Scorn Reviews
So much about Scorn feels like a trap. It’s designed to cost you progress, to waste your time, and some might think this burdensome despair is some sort of brilliance on the part of the developers. To someone who values their finite time on Earth, it’s snide crap that shows contempt for its audience at every opportunity.
It should be pointed out that Scorn is a day one Xbox Game Pass game, and that is really the only way to justify playing it. Otherwise, Scorn is an experience that even the most diehard horror game fans should skip.
I have enjoyed some action-adventure horror games out there. Limited ammo and health reserves can be a great tool for upping the tension and a great story helps make it worth seeing things through. Scorn has none of that. It is bland, boring, plays poorly, and excels in no areas.
Despite a beautiful artistic design, Scorn is a tormenting journey to a strange world where there is no logic, purpose or fun.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Scorn has one of the most beautiful worlds you'll see in a game (if you can see beauty in the grotesque). It's just a shame that world is also home to a frustrating puzzle-heavy adventure filled with aimless wandering.
Scorn's frustrating combat, unbalanced puzzles, and unforgiving checkpoints make it an infuriating slog through an otherwise intriguing setting.
Scorn is aesthetically impressive and sets a tone early on. Unfortunately there's nothing more to back up this experience as plot is non-existent and puzzles are linear.
Despite showcasing an interesting visual design, Scorn is an agonizing trip through a bizarre alien world with clunky combat, glacial mechanics, boring exploration, and a misplaced narrative.
Scorn presents some incredible art direction and a biomechanical Giger fever dream of a world to get lost in, but that’s exactly what you’ll be doing in it for most of your time: getting lost.
A mediocre adventure with a fantastic scenery that's really lacking in a gameplay department. For that reason, the beauty alone can't hold your attention for too long.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Scorn is a game with a terrific art direction that is directly inspired by the creator of Alien, H.R Giger, but also the works of David Cronenberg. An incredible ode to Hans Ruedi Giger that fails on every other level. Combats aren't good and necessary, and puzzles are too often base on the same mecanic. A VR version could have made the ride perhaps less tedious.
Review in French | Read full review
If you love H.R. Giger, unsettling body horror such as those seen in the works of Junji Ito, or creepy alien experimentation scenes from films like Fire in the Sky, you’ll undoubtedly appreciate Scorn’s overarching concept. Sadly the execution leaves much to be desired, which is a shame as I feel like Scorn could have been a real standout as far as atmospheric horror games go.
Scorn impresses as a visual tribute to H. R. Giger, but half-formed gameplay hurt its horror more than it helps.
Not without its flaws, but still a superbly atmospheric adventure of horror and discovery.
Most video games that model themselves on H.R. Giger's biomechanical monstrosities are purely aesthetic. Scorn wears its influences not on its sleeves, but inside them; a mass of ooze and darkness and gnarly, desiccated things; a grimly singular puzzle, but perhaps one that didn't need the combat to deliver its horrors home.
For every vomit-inducing scene of body horror, you’ll also lose your lunch at the game’s technical and design issues. Like the creature and the protagonist, it just feels as if Scorn is fighting against itself at every step along the way.
An atmospheric experience more than a game itself, Scorn is a desolate travel reminiscent of old school adventure games like Myst.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Scorn is a visual atmospheric feast, but the focus on atmosphere left the title without solid gameplay and a narrative, making it as confusing as the conclusion.
Scorn really brings the art that inspired to 3D life, meshes it with good music, and presents it on a stable platform. But the mundane puzzles and poor combat drag it down.
What you get out of the game is what feels like a really great artistic idea, which the team committed to fully. And after the art was done, they tried to place their gameplay ideas anywhere they happened to fit. The end result is a visually arresting, but haphazardly designed experience.