A laboratory tucked away deep in a secret military base, dark hallways, a monstrous creature lurking in the air ducts, frightened scientists, armed soldiers, screams and shredded bodies: these are some very classic ingredients that the found in many horrific cinematographic and video game productions. If Carrion takes all these elements on his own, he also takes the genre on the wrong foot by offering us to play not a brave mercenary or a devoted hero, but the terrible creature itself. Already pleasant in itself, this reversal of roles becomes downright enjoyable when we make our first trips. At the same time spidery, tentacular, wormy and blobesque, the thing that we embody has indeed extremely fluid and organic movements, which benefit from a fast and precise animation. When the simple fact of moving alone provides pleasure, you know right away that you are going to have a good time!
Playing a creature straight out of a horror movie like The Thing is not trivial! With this originality, Carrion also seduces with its atmosphere and graphics.
Regarding the controls, know that the joystick allows you to move more easily than the keyboard / mouse, but that we aim more effectively with the latter option. In both cases, the controls take a little getting used to, but you get the hang of it fairly quickly. Also, don't rely too much on the screenshots to judge the aesthetic qualities of the game, because it really looks better in motion. Always readable, the pixel art is of very good quality. It is also bathed in very convincing light effects. And the scenes displayed are all the more pleasing to the eye as the creature squirts the blood of the unfortunates who cross its path by hectoliters, until repainting a good part of the decorations. The adventure also offers us three quieter passages, where we embody a human who walks quietly in the environments and activates a few switches here and there. Essentially narrative and "ambient", these flashback sequences bear their name particularly well, since their graphic style inevitably recalls the Delphine Software hit released in 1992. The developers are therefore men of taste!
MONSTERS AND COMPANY
The gameplay as a monster gives pride of place to exploration, with a few puzzles to solve, save points to find, and access to the next area to unlock. Nothing really difficult, a few neurons are enough to understand how to activate such a switch, cross such a passage, reach such a place, or defeat such an enemy. The opponents are mainly made up of harmless scientists, civilians armed with a simple pistol, soldiers with a gun and an electric shield, soldiers equipped with a powerful flamethrower, as well as a few turrets, drones , and other bipedal vehicles. Again, the difficulty remains moderate, which is rather a good thing. After all, we embody the predator and not the prey! The basic attack consists of grabbing a human with a tentacle in order to devour it. This makes it possible to gain biomass and therefore to increase in volume. Thus, we become more resistant to shots, more impressive on the screen, and we can even access various additional powers. These are unlocked over the course of the adventure and the DNA containers found, and bear exotic names such as Xiphorrée, Harpagorrhoea, Acanthosis, or even Arachnophtisie.
In concrete terms, it becomes possible, for example, to throw a spider's web in order to trap victims or push switches, to project oneself forward to destroy wooden obstacles, to become invisible for a few moments, to turn into a cloud of times in the water, or to cover oneself temporarily with a keratin armor. The most interesting power is certainly Parasitism, which allows you to take control of a human, in order to make him open doors… or to force him to shoot his colleagues if he is armed! These powers are varied enough to offer enjoyable combat and puzzles, but they still suffer from a slight flaw in game design. The game indeed forces us to regularly vary the biomass of the creature, because certain powers are reserved for this or that section of the "weight bar".
If we fully accept the absence of a mini-map given the animal character of our avatar, the game would still have benefited from guiding the player a little better, even if it means losing a little in life.
Consequently, it is necessary to regularly deposit or recover biomass in specific places, in order to be able to access the desired capacity. This generates some hardly useful round trips. We would have preferred to be able to select any power at any time. The other faults of the adventure concern the lack of variety of scenery, which also contributes to losing the player at times. If we fully accept the absence of a mini-map given the animal character of our avatar, the game would still have benefited from guiding the player a little better, even if it means losing a little in life. As for the latter, it is far from reaching records since it only takes five to six hours to see the end credits. Let's stay positive, the game avoids dragging on and becoming too repetitive!
