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What the hell is Scorn? This icky survival horror will leave Game Pass subscribers squirming

Xbox decides to involve HR (Giger).

^Stay tuned after the ads for some smooth PC footage and review impressions.

The extremely weird, disturbingly fleshy, unsettlingly phallic, HR Giger-inspired survival horror thingy Scorn finally comes to Gamepass. But, beyond the Promethean aesthetic, what on earth is it all about?

Bloody hell.

Well... egg redistribution, and poking things in holes. And it might just be one of the most interesting experiences to hit Next Gen to date: something that so heavily and unequivocally leans into its aesthetic, no matter how unsettling things might get, that you have to admire it for its vision alone. There hasn't been a mainstream release that goes all-in on grossing out the audience like this since Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and if anything, Scorn is even more sickening.

A creature puts their arm inside a rather phallic looking pillar in Scorn's Act 1
For goodness sake.

But there's more to Scorn than the visuals, and it's a fascinating world to explore... if you have the stomach, and patience enough for some head-deskingly obtuse puzzles. As Kelsey notes in her review, Scorn is an exercise in environmental storytelling, eschewing cutscenes and exposition in favour of simply letting the player piece things together for themselves. It doesn't provide all the answers, leaving much of its deeper meaning wide open to interpretation: and it's all the more compelling as a result.

A fitting tribute to H.R. Giger, then.


Scorn is available now on PC and Xbox Series X|S, and is a Day One release on Xbox Game Pass.

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