CARRION Reviews
The horror genre is packed with everything you could wish for.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Carrion is an excellent spin on the horror genre that switches the power-dynamics of a traditional horror game while still retaining a lot of the tension.
Carrion is both a beautiful and grotesque nightmare that flips you into the role of the monster.
Carrion takes the formula of many of the great 2D adventures that came before it and repackages it with grisly body horror and the twist of being a monster on the loose. It doesn’t change up the formula too drastically with its basic genre mechanics, but it still manages to do everything that it does do near-perfectly in a short amount of time.
CARRION is gloriously gory and playing as a tentacled monster is fun from start to end, even if the main gameplay loop could grow a little repetitive in places. Slipping your way through the laboratory and pulling off all sorts of gruesome kills was always an absolute blast though, whilst unlocking new abilities always felt rewarding – especially when they had to be utilised in some of the environmental puzzles or when stealthily sneaking past some of your deadlier prey. It is a shame there isn’t an in-game map to make traversal easier and simply unlocking new biomass points could get a little repetitive at times, but it’s hard to complain too much when you get to wreak havoc as a destructively monstrous blob of gore and tentacles. Best. Protagonist. Ever.
Carrion is a good title, perfect for those who look for a fun challenge that combines action and stealth mechanics and puzzles.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
CARRION‘s greatest triumph isn’t the beautiful aesthetics or the extremely fun gameplay, however — despite it having both — but the game’s ability to make players own the identity of an amorphous creature discovering itself while finding a way out and feeding on the unfortunate. If that’s not immersion taken to the coolest extreme, I’m not sure what is. CARRION is a must-play; grab it before it grabs you.
In the end, Carrion is less about your blood soaked rampage through human filled hallways than it is about rampant, persistent, perpetual fear. The lingering fear that permeates many of the areas in the game is almost tangible and it is your greatest weapon against the humans that stand in your way. Peering out from darkened alcoves in corners or silently picking your moments from watery depths, as the humans above pace nervously, knowing their lives are yours for the taking, is when Carrion is at its best.
Carrion struggles to depict the idea of “having power” as nothing else than a brainless venture. Something you inherited. Therefore, every action and every killing lose its meaning. Even though you are a monster, your actions are never questioned or given context. In the end, the gore is the only thing that really makes you feel something. Gross, at most.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Carrion is a lean but undeniably fun reverse horror with plenty of clever ideas that will have you second-guessing meatballs.
Carrion is an energetic and taut game that flips the tables on The Thing, putting you in command of the alien creature and tasking you with simply going to town on the hapless humans surrounding you. The loose physics-based gameplay is satisfying to play, and the enigmatic creature's bloodlust is crucially never too powerful to render the armed humans that challenge you entirely helpless. Although Carrion's story falls largely flat, it's a very satisfying slaughterhouse of gnashing teeth and tentacles.
Carrion’s concept of playing the evil, inhuman creature that’s out to eat everyone is definitely interesting and, at times undoubtedly visceral despite its distant 2D perspective, letting you bloody up rooms and leave halves of corpses lying around for later consumption. Its movement enforces the foreign nature of its protagonist but frequent frustrations like repeated difficulty spikes during combat and getting lost in its unremarkable facility do chip away at its awesome parts. Nevertheless, if you can weather some frustration, you’re in for a lot of delicious dismemberment and many horrified screams as you take Carrion’s flesh beast on its bloody journey.
It’s equal parts Metroidvania and player directed blood-bath and one of the best games of the year so far.
Carrion is the perfect marriage of John Carpenter and Cronenberg horror, with an almost unsettling glee as you careen through the game devouring all in your path.
Carrion is a fantastic game that flips horror tropes on their heads and allows you to be the one slaughtering the ignorant and incompetent humans. There is actually a lot more depth to the gameplay than I anticipated, which never led to a dull moment.
However, frustrations aside, Carrion was still an entertaining playthrough. As one of Devolver’s major releases of the year it doesn’t quite hit the high mark I expected. It doesn’t need to be a breakthrough experience, though. It’s just plain fun, and I could see myself playing through again.
Carrion is often obscure, uncomfortable, unsettling, and distressing. And this is why we loved it.