If you watch my livestreams (twitch.tv/janeiac) you’ll probably know that I’m a *little* bit obsessed with tentacles (they’re just good cuddle friends). So it’s no surprise that when Devolver Digital announced Carrion was coming, earlier this year, I got tagged in the post by an awful lot of people (thanks everyone).
Carrion sees you take on the role of a lethal ball of teeth and tentacles as you try to escape from a scientific facility. As you go you’ll be eating scientists and soldiers, destroying mechs, solving basic puzzles, gaining new abilities, and getting freaking lost.
There’s a few different types of enemy scattered around the base. First the scientists (usually unarmed, always delicious), there’s soldiers (protected by shields, treat them like BBQ wings and toss out the armour once you’ve eaten the good bits), mechs (like a crab, you have to tear off all the armour to get to the delicate meats inside. Careful though, their claws (chainguns) will mess you up in seconds), and finally there’s autonomous drones which can be annoying in large numbers (taste bad and shoot you, best avoided).
The movement feels incredible either with a controller or keyboard and mouse. As you move in a given direction, your beast will throw out tentacles to pull themself along. Grab humans with your gory appendages, before moving them closer to consume them and gain additional mass. It’s just so natural and (at least during the early game) makes you feel really powerful and dangerous.
This is where the game shines. There’s a few sections where you just click. You move swiftly, back and forth, dropping from a vent and taking out multiple screaming, pleading snack meats. You cut a swathe across a room leaving nothing but viscera in your wake. It’s glorious.
But then you start to explore and the exhilaration vanishes. The game contains no map function (I get it, why would a tentacle beast have a map) so you either need to be making notes yourself – taking you away from the game – or just bumble around until you work it out. I regularly found myself lost for 20 minutes or more at a time, cursing the decision to have the roar function only point you towards save points and not towards your next target. It would be a simple fix and still stay within the logic of the game world.
This oversight is a real shame, because it takes a solid 9/10 game and knocks it down a lot. I spent the final hour of my playthrough wandering round and round in circles, growing more and more frustrated, because I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere new (I actually needed to go back to the beginning zone, an area I’d previously assumed I just couldn’t find a single secret from and that’s all that was there, so had given up on. Turns out this area couldn’t be completely cleared until the end). I really hope the team makes a sequel that’s a bit more user friendly and respectful of player’s time because there’s definitely an amazing game that could be made in this engine.
Pros:
- It’s a single gimmick game that doesn’t go on too long (bar getting lost).
- An amazing power fantasy.
- Glorious tentacles!
Cons:
- Lack of map leads to frustration.
- Failure to deal with mechs correctly will see you starting a room over and over again as they cut you to ribbons in about a second.
- I’m just going to say the lack of signposting again.
Stoned Monkey Radio 