Contempt, Experimenter

We experienced the first hour of Scorn, the sickening horror adventure whose visuals were inspired by the works of HR Giger coming to PC and Xbox.

There is no dialogue in “disdain”. During the hour we spent testing the start of the game, there was no sentence, exclamation, or thought out loud. Instead, our disturbing journey into a horror adventure Ebb . Program It was punctuated throughout by repulsive noises, a mixture of bones, tendons, muscles and minerals, in perfect accordance with the biomechanical environments created by the Serbian developer.

Released October 21 on PC and Xbox, this work has already stood out for its stated and obvious inspiration from H.R. Giger’s work, bizarre visuals and focus on body horror. trying to disdainHowever, we’ve had a very different experience than the horror genre is used to over the years: at least as far as we’ve come, there are no fears, no hopelessly fleeing enemies or monsters to eliminate with the few bullets available. It is already known that throughout the approximately six hours of the game there will also be moments of action, but it is clear that the focus of the scorn will be on the atmosphere, exploration and solving disgusting puzzles.

The first apocalypse now

Contempt, the player is not in good shape

To get an idea of what awaits us in Scorn, we don’t even have to start the game. From the splash screen, you are in front of your face Letter, completely bare, nails are worn and veins are clearly visible along the very thin bones of the arms. We see her wrapped in what appear to be the roots of a strange place, but the beginning of the game offers no explanation for how she got there. In a jiffy we see him drag himself toward a majestic tower, before falling into the void and awakening in a structure halfway between a temple and a huge prison.

We spend some time looking around, focusing on each one gross Details: You pass in front of a door with a strange mechanism, and you walk along desolate corridors, criss-crossed by cables and organic mechanisms. There is a light in the center of the room, but it is not clear what you are working with. There does not seem to be any danger, but then we are faced with a biomechanical device with a crack in the middle. Obviously, we decided to do what (no) anyone would do in this situation: put our arm on. From this moment on, contempt began to come alive.

strange mechanism of retractable feather, a “plug” that allows him to interact with switches, machines, and stations in the scenario. It can be used to activate portals and open up new paths, but when we get to a huge room with a tower in the middle, things get really fun.

Without going into too much detail, we find ourselves in front of an elaborate puzzle divided over several floors, involving shells being moved in the correct order, torture machines and transporting on rails. The mystery It wasn’t particularly complicated, but its accomplishment was slow, sad, and heartbreaking, although the developers later revealed to us that the same puzzle had more than one possible solution.

biomechanical hell

Once the puzzle is removed, you continue to advance in this biomechanical hell until you reach a new area. Stacked corpses, empty shells and strange phallic columns invite you to solve a new puzzle: using another station, you have to move other containers, while in the background you begin to hear ominous music. This is where you get the main ingredient game weapon, a disgusting organic rifle that currently doesn’t contain any bullets, but it can tip it forcefully. At first, it is used only to strike and eliminate flying objects blocking the path with their gas, but later in the game the weapon will obviously be used to interact with the environment and to eliminate more dangerous enemies.

What remains for us to understand is how much the experience will change when Scorn starts introducing deadly monsters and other weapons to defend himself: the development team confirmed how the game is not a shooter, but in the latest show a character was seen reloading the weapon with ammo, and large aliens chasing and assaulting him on him.

From what we’ve seen and tested so far, contempt leaves its mark as it does torturing the player He tortures him physically and mentally, throwing him completely naked into a prison where everything is sadistic, hostile and hideous.

The first hour of disdain was as disgusting and disturbing as one might expect. Trailers and development diaries have prepared us for extreme body horror and a terrifying and terrifying game world, where flesh and metal intertwine and blend in a surreal way. What surprised instead was the complete absence of traditional enemies and the focus on environmental puzzles, with puzzles hopefully as complex and unsettling as the ones you encountered at the beginning of the game. Sure, it takes the stomach to step into the biomechanical hell created by Ebb Software, but in the midst of a flood of horror games very similar to one another, Scorn promises to be a disturbing and welcoming novelty.