and especially don't work if you don't even know what their goal is at all. I know it's supposed to be the "fall just before reaching the end" tragedy that's been around since Orpheus and Eurydice, but Scorn felt more like taking the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and just leaving out everything except the walk back to the surface. We see Orpheus just walk for a while in this hellish environment before reaching what appears to be an exit from this hellscape before turning around and seeing a woman who then disappears and now we see him fall to the ground, dejected. Like, I guess it's tragic, but it's hard to really feel much when we didn't even have the slightest idea of Orpheus's goal before the very end.

@@RollerOfEyes "give us some lore and story" "OMG WaNt EvRyThInG SpOoNfEd?!" dude, no one talked about spoonfeeding anything, there is LITERALLY no story to this besides walk forward and solve puzzles, you do realize a game can have a story without spoonfeeding it right? like with ENVIROMTIONAL STORY TELLING which was touted as what this game would be, but there is no story (hell the artbook has all the actual lore and story for this world) you really just ASSUME what someone wants "can i have more story and content please? least so i can understand things" to you going "WHY DO YOU NEED 20 HOURS OF LORE AND STORY WITH COPY PASTED ENEMIES?!" just get off your high horse ya pretentious Giger fan

Very reductive to compare it to Agony. Scorn is a 3d replica of Giger art, Agony is softcore porn and gore for the hell of it. Scorn is an art exhibit as well as a game, even if the game parts aren't that good.

I thought the same until I reinstalled Agony for the hell of it. I had forgotten, but Agony is so, so bad. However you feel about Scorn, comparing it to Agony is just mean.

i side with these two. you haven't played agony if you compare it to scorn.

I’d just play Spec Ops: The Line.

You glanced over the store pages and steam reviews for both of these games without ever actually having played them.

Yahtzee spreadin misinformation online🙄

The more you know 👍

For me it's fascinating that anyone even tried to make a game here in Serbia, knowing how any project can turn into a nightmare, unless you have money to waste.. The game is as bad as i thought it would be, but at least they tried..

There's a video doing the rounds that might be worth checking out that contradicts the idea that combat is unavoidable - and suggests that you're actually *supposed* to avoid it. More monsters follow a preset path and if you just stay out of their way they'll eventually bugger off and leave you alone.

@@FTZPLTC theres an unskippable boss fight

@@FTZPLTC Then the developers did a bad job at making that clear, like cmon, the first monter you see is were you first have a long range weapon so the player is condition to kill it even if you dont have to

@@TonyTynebridge That one is more traditionally gamey with a lot of running away until the boss decides to take a break and air out it's vulnerable bits. I'm not sure if that's positive or negative.

I actualy have some problems with the adventure elements of the game but found the combat to be passable and actualy doing its' job quite well. Sure, the anal probe gun you find first is more annoying than it should be, but the rest - Flow and number of enemies, carefuly gauged amounts of ammo etc. - do feel pretty consistent with the game's ideas. Plus if you use your weapons well you can murder anything going towards you without breaking much of a sweat, altho the level design certainly annoyed me during a few fights (and let me break the AI in a few others), and the way you slow down during reload is something... I get what they were going towards, but it just feels needlessly punishing. The one time I did think the combat was bad was during the final bossfight which just... Ughhh.

A man that generally doesn't like Borderlands doesn't like Borderlands game, what a shocking surprise.

To be fair, Borderlands 3 really sucked, and I even liked TPS.

@@SpiderwolfHowling TPS was mistreated and is underrated

@@SpiderwolfHowling 3 also had the weakest antagonists that just made me disgusted because they felt like some sort of zoomers.

@@Misanthropolis You know what? I actually quite liked how the villains were essentially really shitty zoomers, really related to me based on how as a gen z adult, zoomers are the fucking worst part of my generation.

