Scorpion: Disfigured – PC Review

Reviewed by Tom Clark on October 30, 2009

Scorpion: Disfigured - PC Review  | read this item

I’m always babbling on about alchemists mixing together genres and concocting bizarre combinations of games, sometimes producing greatness but often ending in disaster. Well, this time I’m throwing out all comedic references (for this paragraph at least) and triumphantly stating that Scorpion: Disfigured is the real deal. All the component parts are there; F.E.A.R., Crysis, Half-Life, BioShock and even the legendary System Shock 2 – a list of phenomenal games that should make any decent gamer drool with excitement. Can one game that combines elements of each recreate the same effect? Sadly, not quite – but there’s definitely hope for the future.

Most of the creativity is added to the concoction by the story; it’s not the usual save the world rubbish either (we’ve all done that thousands of times already). Okay, it’s another post-apocalyptic shooter but this is really just used as a backdrop to the action. Before the civil wars that led to the collapse of law and order, a medical, biochemical and pharmaceutical company known as Zinyth Enterprises had been supplying the former Bosnian capital with aid. However, in 2048, a young female scientist breaks free from Zinyth Enterprises and it’s clear that it is doing a lot more than the brochure says.

Human experiments are performed. A virus is being developed that turns men (and presumably women) into fanatical suicide bombers – think zombies with guns! Combat suits that provide wearers with extraordinary psychic and time-control abilities are about to enter production. Only a prototype suit exists at the moment and guess what, the scientist managed to smuggle it out (you just can’t get decent security after the apocalypse).

You are an agent from a super secret organisation in Washington using the codename Scorpion and have been sent to the unnerving Zinyth building to “verify” the scientist’s claims. Your weapons: the prototype combat suit and the scientist’s detailed knowledge of the location. Unsurprisingly your mission changes from “verify” to something more shooty fairly quickly.

On the face of it, Scorpion: Disfigured is just a run-of-the-mill First Person Shooter. You hold a chunky metal gun in your right hand, walk around pre-made levels, look around with the mouse and click to shoot. It’s a much deeper experience than that though. Whenever you kill someone, you get the chance to raid their body for any items they might have been carrying. Often bodies turn up nothing, especially when searching the cold bodies of unarmed brainless zombies. Occasionally fallen enemies do provide something useful such as grenades, bullets or medkits, making the practice of walking up to stiffs and pressing the Search key crucial. Usable items like medkits or power batteries for your torch aren’t used automatically when picked up as in most shooters. Instead, you actually have to individually use them when you deem sensible. You’ll only want to use health restoring medkits when you are hurt so badly that using one gives the maximum effect. The same is true of power batteries because when you realise that the torch does not magically recharge when it is not being used, you’ll start doing your best to conserve power.

I am also surprised to find that ruthlessly slaughtering thousands of guilty armed men (and the occasional flamethrower-wielding zombie) actually awards you experience points. When you have enough of these points you increase in level, with new levels resulting in new special abilities being unlocked for your combat suit. These abilities include the usual slow motion Bullet-Time and damage-absorbing shield but there are also more imaginative ones. Killing Spree causes targets to randomly launch violent attacks on anything in their vicinity – great if you find yourself cornered by patrolling squad of combat-hardened military insurgents. Telekinesis stretches out an invisible hand and pulls targeted objects towards you ensuring you never miss hard to reach pick-ups, greatly increasing your lifespan in tricky areas.

You can only have a certain number of powers active at one time although you can switch between the inactive and active ones. The active powers are used in typical BioShock fashion. Clicking the middle mouse button (you can change all the controls) switches between your gun and psionic offensive or defensive capabilities. You can even upgrade the unlocked abilities with special coke-can shaped items. Want a 10% longer lasting shield or a less energy wasting Mind Control power? Just stick that needle hidden within the coke can into your arm and that upgrade is yours.

The next big feature is the suit – this is where the Crysis and Half-Life elements come in. Your suit keeps you alive and displays vital information such as how much health you have, your current experience and a readout of your surroundings – step into electrified water and a little electricity symbol appears at the bottom of your screen. The suit is basically your second skin – it holds all your guns and special powers. Apart from the knife, only three weapons can be quickly switched between. As your suit can hold them all, finding a safe spot and reconfiguring your chosen armaments is all that’s required to use the entirety of the extensive arsenal.

Like your psionic powers, the suit can also be upgraded. The only upgrade allowed is a health booster which raises your maximum health – a bit weedy to be honest. I would have liked to see some truly original suit abilities such as a Magnetic Field that when switched on ripped the guns from the hands of nearby enemies and drew all nearby items towards you.

