Scorn Stays True To Giger’s Concept Despite Improvisation: Criticism is a harsh sport. It moves slowly, leads you through meandering mazes without much direction, provides no narrative comforts (at least at the beginning), and is set in a profoundly unpleasant and horrific universe obviously influenced by the works of Swiss artist HR Giger.
For me, it has been a trying ordeal. Nonetheless, if I’m being really forthright, I believe that difficulty serves as the goal. And here’s where it’s possible that Scorn succeeds.
Ebb Software has been working on Scorn since 2014, and it was finally released yesterday for PC and Xbox (I played it on PC). The game was first funded in 2015 but was scrapped due to a failed Kickstarter campaign and a subsequent intention to release it in two parts.
It returned to Kickstarter in 2017 and was finally able to raise the necessary funds to be complete. It draws influence from Heideggerian philosophy and touts itself as “an atmospheric first-person horror adventure game set in a nightmare environment of weird shapes and dismal tapestries.”
Survival of the fittest. pic.twitter.com/xWwypIeGQE
— Scorn (@scorn_game) October 19, 2022
Scorn Stays True To Giger’s Concept Despite Improvisation
Philosophy is not my forte, and I have no interest in offering commentary on Martin Heidegger’s work or how it relates to this game. As someone who has been profoundly affected by HR Giger’s creations, I come to Scorn with an appreciation for the kind of art that is frequently unpleasant, challenging, and abrasive—whether on purpose or not.
I can not claim to be an authority on Giger’s life or the motivations behind his artwork, but I can speak to my own personal reaction to it. And it is in this spirit that I approach this game.
After five hours of play, I like Scorn because it challenges the player in interesting ways. Although I’m not having a pleasant time, the incredibly Giger-esque visuals are pulling me through the game’s hallways. This macabre bloodfest is more an adventure game than a first-person shooter.
For me, a trans woman who has spent most of her life in the closet, HR Giger’s art evocatively conveys a feeling of foreboding and perplexity over the fate of sex, sexuality, and the body. In contrast to the basic, gore-for-gore’s-sake function that Hollywood has frequently reduced it to, his photos give contemplative settings that are far more in sync with my perceptions of the world.
This is exactly why I keep coming back to this game. While Scorn isn’t for everyone (or even most people), it has been able to reflect my impressions of Giger’s work thus far by not pandering to the standard of accessibility demanded of “AAA” video games.
There is no helping hand extended. No map. There is no measurable standard. It takes some time to make sense of the HUD features (to a fault, frankly) and the riddles. You have no vertical leaping ability. It is forbidden to stoop. The pervasive presence of invisible barriers gives Scorn the air of a museum.
The early adversaries are almost invulnerable to your initial “weapon,” and your rifle is quite imprecise even when you upgrade it. The “where the f*ck am I meant to go now” syndrome is at an all-time high in this game. It’s frustrating, but I want to see it through to the conclusion.
What I like most about HR Giger’s art is conveyed and used well in Scorn. A third, perhaps deadly, aspect where it falls short, however.
The first thing it does well establishes a sense of disorientation and weirdness. Nothing has worked out as I expected it would. To me, as a player, that’s quite annoying. But speaking for myself, Claire, I find great pleasure in this state of confusion and uncertainty.
The typical progression involves discovering mysterious chambers and gadgets of unknown use. You attempt to trigger them in some manner, either by picking up strange things or by repeatedly pressing the A button, only to be left scratching your head as the animation plays but nothing happens.
Once you’ve figured out where you’re meant to go or what kind of filth reacts with what kind of beating organelle, you’ll stomp about the halls and touch nasty objects until you’ve exhausted every possible combination.
It’s frustrating, for sure, but I think that, in Giger’s vein, that’s the way it ought to be. You have to keep up with a steady stream of strange crap, and the game would ruin that if it randomly assigned lore terms and catchphrases to items and areas around you or became friendlier.
There has been no dialogue from the protagonist so far, so I have had to rely on my own ideas to describe what I’ve been through. In the absence of context and nuance, scorn takes on a very personal quality.
The Giger inspiration in this game should provide for a bizarre and baffling experience. Unfortunately, many of the riddles here are recycled from previous games.
Scorn’s second major triumph is that it gives life to the “mechanical” in the “biomechanical” source material, which is what makes them function, at least in my opinion. Because of my alterations, this kind of painting now has a feeling of motion that is often lacking in Giger’s static works.
These two features work together to provide me with an immersive gaming experience akin to becoming lost in artwork by Giger. Prometheus-like than “Brain Salad Surgery” is played more gradually and slowly.
On its own, Scorn is no “Brain Salad Surgery,” “Necronom IV,” or “Birth Machine,” but as a computer game, it strikes a chord with the same themes that interest me in those other works.
I don’t think Scorn’s overall flaw is related to how awkward the game is to play. The main character moves much too slowly (practice pressing “sprint”), and you should probably disable motion blur and increase the field of view (FoV) by at least a couple of notches.
The game also exhibits a stutter that has been more prevalent in games powered by the Unreal Engine. Any or all of these are reasonable concerns for gamers to have in abandoning this title.
However, I think its biggest flaw is that the art design doesn’t deal with human sexuality at all, which is astonishing considering the original material. Scorn may have benefited from studying Giger’s work if he had paid more attention to its sexual overtones.
Of course, there are graphic depictions of bodily harm here, but where Giger succeeds, despite his twisted and warped aesthetic, is in conveying a feeling of humanity via his work, which Scorn lacks due to its oversimplification of sensual tropes.
I can see why that might be the case. Similar to HR Giger’s deformed genitalia artwork, which features monster penises and vaginas, such a game would certainly be restricted to mature audiences. The “inserting,” phallic imagery, and yawning gaps are all there to point in the proper directions, but Scorn fails to fully capitalize on these opportunities.
I think this game would benefit greatly from the addition of penises, vulvae, and other sexual organs. The many tubes and rising phallic items have a design reminiscent of Giger-esque biomechanical sexuality, although they lack the distinct intricacies of genuine human anatomy. Scorn is similar to a radio-friendly version of a more adult song in this one crucial respect.
While I’m not sure I can put my faith in a contemporary computer game to handle such subject matter gracefully, one of the things that draw me to this aesthetic is the way it mixes terror, perplexity, and sexuality; it’s a pity to see this so… tamed in Scorn. This game misses out on the raw, hauntingly bizarre sexuality that is usually what pulls me to Giger.
Contempt is not a game to be played. Playing it is frustrating and difficult. Like hearing Dillinger Escape Plan backward. As long as the clumsy fighting doesn’t ruin the experience too much, I’ll keep slogging down these halls for those reasons.
Final Words
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