I noticed this game on Steam, and I tend to admire titles with "outbreak" in the name. The price was ZAR 80 ($8) so it was cheap and I thought I should purchase it - which I did.
However, beforehand I did read up on the review as well as watched it (as I normally would do before purchasing any game), and I was taken aback to see it get such a low score. I really wanted to play the game myself to see why it got such a low score, and if such score rating did justice to the title.
But from the video review it seemed a decent shooter so I went ahead and bought it.
The game is not a total sh*t fest but it is far from good too. The environments look neat, they are nicely designed but of course in Scourge you don't have an option to take it all in. You will find yourself moving from area to area rather quickly, and the environments become a blur that fade from memory.
Another environmental aspect that I found unfortunately enigmatic was the fact that the story all takes place on an island where the Nogari Corporation is headquartered. However, you never are aware that you are actually on an island without the story telling you so. You never see any ocean, or island vistas or anything of the sort - so the fact that it was centered on some island is irrelevant - it could have been centered in the middle of some city and you would never have known. Basically you only see the insides of the Nogari facility and almost nothing else.
The gun-play is decent, but don't expect much from it. You have (if memory recalls) 5 - 7 different in-game firearms to use. But the game is relatively short, so the gun variety doesn't seem to be a major blow because there isn't time to use a whole assortment of them. They shoot fine.
The enemies are nothing special. AI is lacking a bit, but nothing that is horrific or game breaking. There are not many varieties of enemies, but enough to fill the campaign length. You fight aliens which look like armoured spiders that come in different sizes, as well as humans that wear various armour types. It's nothing special but not overly bad at the same time.
The story is weak and you never feel like you are investing any emotional attachments to it. It is simply some corporation conglomerate manufacturing some aliens from a meteorite fragment they found (something like that, but I never found myself caring much), and you must stop them otherwise they will take over the world. The story develops a little as the game goes on and there is a twist in the works. But again, the story is voidless, and there is almost no attention paid to its details - the story is certainly a weak one here, the twist adds a bit of spice but is nothing that we haven't seem before.
The mechanics of the game are not great either - nor are they game breaking The voice acting is usually clear and crisp with the exception of some parts where you may struggle to hear the characters talking over the background music during cut-scenes. The voice overs are neither very convincing, this could have been much better.
The characters are nothing much, you know almost nothing about them but can only judge on their looks. You dont find yourself caring for either of them.
The bottom-line is that the game is below average, it is not by any means a good title, yet at the same time it is not the worst. A score of 2 seems a bit low to me, because a 2 assumes that the game does not work in almost every aspect of it, yet this may be the case for certain parts of Scourge, but it certainly does work in some areas.
The game is mildly fun, and I found myself wanting to finish its story. However, the story is cut short and stopped randomly at one point in order to build up a climax for a sequel. This was frustrating and unexpected, and probably why I am giving it a 3 instead of a 4. That was just bad scripting because it pisses the player off and leaves them unfulfilled.