Well, it's your opinion and it's valid, but l didn't think it was boring at all. To me the game was a slice of life of a post-human person in a world devoid of soul and individuality, where all life and matter is to be used as a resource. I really liked how mundane the horrific things around me were presented, and didn't need anything to contrast Scorn's world to anything, because l can just look at my friend working at Mac who is not allowed to sit and sells hormone and plastics-filled castrated steer meat to fuel human cogs in the machine of my country

I think while the game was influenced by Geiger, they did turn it into its own creation by deviating from his designs as well by adding the gore element. Another review i saw about Scorn made the connection to factory farming and the meat industry....hence all the blood. You're introduced into a world with alien/strange/unnerving machinery and all it seems to do is harm to either yourself or a 3rd party. One of the first things you do in the game is cart a weird creature into a device that disembowels them. You're left to wonder wtf the point of that machine was...or how many times it has been used for this very purpose. You cant discern what the exact point of machines like this would be...beyond just causing suffering. Its beyond your human comprehension what the intention of these alien devices are or what they are designed to do. Likewise, cattle in a farm could never comprehend what the meat industry is, or that their environment is an elaborately designed mechanism to turn them into a hamburger in exchange for money. To the cattle, their surrounding environment and machinery just causes seemingly pointless death. I'm not sure if that was the intention of the game developer, but adding this lens made me appreciate the game a bit more from an art perspective.

To be fair, most of the Giger's work is about cocks so they should have maybe just made a hentai game...

Well it wasn't meant to just be giger And there's a lot of incomprehensible stuff in it It might give you a perspective Like your example for the robot Your perspective is it's just cruel and grotesque But the machine isn't doing anything out of malice or evil It just does what it does and you can not comprehend what it is trying to achieve from this

If I catch you in the Buttrix, I'm gonna send a virus your way.

Butt what if you are using a port-a-potty?

@@the_representative port-a-potty's have buttfi

This is a great summary for the world building in scorn

booo, never played agony before and it shows

Honestly if the combat was removed (or made such that avoiding it was the best idea a la Amnesia) it would be near flawless.

I understanding people quite liking this but loving it? Really?

Amnesia TDD is a masterpiece, Scorn is a massive disappointment.

@@ZachGatesHere no it wouldn't, by flawless do u mean hardly any content? If they removed the combat it would be even shorter, why do u think every animation takes half an hour, to pad the play time

@@ZachGatesHere Avoiding the combat is the best idea for the most part. It's just not all that obvious since you get weapons and a health bar and a healing plumbus.

i mean unless that normal world was also set in an alien environment where you have no idea of what's going on, it would not benefit for what the devs were going for.

Look up a game called dark seed. Basically does exactly what you listed. It's not a great game, but it DOES show that the juxtaposition between the alien world and the normal world makes the impact a lot larger.

​@@4eeeeeeee2 absolutely not. if you've played agony for real again, you'd remember different. agony is genuinely painful to play, this one is just meh.

They are in the same family but this one has more style.

Not quite. The difference is SCORN is quite bad, but Agony is terrible.

i guess it's officially a genre now - weird fleshy waste of time and money

i mean to be fair they stated it isn't an FPS afterward themselves.

@@RollerOfEyes Yeah, after they already scammed everyone into buying their garbage game.

@@lukew6725 Look out we got a badass over here making hot takes

@@RollerOfEyes The whole thing went down like they were Marketing us a Vibrator but said at the end " Ow this is a messager" Like Hitachi does.

@@Trynt33 Not really a hot take. Many people don't like this "game".

They weren't really going for bioshock tho

@@RollerOfEyes Okay, what _were_ they going for?

@@RollerOfEyesscorn still sucked

Eyyy you missed pal!

I agree that it wears off because there's no point of comparison but games can fuck off with the whole "nightmare creatures representing brain problems because it's all in le head" or some shit. It's overdone.

so you want shitty silent hill instead of anything unique, got it

You see with your eyes closed, invertebrate.

Would you try to finish this level now as an adult ;-)

Amen

Borderlands 3 in specific? I think Borderlands 2 was a B- at least. I’ll admit 1 couldn’t decide on parody or earnesty and was mechanically wonk, while 3 tried to jump the shark with a pair of pool noodles pulled behind a row boat.

