8/13/2023 0 Comments Carrion ps4![]() The emphasis on exploration and upgrades probably makes Carrion sound like a Metroidvania, but that’s not usually the case. Carrion does a remarkable job of continually changing the stakes. Phobia knows this, so they’ll force us to reduce our own health because we need the cloak ability to get past a security system, and then they’ll follow it up with an intense ambush when we’re at our most frail. Players can deposit biomass and reduce the creature’s size when they need to, but this makes it more vulnerable. Eating victims causes the creature to grow, which lends it greater damage resistance but also locks it out of certain powers. ![]() The interesting thing about the upgrade system is that the monster’s ability set is based on its size, which in turn is linked to its health. This involves absorbing anomalous materials and learning new skills, like being able to shoot webs or impale and pull down obstructions. Of course, if all of Carrion was like that, it’d run the risk of turning into white noise, which is why developer Phobia frequently shifts the focus to navigating the labyrinthine layout of the facility. It’s some of the purest and most brutal catharsis I’ve experienced in a game in ages. ![]() Even the flying drones, the peskiest enemies, are defeated in the most inelegant manner – by grabbing them and repeatedly bashing them against a wall. That’s as tactical as Carrion’s combat gets, and even then it unfolds in short order and usually ends with the monster violently whipping its prey around like a dog that’s caught a small rodent. ![]() Security forces turn the tables when they come equipped with flamethrowers and impenetrable shields, but since the monster isn’t restricted by gravity or the size of an opening, it can rapidly retreat to an air duct or elevator shaft and flank such enemies from behind. Guns pose little threat, and thus a room full of poorly-armed humans can be cleared in a matter of seconds while blood cakes the walls and torsos are strewn across the floor. There’s nothing subtle or meticulous about the way the creature picks off its enemies – it prefers to burst from vents, rip its targets in half, and devour the remains.Įncounters tend to quickly go one way or the other. The right stick, meanwhile, is used to grab and thrash objects, which forms the basis of a combat system that’s appropriately barbaric. The player can move freely along both axes – just point the left analog stick in any direction, and the monster will sling a tentacle and effortlessly pull itself forward. The monster is as much a joy to control as it is to watch. Instead, it’s our enemies who are running and screaming, and it’s quite the power fantasy. If we were playing as one of the humans, this thing would be terrifying. It’s both massive and fast, and in the aftermath of a successful attack, the game’s 2D industrial environments run convincingly red with blood. Carrion‘s monster is a triumph of procedural animation, sprouting new appendages as it needs them and squeezing and contorting its body like a dense liquid to fit through small spaces. This isn’t that kind of game, so sit back and enjoy four or five hours of guilt-free carnage. At no point does Carrion fixate on all of the widows we’re making during our escape attempt. It’s not a metaphor for anything, nor is it a tragically misunderstood figure in a narrative about how man is the real monster. The creature is a squishy, writhing, amorphous mass of tentacles and teeth, and critically, that’s all that it is. We play as the villain of the story – a monster attempting to break out of the underground lab where it’s being held, and there’s a certain gleefulness to the way Carrion presents horrific violence that suggests it isn’t interested in lecturing us about morals. WTF Why do humans have such trouble dislodging themselves from ladders?Ĭarrion is being marketed as a “reverse horror game” in which players aren’t getting scared, so much as they’re doing the scaring. LOW The lack of a map occasionally makes navigation frustrating. HIGH Just watching the monster do its thing.
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