The suit also holds a list of the enemies you’ve discovered. This is not that unusual a feature as many games use a similar concept to give a backstory on different foes. This game keeps any backstory to a minimum which is definitely a good idea, avoiding you having to stop to read reams of text. What it also does is give important information on those enemies including weak points, weapons they usually carry and suggested weapons to take them down. The enemies range from zombie rottweilers through virus-infected humans able to fake their own death to armoured military insurgents with heavy machine guns. The great thing about this is that there are more than two sides to the conflict. Zombies, being the ravenous flesh-hungry creatures that they are, are perfectly happy to attack enemy human marines. Squads of human commandoes also scour the base looking to clear up the meddlesome virus-ridden zombies. This three way war between you, the zombies and the mysterious military clean-up crew leads to some excellent battle scenes for you to watch from a distance.

As you should have guessed though, this large level of detail means the game is quite difficult to get into. There’s simply too much information on the screen, too many hotkeys and too many ‘what to do when’ rules. I really enjoy the fact that there is this much extra detail, for example the upgrades and enemy discovery make Scorpion far from the average shooter. I just think that some more time spent streamlining the game would have definitely improved things. The first 10 minutes of play can matter most in First Person Shooter games, and this is the most confusing part of Scorpion. It’s not until you start to experiment with the upgrades and psychic abilities that you get a proper taste of the game. The User Manual, meant to explain the game mechanics, doesn’t even mention gaining experience points or how to upgrade.

Another important gameplay feature to point out is the quality Artificial Intelligence (AI) controlling enemy characters. Okay, for the zombie-type creatures the default behaviour is just to shamble straight towards you. However, it’s the armed guards that really bring the AI to life. The guards all use cover realistically, ducking behind objects and leaning around corners to avoid your fire. They rarely fight out in the open, often forcing you to come to them if you are to be in with a chance of killing them. They also never (as far as I’ve seen) blow each other up with grenades which is a good sign. It’s not the best AI I’ve seen, enemies do not attempt large scale flanking operations or dive through windows to avoid fire, but it’s a superb effort and a lot better than most shooters on the market today.

Enemy squad members audibly communicate with one another giving you some indication of their next move and making them feel like actual people forming plans. Other enemies, such as the zombies, make a range of noises. Some make blood-curdling cries while others just groan in thunderous voices. Catch some types of zombies unaware and you can actually hear them talking to themselves, a bit like BioShock’s Splicers. “Where are you going?” “What are you going to do when you get there?” one exclaims. Another seems to communicate with other zombies saying he needs you for parts. This provides a wonderfully creepy setting that really enriches the game experience.

By far the best bit of sound is the talking suit. Basically, whenever any crucial meter such as health is low your suit chimes in with a computerised voice to state the problem. Whenever you pick up a new weapon, your suit reads out the name and adds it to your inventory and when upgrades become available, your suit informs you. It really makes you feel like a super-warrior with a high-powered combat-enhancing suit. I think this is one of the best elements of the game and I would love to see it made more dominant in any future games. The suit could be given some AI itself, becoming more like a person. It could detect enemies in the vicinity, state a suitable weapon and even give a suggested tactic. It could also give updates as a battle played out, such as enemy positions. Of course the player could just ignore all this stuff and play the game as normal, although having this style of computer-aided gameplay would definitely push the game above many of its tougher competitors.

The graphics are excellent. Animations are smooth, there are very few clipping problems where men stick through solid walls and characters are superbly detailed. The guns too are exquisitely detailed. Most weapons come in a standard metallic grey black colour. Some, like the machine gun (incredibly hard to fire accurately in anything but short bursts due to the excessive recoil), have glowing lights to give them that extra wow factor. Unfortunately, you will need a beast of a PC to get the best out of this visually demanding game.

A dent in the graphics score comes from the inclusion of stupidly dark rooms. Some of the rooms are actually so dark you cannot do anything but scramble about blindly using the map to navigate. Naturally, the dark isn’t a problem if you can use your torch until back into a well-lit area and it is clear the darker areas were designed to add some extra horror into the mix by limiting your vision to the circular torch beam. However, this does not work as intended because using the torch is not always possible thanks to the non-recharging torch power. Fortunately you usually have enough spare batteries and hitting the Use Battery key will replenish all lost power although there are occasions where you are left blind and without any sense of direction.

A substantial dent in the score comes from the absence of multiplayer. A co-operative game would have been an improvement for a start. Scorpion also seems perfectly suited to a deathmatch multiplayer where players build up characters with individual abilities and upgrades. Still, the single-player is a decent length which at least eases the pain of disappointment to some extent.

It doesn’t happen very often but a hidden gem has slipped under the radar with Scorpion: Disfigured. On first inspection you might dismiss it as ‘just another shooter’. I implore you to look a little deeper as you will find that this game blossoms. The sound is quality, the graphics are superb – discounting that annoying darkness problem – and the gameplay wisely stays away from the repetitive shoot and move structure that can infect games of this genre. However great I think the game is, it is a single-player only affair. If you prefer multiplayer shooters where any situation can be solved by lightening fast reactions, this game definitely isn’t for you and you should probably avoid the purchase. If playing on your own through a deep, well-scripted and enjoyable single-player is your idea of perfection, buy this game.

Tags: First Person Shooter, pc, PC Review, Sci-fi, Scorpion, SCORPION: DISFIGURED, Shooter