By now you have likely heard of Scorn’s greatest flaw: the lackluster combat. I’m not about to sugar coat it for you and say it’s not actually bad, just misunderstood. Not that it isn’t misunderstood, as few players seem to realize you can just stun an opponent and then sprint on past towards safety. That is a possibility most seem to ignore! However, coming to this realization doesn’t “fix” the combat, particularly as there are some areas or encounters where this will just drive you towards a dead end with several aggro’d monsters chasing behind. It just provides an option to skip most of the combat encounters.

There are some games in which bypassing combat is the whole point, and others where bypassing combat is, in itself, a different kind of skill-based challenge. That is not so with Scorn, and if it is, then Scorn is designed doubly poorly in this regard.

Note that the developers themselves emphasized throughout their marketing that Scorn “isn’t really a shooter”. There was a lot of discussion regarding the game being more of an adventure or puzzle game with only a bit of combat for atmosphere and tension. The problem is that, as soon as combat is introduced, it feels like the game is eager to drop several monsters in great quantities at the player at nearly every turn. At first it is successful in even the weakest of critters being terrifying to run into, but before long the game has thrown so many at the player that it simply becomes tiresome and annoying.

For some, this will be tolerable as the rest of the experience will be strong enough to carry them through. For others, however, Scorn will be one of the worst games they played and, if they manage to forge through to the end anyway, are unlikely to find its conclusion to have been worth it.

It may seem as if I myself disliked Scorn, but I was, in truth, pretty entranced throughout my entire playthrough of the game. This is a world that begs to be examined and a completely wordless story that the brain yearns to decipher. It’s completely possible that there is no narrative in a traditional sense, no “point” to the story as one might expect from something leaning so hard on its artistry. It may be that the whole point of Scorn is to be experienced, to be felt, be it in the repulsive appearance of its beasts and environs to the shock and discomfort of interacting with its bio-organic machinery.

No doubt you’ve already seen and heard many an analysis of Scorn’s artistic influence from H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, but mere screenshots and comparisons undersell the ingenuity that occurs with being in this environment. Having been a long-time fan of the Alien franchise, I’m certainly familiar with Giger’s work, but before long Scorn stops looking like a familiar environment in which a Xenomorph or Facehugger might pop out and instead establishes an identity of its own. There is a tale of a downfall here, one of potential hubris, and by the conclusion Giger’s obsession with sexual anatomy is turned towards an indication of cultural value. It is hard to describe not only for fear of spoiling what the player encounters, but also due to my own uncertainty as to what was being communicated. There is certainly something to be said in regards to the body and the machine in Scorn, but the end brings about questions of the soul and transcendence.

The player wanders a shattered Babylon; the great works of a civilization brought down by hubris. That Scorn conveys this through its environment, and even introduces the concept of a conflict between body, machine, and soul, is praiseworthy. If a picture is worth a thousand words then Scorn is speaking volumes upon volumes through visuals alone.

But Scorn is not a picture book, nor is it a film. It is a video game, and a video game must be interacted with, and this is where it slowly begins to fall apart. I, personally, would have greatly enjoyed the game if it had no combat and was, instead, a “walking simulator” filled with puzzles. I enjoyed its many puzzles and brain teasers far more than even its least frustrating combat encounter. From larger, environmental obstacles such as those found in the Zelda franchise, where the level itself serves as a “puzzle”, to the smaller brain busters that force the player to twist some knobs or turn some levers in a journey to the solution, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game.

Not all puzzles were created equal, however, and the very first brain buster you come across — before the player has even been granted a weapon or introduced to a monster — can take up to or exceeding ten minutes to complete. Demanding the player rearrange a series of “eggs” so that they can guide a specific one to a specific spot upon the wall, it was another notorious source of complaint for most players. Yet it still had nothing on another puzzle halfway through the game focused on connecting circuits in which I stumbled upon its solution by luck and surprise.

Most of the puzzles are, I think, fine, but this is not like Portal where the design is less focused on creating a proper challenge and more on tricking the player into thinking they’re smart enough to figure it out on their own. These are straight out of some “1,001 Mind Bending Puzzles” booklet you’d have found in the check-out lane of a grocery store some twenty or more years ago. Isolated and alone, they’re fine enough as far as puzzles go. As something players are forced to engage with in order to progress (and then must encounter again should they wish to replay) is to instead design your game to push players towards the “Uninstall” button.

I still don’t know how I solved this stupid thing.

This, I think, is why I find Scorn a disappointment. It is less to do with my own enjoyment, as the experience of this game overcame the inconveniences of a few puzzles and the combat. What is disappointing is how, for all its years in development, the team never thought to at least tone down on some of these hard stoppers. Basic play tests would have revealed really quickly how annoying the two or three hardest puzzles were. It would have made it clear that no one was enjoying the combat and to perhaps reduce the number of monsters roaming the environment. Don’t even get rid of combat altogether! The combat is, conceptually, fine, but there’s no reward for engaging in it and it occurs so often that even trying to avoid it is a headache.

With minor adjustments and tweaking this game could have been far more pleasing and enjoyable. It would have been an easier game to recommend. Instead, even though I came away enjoying the experience overall, I struggle to recommend it to anyone.

As vague and mysterious as Scorn’s story is, nothing is so mysterious as to why the developers thought this was okay. I certainly hope being on Game Pass works out for them.