Scum is a survival game unlike any other. While DayZ combines survival with sophisticated PvP combat and games like Deadside emphasise instant gratification, Scum has carved out a niche for itself far to the left of DayZ by emphasising the experience of survival by providing players with one of the most thorough metabolism simulators in existence.
Scum Game Review
While many survival games feature a mechanic to flag spoiled or uncooked food, Scum takes this a step further by requiring players to consume the right proportions of vitamins and nutrients to be healthy. Eating too quickly, too much, or too little food might make your person sick. Eating a dozen candy bars a day may make you feel full, but it will also make your character physically heavier, less agile, more susceptible to illness, and with a larger hitbox, a target for other players and the undead.
As one of the few survival games that permits cannibalism, Scum, a hungry survivor could not hesitate to make you their lunch.
Ugly Characters In Scum Game
Character models are awful, with even the best-looking character models being fittingly referred to as “Butterface bob and pals,” despite the fact that the world has been meticulously built and there are some incredibly beautiful places to explore.
While I don’t expect hardened prisoners to look like catwalk models, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect characters to have some control over their facial muscles and have their heads firmly attached to their necks, especially considering that other games using the same engine have succeeded in making their characters at least appear human, if not attractive.
Looting In Scum Game
In Scum, the treasure drops when a puppet (zombie) is killed always match what the puppet was carrying or wearing. This is a step forward from most survival games where you have to pass past perfectly decent-looking zombie pants while bare-legged in order to loot a tuna can or a pair of sunglasses.
The entire game world follows this design tenet; for example, clicking a pile of logs will allow you to harvest logs. Fridges also hold food, while autos hold scrap metal and car parts. This is fantastic and different from games like Population Zero where you would have to travel past a mountain of stones in search of a single lootable stone.
Misogynistic Scum Game
While Scum didn’t have any female characters when it first came out, this lack of diversity was subsequently remedied in what may be called the most repulsive example of inadvertent bigotry by a well-known creator that I have yet to see.
The announcement of player-base female characters was made as part of a brief film that included a scantily clad woman dancing suggestively with censor bars over private parts. While this was obviously done in jest, it is insulting to female players and almost offensive. Even once the censor bars were eventually taken down, the situation did not significantly improve. Bare buttocks and a blouse that read “naughty catholic girl” that showed a lot of skin were now visible.
While the in-game wardrobe selections are appropriate for a survival game, many people won’t be able to get beyond the disrespectful and out-of-date representation of women in the cringe-inducing video.
Nudity In Scum Game
Nudity that is used tastefully in a video game is acceptable; in the case of a survival game like Scum, where clothing might become wet and result in hyperthermia, occasionally taking off clothing is a requirement.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as mature, so if you play on a server with less maturity, you will frequently see plenty of exposed male and female “private parts” and huge breasts. The developers’ wry sense of humour is clear, but allowing users to make absurdly enormous “body parts” just fosters immaturity and obscenity.
Fickle Community
Gamers that play survival games frequently request depth, complexity, immersion, breathtaking graphics, and realistic survival techniques. Players left it in droves when Scum, which checked off all those conditions, came up because it was not the gank fest murder hobo simulator they secretly desired.
Contrarily, the same group flocked to Deadside when it first started as a murder hobo simulator, only to abandon it in droves when they realised it was not the in-depth, immersive survival experience they had hoped for. Fortunately for Gamepires, there are enough gamers who enjoy survival games who will play them through both good and terrible times.
The continued renewed success of games like DayZ, Conan Exiles, Ark Survival Evolved, and Scum, all of which were labelled as failed projects during the darkest moments of their early access journeys but now enjoy healthy growth and player engagement, highlights the importance of the nucleus community for the long-term health of any game. Scum has survived the storm, and assuming Gamespire keeps the support of its audience, its greatest days are yet ahead of it.
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