INCISION

Incision is aggressively dark, a rare game can match its edge. Naturally, the biological horror setting invokes Akira and The Body of Many, but the closest parallels gameplay-wise would be DUSK and HROT if you infused them with the period blood of a Strogg juiced on anabolics and hepatitis. I separately noted the brutal poetic precision the game uses to describe its unholy filth, it reminded me of Cruelty Squad of all things. That said, the freak is a thing of its own, here I hope to show how sick it really is. You have no idea. And I was none the wiser, but I'll tell you all about it during this gooning sesh. Except for what the protagonist is and how is he alive after being skull-tongued right through in a crunchy intro. I can keep my ancient Chinese secrets. Violated by the void yet still lucid, John Incision seeks to dethrone a God... or degod a Throne? Something like that. What came next was a bloodbath so stupendous I forgot to cognise. Our guy wasn't as lost in the sauce, doing research when things got heated and you two merged into one. An attempt to dissect the puzzle of chimeric flesh plaguing the city? Don't need a PhD to know the answer is mass destruction. Alas, there isn't much left to destruct in a place so far gone. Mad meat and steel meld together, towering walls of palpitating organs emerge, growing into a network of information banks. The Growth tracks every casing left on the ground, intimate with every cell in your body. Constantly bloating itself by devouring the agonising city, it festers into twisted mounds of flesh while its pestilent urethrae permeate the groaning wreckage rusted from blood. A cruel trypophobic nightmare amalgamates and spreads into hive megastructures of rotting tissue, riddled with hyper-industrial labyrinths haunted by revolting symbiotic spawn. All that forms ridiculously grimy, surreal art pieces transmitting a terminal stage Pandemonium who chokes when it doesn't screech, drowning in gunk. And the dark wind blows. The sound and music fit the bill. Disturbed, sharp, distorted - in tune with the stark, sorrowful apocalyptic vistas. Jesus wept. Hell, those could make a cenobite weep. In 40k universe this would call for immediate Exterminatus. Keeping the scale tight, this game shares Warhammer's balls-to-the-wall approach to world-building and all else, which mandates its celebration of the old ultra-violence. [h3]Godspeed[/h3] Incision's grindset is simple: you die as soon as you stop moving and shooting. Scratch it, you die anyway. Running is lightning-fast, so I instantly used this perk to sprint into my own grave, got rekt so abruptly it was comical. That's a Quakeborn alright. Kill time is also quick, a blink and either of you is a pile of pulp squelching on the floor, steaming. Aggravated by the lack of quicksaves or checkpoints! You must rely on archaic 1-ups scattered around. They revive you on the spot, but don't carry over to a new level. Weapons and ammo can be hoarded, though. Looking at the feedback, death is a major point of contention. After beating a couple of levels on a harder difficulty, I started struggling with the repetition imposed by it. First-timing a level can take up to 30 minutes if you're thorough. Sure, it takes 1-15 otherwise and it's easy to memorise the streamlined map structures, but unless you travel the furthest frontiers of the spectrum (godspeed) even these bountiful secrets and tight encounters lose their edge the n-th time around. Worst of all, an impatient part of my monkey brain turns me into a lemming on repeated attempts, so I die in increasingly dumber ways, frustrations pile up. That's why I get the beef expressed by certain reviewers. Just don't buy everything they say. I know my limits, for one, Hollow Knight rejected me. I just don't have what it takes. But do I pout like a child or gossip about it? Don't say "guns bad" or "music bad" just to fabricate a pile of cheap justifications for your scrub ass to sit on. No need for its sobbing farts, simply admit to a skill issue and let go. Luckily, switching to the second easiest difficulty was enough to ease my pain here, mostly due to slower projectiles. If you think this made the whole affair a cakewalk, you haven't been paying attention. The only thing that changed was that the balance between fun and anger shifted towards the former. Most importantly, I kept feeling that tension in my throat and there were moments when my heart fell outta my ass. Although a weaker me would prefer to cuddle with my PCMR special (savescum), making me feel comfortable wasn't the point. I respect the author's vision, recognising that a strong principle overrides our whims, that art doesn't need to be all-inclusive. It takes guts to go against the grain, it's less profitable, which makes such a selfless commitment to the original intent all the more valuable. [h3]The Whole 9 Yards[/h3] Evidently, I was in awe of the defiant spirit from the get-go, which helped me practice what I preach since I desired to see the game through. But I also gelled with its ever-escalating action the second I gibbed my first foes using a magnum revolver. Yeah, that's the kind of game to make it your first weapon. The guns are to go postal with, certified killing spree classics. All 10 of them are cranked up to 11, even melee. Of course there would be a quad shotgun, hell, have a GIGA-shotgun while you're at it, impregnate whole rooms with shrapnel in one alt-fire blast, why not!? Even the machine gun is a double-barrel. The minigun measures ammo in yards, what a nice touch! Not to mention the best flamethrower ever made. Fire gibs, too, and it feels right. Each piece is obscenely impactful, each is a nuclear option. And there's an actual nuclear option... obligation, compulsion... but who doubted at this point? Haven't seen one since Shadow Warrior, haven't met with such level of carnage since Rise of the Triad. Some visual clutter is a small price to pay for the spectacle. Sight is overrated, just don't stop your murderous rampage even for a second and you'll be fine. Suffice to say, turning hordes of failed unlife into burning puddles of slurpy sludge feels insanely satisfying. The monsters are born of torture, nurtured by rot, which shows in their painful designs. Almost as fast as you are, packing a punch, they're thankfully dumb as hell. It's useful when there's a pool of molten metal between you. For a display of good manners on the dev's part, there are no hitscanners, projectiles only. Don't worry, the wretched fiends shall still get your ass. Their malicious nature in the form of nasty backhanded tricks will become apparent soon, they put up a fight. Whatever you do, don't hesitate. Pure instinct is the only way to ensure survival, you must learn to be as primal as your enemy. Pull the trigger before anything happens - to make them belch through a thousand holes, spill into a porridge of innards, leaving gushing chunks of ludicrous gore to flood the corridors - and lower your gun only after the bloody mist settles. The bosses are fire as well... Okay, I know, right? I've made a few seemingly grotesque claims in this review. Perhaps not surgically accurate, I believe they expose the shrieking core of this game. Made of conviction and grit, Incision really goes that hard. My curator [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35305390/]Big Bad Mutuh[/url]