Halloween Game Review: Carrion
Written By Josh Hill
CONTENT WARNING: This article and the game it discusses contain depictions of violence, gore and mild body horror (Albeit Pixelated)
We do not recommend you reading the article if you are not comfortable with such topic or you are under the age of 15 as it could trigger negative emotions.
Josh Reviews Carrion (Released July 2020)
Created By: Phobia Game Studio
Published By: Devolver Digital
Synopsis:
Carrion opens in a large science facility in which your character (an amorphous tentacled blob of flesh and muscle) is found in a glass container behind heavy security. It very quickly becomes apparent that not a single one of the scientists in the army of bespectacled cannon fodder, has ever watched a single second of any sci-fi horror. After breaking through your confinement with a level of ease comparable to a child stepping on an ant, you make your way through the entirely unsecured ventilation system and quickly begin mowing through a horde of enemies in an attempt to escape.
Review:
Carrion is a Reverse-Horror Game. By which I mean you are playing as the monster instead of getting chased down by it. That’s why I felt it would be fun to review. It provides a unique perspective even if it isn’t the best example of what the genre is capable of.
The game is relatively short, only taking about 4-6 hours to complete casually, with an additional 2-6 hours if you feel like going the 100% completion route, and I think that's a good thing. Unlike distant relatives at a Christmas party, Carrion doesn’t overstay its welcome and it fits an experience within this time frame that’s more enjoyable than what many other games are capable of providing in a much larger time span (Which tends to be par for the course with indie games).
The reason for this is that although the game play is unique and offers a rather endearing level of catharsis from it’s violent combat, Carrions mechanics are rather bare bones. Despite the range of interesting abilities you can attain, they lack depth a d I can see myself getting tired of them if I had played for longer. However, as stated earlier, the developers realized this and adjusted accordingly.
Throughout your play through, you are given various upgrades that grant you several new abilities. Some of these are required to progress while others are only there for those who are trying to 100% the game or feel that they need the additional boost. These new mechanics keep the game play fresh, as does the ever increasing difficulty of the enemy encounters. Eventually flamethrowers are added in, then drones and even mech-suits with Gatling guns. But make no mistake, even close to the beginning, combat encounters aren't exactly a walk in the park. It only takes a few well placed shots from an M.I.T. graduate with a pistol to quickly strip you of your biomass and consequently, your powers. This leads into my next point. The game makes you weak on purpose as a means to incentivize stealth play. It’s most certainly possible to go in guns (metaphorically) blazing, but the risk/reward factor is practically non-existent as you can achieve the same thing by hiding in the vents until a mech-suit walks by for you to take over. This of course is a drastic understatement as the level design is good enough that it’s never that easy, but the point stands. Carrion relies on the idea of stealth, and I could make arguments for why this is a good or a bad thing, but here I’m going to say it’s good.
Normally in horror movies you find that the killer/monster is much more methodical and calculated. This allows the director to slowly build tension and allow for a more terrifying/cathartic release of this tension. In movies like Halloween Kills (2021, David Green), the opposite is the case. It’s just raw, unbridled carnage and bloodshed. It lacks this element of slowly built terror. Which really sucks as its one of the key aspects of the genre. Without this, the audience may come away feeling like they’ve wasted their time (yeah the reviews for that movie aren’t great).
In Carrion, this stealth makes you feel like a sneaky mf and can really add to the feeling that you get from stalking your pray from out of its field of vision while they cower behind their guns in a futile attempt to survive.
Despite this fact, a case can be made for why (on your second play through) you might want to try and brute force your way through the harder levels without using much strategy, even if it fails 80% of the time. It’s because it’s really damn fun. The game isn’t very flexible in this regard but I would rather a game that excels in either stealth or force, then a game that makes the claim that it’s able to do both then fail in one, or even both aspects.
Now, I have to talk about it’s puzzles. Carrion’s puzzles are a mix. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, the puzzles are going to be baked seamlessly into the level design to a point where they aren’t really puzzles at all and more; “you gotta go in this direction and hit a button/collect a plutonium core before you can go the right direction.” But that one time out of a hundred… ohhh boy. It isn’t even a puzzle that got me here but it most certainly left me puzzled. You know what, I lied, this paragraph isn’t actually about puzzles it’s about a bit of level design that I thought was a puzzle but actually wasn’t, it was just because I had missed an upgrade in the previous stage. Most of the time, the level design is great, sometimes its okay but still passes. And then there are the times where it isn’t good at all. A few of the levels are poorly laid out and can sometimes leave you feel like you’re going around in circles until you accidentally accomplish something. But look, it’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things even if it can slow you down a bit.
Recap & Final Verdict:
Overall, Carrion is a relatively short, pixelated, reverse horror, strategy game where you play as a sentient flesh mound as you brutalize scientists and the steal the powers of captive organisms in an attempt to make it to the center of a scientific facility so that you can obtain something you need to escape undetected (I’m not spoiling what it is).
When you say it like that it’s kinda wacky but hey, isn’t everything about the horror genre?
(I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch horror movies)
I give Carrion 4 and a half Dead Scientists Out Of 5.
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