My experience with Scorn was mostly comprised of hoping the gameplay part of the game would end so I could get back to absorbing the game's atmosphere. I would say it's an agreeable opinion that combat is not very good, and I believe I can nail that down to the enemy design rather than gunplay. Having seen other people's gameplay experiences it's clear that enemies are easily cheesable (assuming you want to fight them and not just run around them), but in my experience it seems like the enemies were designed in such a way to lead to cheap player deaths, with the 2 heavy enemies spawning in front and behind the player in a narrow hallway being one of the worse examples. How the game handles spawning is almost like Plutonia Experiment, but for a slower-paced fps game. Only time combat felt acceptable was in the game's finale, but even then some might argue that encounter wasn't very intuitive, which I'm inclined to agree. Other than that, if we remove combat from the game I'd argue it's a worthwhile experience. Puzzles are pretty neat, but of course the bread and butter is the world design and atmosphere. Visuals and soundtrack do an excellent job at creating a haunting and macabre world, and the story while esoteric is carried primarily by worldbuilding through your exploration of the decayed ruins of a dead civilization. Story is definitely something I'd be interested in going into further, since on my initial playthrough plenty of symbolism jumped out at me that's worthy of further exploration. Scorn is definitely an art piece, it's understandable that lots of people aren't too happy with that, and the game's store page doesn't help with it's reception. This game is primarily horror game/art piece, puzzle game secondary, and fps tertiary. I think there's immense value in that, but it's worth being aware of what the game is before jumping in.
