Scorn Review: Not for the squeamish

Not. At. All.

Scorn has been on the radar of many players for some time now; in fact, Xbox fans were first introduced to the horrific title when the Xbox Series S and X consoles were next-gen and not current-gen. While the wait for it was long — and perhaps arduous — developer Ebb Software softened the blow a bit with the announcement it would release a week earlier than originally planned.

Early or not, Scorn is perfectly suited for the spooky season, with an aesthetic that’s very clearly influenced by the unsettling works of H.R. Giger (Alien and a hell of a lot more). The level of excitement that generates within you will largely dictate how much you enjoy it.

Trying to describe Scorn‘s story would first mean that I’d need to understand it, and I’m not sure I can even come close to that. As a humanoid thing, you wake up — or get reincarnated into a new body, or are simply born, I dunno — in a harsh and unrelenting non-human (and therefore alien) environment. No characters will utter a word in the seven hours of gameplay on offer; a narrator never materialises to help piece together clues. Like your character, you are on your own.

Until you’re not.

Scorn looks like it’s ripped out of Alien or Prometheus and has more in common than just that. Puzzle and combat gameplay both rely upon the theme of an unwanted entity, either liberating egg-things from handy tools that you can graft onto your own person, or combat against biomasses or literal parasites. Exploration is absolutely necessary so you can try to get an understanding (right or wrong) about how all the alien machinery around you works before you try to set it all in motion. While I’m still not sure what my motivations were when playing, one thing was certainly clear: press on.

You’re thrown into the deep end immediately with a challenging puzzle that requires some decent spatial awareness and (with gore removed) could have functioned as an exercise in Resident Evil 4-style inventory management. Puzzles will range from being a test of logic — so fun and engaging — or a somewhat linear path collecting and distributing items throughout a larger arena, meaning it becomes somewhat of an unnecessarily slog in a world where you’ll get turned around quite easily. Regardless, one thing is largely true: completion of a puzzle generally results in someone or something getting something ripped off its body.

Puzzles generally involve you sticking your penis fingers into vaginas control sockets of some fashion (Giger would be proud), complete with squelching noises that are too loud and linger for too long. Some instances can prove to be real head-scrathers, but once you see a puzzle play out to its finish, the mechanics within it generally become clear and understandable (though you might have lucked out in getting to that point; hindsight is a beautiful thing).

Randomly, the very first puzzle you come across is coupled with a morality play of a sort, not that you’ll realise at the time. It’s the only puzzle — as far as I can tell — with two separate outcomes, and each is tied to its own Achievement. It’s curious because this type of thing never happens again, so I’m wondering why this instance was placed inside at all.

Puzzles are made a little more difficult at times because of the very nature of Scorn‘s visual design. While there is variety in locations when looking at its entirety, individual arenas tend to look very similar. That makes it difficult to get your bearings and actually figure out where you want to go, even if you can picture the device or corridor you want to be at. Worse yet, if you put the game down for a couple hours and then jump back in, you’ll certainly have to spend a good ten minutes reacquainting yourself with where you are.

Equally as flummoxing is that several switches or devices blend in with the pulled-back foreskin ribbed walls that envelop you in most locations, and those are the little details that mean the difference between progression, refilling your health bar or getting some ammo.

Combat will be a divisive aspect of Scorn, with enemies lobbing insanely and frustratingly accurate projectiles at you as you’re forced to carefully line up your shots or get in close and personal with a jackhammer-style melee weapon due to a significant lack of ammunition. The mechanics are perfect for survival horror, and much like in Resident Evil I found it best to just avoid engagement and run away from baddies in large sections of the world. That tactic will largely work — as will cheating and jumping onto a puzzle or refill station so animations cancel out baddies’ attacks — but there are some small bosses that will require you properly take them out. When tactics don’t work and you die? Get ready for some pretty brutal checkpoints that can take you quite far back along in your journey — and so much so at times, that you’ll need to reorientate yourself before you even get back to the combat section that felled you.

One combat sequence in particular had me stuck for hours; trial and error (and a reviewer’s Discord) helped me sort that out (and I’m happy to share my VERY SPOILER-FILLED tips with you here if you need ’em).

In the end, Scorn isn’t necessarily scary, but it is gross and uncomfortable — blood and gore litter the world, accentuated by pulsating masses of viscera. Statues start off as things that could look like a humanoid face and eventually evolve into something easily recognisable and far more pornographic. You may not like what’s on the screen, but there’s no denying that Ebb has thought long and hard about the world it’s presenting and has succeeded in creating a cohesive and fully-formed offering. Things are constantly confronting, but Ebb never actually steps over the line; nothing is done purely for the sake of it, or for fleeting shock value. In contrast, I remember a game I played called Agony that absolutely went too far, threw things in just because and had buggy gameplay that only pulled it down even further. While there are some face value comparisons, Scorn is certainly not Agony.

I hope by this stage that the imagery and setup I’ve described gives you enough of an idea of whether or not this is for you. I’m not sure I’d ultimately recommend Scorn for most, but I do applaud it for being so damned unique. Those on Xbox Series consoles or Windows PC can try it without spending any additional cash as it’s on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass accordingly. Good luck if you jump in.

Scorn was reviewed using a promotional code on Windows PC via Steam, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.

Scorn 14 October 2022; 3 October 2023 (PS5) PC PS5 Xbox Series S & X   Buy on Windows PC via Steam Buy on the Microsoft Store