1 = boring barely a game at times 2 = not bad 3 = full on soulless rehash of 2 corporate product TM

well said

1 - Passable. Could understand the appeal. 2 - Complete garbage. 3 - Amazing game.

samhein!

silver shamrock

S C O R N

S C O R N

[*scorn*]

A sting plays and you get like - the name of the new section/ environment is revealed. Mighthav3 been nice.

why isn't it both?

@@resiseven7407 cause a "game" has to have a good gameplay experience, not just visually :v

@@DomitriCervantes there are plenty games that have bad gameplay, too many even. just because you don't enjoy playing something that doesn't mean it isn't a video game.

@@resiseven7407 then maybe they shouldn't be games.

@@shantaeisbae interactability adds a whole new level of immersion and atmosphere to a piece of art. silent hill 2 is possibly the greatest example and yahtzee even cites that game in this very review. i just don't like the implication that a game being "art" is somehow something to be ashamed of, like the very concept of a game trying to deliver something more than a typical gameplay experience makes it inherently flawed. i've noticed it countless times, and not even in video games, but in things like music and film as well. video games are already art. there is zero reason scorn can't be both simultaneously.

because the game industry needs something different for once. if i have to gag on poppy playtime's fat chub for another year im gonna throw up.

Because Xbox people need *something* to play this holiday lol

This isn't the first time something like this happened. There was a game at one point in....2014 or 2015? It was called 18 something something and it was literally a 3 hour movie with some quick time and walking around

I think the issue is more "why did it have combat" than "why was it a game." The level of interactivity does fundamentally change the way you, y'know, interact with a piece of media; I think it's very possible that the ability to explore this landscape directly was a key part of why they made it a game in the first place. I think the issue is more that they saw some of the reaction to Gone Home and games like it and were like "well if it's just about walking around and learning things The Gamers will throw a hissy fit and we can't have that so."

​@@Oops-All-Ghosts That's fair, but if you removed Scorn's combat you'd still be left with a sub-par puzzle game. Remove that and you get an hour-long walking sim, without any of the story elements that make for an _engaging_ walking sim. It has excellent art direction and literally nothing else, and while that's fine in other media it makes for a bad game. I think the 'essence' of Scorn would have been better served by either a different medium or different developers. Maybe just more _experienced_ developers - I wouldn't say no to a Scorn sequel, if the devs are able to learn from their mistakes.

i love games people can have opinions about. we can all agree there's not much like this, i prefer different things that fail/succeed than a bunch of copypaste games every year, you know?

@@RollerOfEyes Eh, more often than not the sort of “mixed” games that end up being divisive, are because they’re actually just bad games, but the die-hards aren’t willing to admit it because they made it their identity or want to feel unique. This game for example, is simply just a bad puzzle game. The only reason people defend it is because the art is executed well, and reminds them of something else. That’s it. If it didn’t have that, no one would bother to defend it because nothing else is done well. Heck, if it had a different art style it wouldn’t be defended either. It’s only because people are so desperate for a game with Giger visuals that’s they’ll defend it because they’re trying to convince themselves it’s good. Otherwise they’d have to contend with the fact that it was a huge missed opportunity and not many games are going to approach this type of visual design for years, a decade, or maybe decades. I also want certain types of games to exist and be good, but I’m not going to pretend it’s good just because I want/wish it was.

@@mrshmuga9 ‘if it didn’t have the visuals people wouldn’t like it’ well yeah, most games are a visual medium, so that is a huge thing that conveys narrative and tone. Games are an experiential medium, and Scorn puts forward something that really emphasizes experience over utility, which is not everyone’s thing. Art isn’t objective, nor is the division between people who like or dislike a game.

