Time to stalk, consume, grow, and evolve. This is The Thin- no, wait, this is Carrion! The latest release in the Metroidvania-meets-horror genre with a twist. Instead of playing some crazed demon hunter, vampire hunter, or anything-else-hunter, you play the monster. In a biological experiment gone wrong, it’s your turn to turn on the humans that kept you in a glass container—time to let your inner tentacle monster out.
Movie Time
I’m not a big fan of monster movies, not that I don’t watch them since they are too scary or anything, they are just not my cup of tea. But, don’t we all let our minds wander when watching a movie like ‘The Thing’ or ‘Cloverfield’, and think – I would love to play a game where I’m that monster. Sure, we had our fair share of monster-games, like Rampage (back in the day), the Kong games, the actual Thing game (in which you played the people hunting the Thing), and a few others. Well, if you ever wanted to go on a rampage, slamming scientists at the ceiling and breaking open doors with your bare … tentacles? Well, then, Carrion is the right fit for you.
What makes Carrion different from other Metroidvania’s? Well, it’s a reverse horror game in which you assume the role of an amorphous creature of unknown origin – you can compare it with a Metroid game in which you play as a Metroid. Instead of upgrading your weapons, you stalk and consume those that imprisoned you to spread fear and panic throughout the facility. By eating scientists and other personal, you grow and evolve as you tear down this prison and acquire more and more devastating abilities on the path to retribution.
Carry On Vania
Gameplay-wise, freedom of movement is incredible. Jumping and slinging around a multi mouthed, tentacled monstrosity felt natural. The monster has total freedom of movement, with its appendages automatically shooting out and pulling it toward whatever direction you point it in. The control scheme took me a while to master, but once I had the hang of it, I felt like a bloody Spiderman, slinging from one scientist carcass to the next. It’s’s delightfully creepy to watch how quickly the Carrion moves around, with a sense of fluidity to its movements, which is essential because hit-and-run tactics are crucial when dealing with the more dangerous weapon-wielding enemies you’ll encounter.
Instead of grabbing health upgrades, enemies can be consumed for health and extra biomass or slammed and tossed around like rag dolls (which is, of course, the most fun course of action). You even save the game in a weird reproductive way, in which you leave a little bit of biomass in the remnants of the prison to create a ‘mini Carrion’ in away. Next to humans, almost every bit of the environment can be hurled across the room, and doors can be ripped right from their hinges.
Carrion Upgrades
Like a true Metroidvania, you’ll unlock strains of DNA that add new abilities to your repertoire, such cloaking, growing blades and charging through barricades, and most notably, parasitically controlling a human. In typical Metroidvania fashion, these abilities typically have both a combat use and a navigational use, and every time you get new talent, you’ll be able to explore closed-off sections of the map previously. Which brings us to the most annoying part of Carrion – there is no actual map, nor a waypoint marker nor any form of a current objective tracker. This made me feel lost some times, searching for a way forward, only to find an optional upgrade that would not help forward but provide me with.. a strange upgrade, not a way forward.
Conclusion
So to conclude, if you are in the market for a game that features the absolute horror of a particular Japanse manga/anime scene, Carrion might be right up your alley. It never gets old to smash a few skulls and throw around a few scientists. Since there is not a real storyline, the game can be completed in a mere six/seven hours, in which you become the actual final boss. Due to the core concept of missing an actual map, I did not enjoy my playthrough as much as I thought I would. The golden age of Nes/Snes graphics felt good on Carrion but did not make up for the lack of navigational mishap.