@@charlieh980 You missed the point. The point I’m making is that people are _so_ desperate for a game specifically with Giger art, that they’ll elevate _anything_ that has it regardless of the game’s actual quality or intended vision. It could be a room where you look at those types of walls with no interactions, and people would still call it amazing because of their bias towards it, and make excuses or fill in the blanks for everything else. Rather than the game earning praise on its own merits of doing anything more than simply existing. Which would be evidenced by people who don’t have a bias towards/against that art style expressing their opinions. It’s the same as buying something solely because a brand name/IP is slapped on it, because they recognize it, and not because of the substance it brings. People only say things like “experience over utility” when a game fails to offer any value outside maybe one specific aspect, and don’t want to acknowledge it. Also, you’re just flat out wrong about Scorn. It _isn’t_ a game that emphasizes experience over utility. It’s not even trying (nor ever tried to be) a walking simulator where the focus is on being in this world and nothing else. It was always pitched as a typical game but with a Giger art style. And in the end, it’s still a typical game anyway (first person puzzle game), it’s just a poor one. Having good art direction doesn’t mean it’s now redeemed or was aiming to be something else entirely because it failed at every other aspect. “Art isn’t objective.” Art may not be objective, but games sure are. This argument only gets trotted out for games with little to no redeeming qualities that really only exist as interactive art museums. Because that argument is _never_ taken to its full extent and applied to broken games. Why is “broken” different and not just “subjective” like liking the colour green? Is it about the intended vision? What if a game was attempting to be a shooter but played more like rhythm game? Is it now bad because it wasn’t what the developer intended, even if the game is “good/great/entertaining/engaging/fun” by most metrics? What if a game isn’t “broken” but the mechanics are very boring and inconsistent. Can it be referred to as “bad” or is liking “Chicken Shoot” a matter of taste? If games are completely subjective, then how can anyone call any specific one “good” or “bad” even by their own subjective metrics? Because if it’s subjective, then so is their criteria, which could change for any specific genre or game and thus their interpretation is irrelevant because there’s no consistency across the board. If nothing can be “bad” then nothing can be “good” either, and good/bad can only exist if there’s a consistent standard to measure against. The answer, is that “art is subjective” is generally just a defence for poor games, because the underlying admittance is that the person can’t argue for the game’s own merits. Otherwise they wouldn’t need to pull out “it’s technically art” card as a defence. A song with only rest notes or even one note is also _technically_ “music”, but nobody is going to take you seriously if you call it “moving” or “beautiful”. They’ll realize you have no standards, and discard your assessments as lacking any value.

@@mrshmuga9 man, sorry to see your views on art, especially in the context of video games is so limited. Well articulated though! Points for effort

Trueee

Judging from the comments the art book is actually where all the lore is. So yea - it is better as a book.

Comsidering the game has a grenade launcher, im gonna have to say no.

@@RollerOfEyes A grenade launcher could be made to work in a movie too, not just a game.

@@talldog9135 trying to say you dont like movies?

@@talldog9135 look, just because in your personal opinion it would have made a better book (despite visuals being 75% of its contents) i can agree that theres no repayability, but a game can have a simple core mechanic and a streamlined narrative and not be turned into a movie. We're just lucky there's no cheap jumpscares or quick time events like any other lame title that strives to do something "different"

It's not 'their' artstyle, it's the style of HR Giger, he is the one who should be credited.

@@Harrier_DuBois Part of it is but its an amalgamtion of different art styles.

But cruelty squad did a way better job at felling you unease in a very strage world, it deverse to be called an "art game" instead of scorn

I'd say a big difference is that Cruelty Squad has a lot more meat on its bones, gameplay-wise, so you feel like you're rewarded for engaging with the world and come back for more. Scorn couldn't decide if it wanted to be an FPS, a walking simulator or a puzzle game and ended up doing all three poorly.

you know anybody in this comment section who can't appreciate a game for trying something different for once never really wanted anything refreshing in the market to begin with. when it comes to survival puzzlers, there's no winning with you. everyone clammers on about another silent hill or resident evil, but when puzzles and resource management come into play, suddenly you shit yourselves and want to go back to playing doom eternal like it invented the first person shooter.