Review for Kholat. Game for PlayStation Network, PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 10/06/2015 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 08/03/2016 The version for Xbox One came out on 09/06/2017
The story has often been a valuable source of inspiration for developers. Titles like the excellent The Town Of Light, which chronicles the hallucinating conditions of asylums during World War II, This War Of Mine, inspired by the long siege of Sarajevo in the early 90s and Outlast 2 with the 1978 Jonestown massacre often more or less marked reference to events that actually happened or existing places.
This is also part of this trend Kholat, the first title of the guys of IMGN.PRO (short for Pro Imagination), an independent Polish company previously involved in the supply of services to other developers. Referring to the famous Dyatlov Pass incident (which also inspired a good Renny Harlin film: Devil's Pass), in which nine hikers lost their lives in unclear circumstances, IMGN.PRO packs a first-person horror adventure with strong elements. from walking simulator, originally released for PC in 2015, then for PlayStation 4 the following year and arrived today in Xbox One version.
The Mountain of the Dead
Russia, on the night of February 2, 1959, nine hikers led by the young (24 years old) Igor Alekseevič Djatlov camped in the Ural mountains after losing their bearings due to a snowstorm near Kholat Syakhl, which in the language of the local Mansi tribe means none other than "Mountain of the dead".
They were all expert mountaineers with the purely sporting aim of reaching Otorten, a mountain located 10 km further north. An undertaking considered among the most difficult due to the season, the height of the mountains and the difficulties of the route. But the nine never made it to that mountain.
The first searches were organized only after two weeks in which there was no more news of the climbers. Their tent was found on February 26, empty, torn from the inside and surrounded by the footsteps of the boys, as if they had given themselves to a disorderly and sudden escape. Subsequent searches led to the discovery of the corpses in the strangest conditions: some naked (in an area where the temperature drops to -30 at night), others with internal injuries, although not serious enough to cause death, one of them without tongue, others with slight skull lesions, some even with slight traces of radioactivity on their clothes.
Considering the unusual conditions in which the corpses were found and the lack of eyewitnesses, what was later cataloged as an accident of the Dyatlov Pass (named after the expedition leader) was explained in the following decades with more or less likely theories, which the whole range of possibilities is at stake: from the mass madness attack of the nine hikers to military experiments, up to the inevitable aliens. Although much more realistic hypotheses have recently been formulated, that of the Dyatlov Pass remains one of the most fascinating mysteries of the last century.
So far the real story, from where the IMGN.PRO adventure resumes. We will find ourselves in the village of Vižaj, the last inhabited place where the nine mountaineers passed in '59, without knowing who we are or how we got to that snow-covered and remote village. After the initial and understandable moments of disorientation, we will begin to explore the village almost immediately reaching the surrounding snow-covered woods, to then end up in a chasm that will take us to the most inhospitable area of the mountain, where the real adventure will begin.
After realizing almost immediately that we are right on Kholat Syakhl, the Mountain of the dead where the nine climbers lost their lives, we will begin a patient search of the diaries left by the boys in 1959, their tents and their equipment, in an attempt to shed light on what happened half a century earlier among those snows, guided in some way by our tenacity and by a sort of mysterious lighthouse in the distance. An investigation made even more difficult, as well as by the adverse conditions of the environment, also by the presence of a mysterious creature that among those snows seems to hunt us with constancy and cruelty.
Kholat's plot, it soon becomes clear, is not very clear and is linked to the patient search for the fragmentary clues found along the way. But it is a deliberate thing, since even the real mystery of the Dyatlov Pass has not yet been completely clear.
There is something out there in the snow
Kholat's mechanics take up what has already been seen in similar titles such as The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter or The Town Of Light: a long and patient exploration in search of clues to reveal the various elements of the plot. The controls are reduced to a minimum, perhaps too much, since there is no function to jump, often forcing the protagonist to long and tortuous turns only for the inability to climb over an obstacle a few centimeters high. The various buttons allow you to run (for a short time, after a while you get out of breath and visual difficulties), to crouch, to open a compass with a map and to activate a useful diary.
As for the map and the compass, they will soon prove to be indispensable to continue the adventure, since our position is not marked anywhere. The same camps (which also function as transporters between the various areas) will only be added to the map once they are discovered. To orient yourself it will therefore be vital to familiarize yourself with the environment and memorize the more or less evident details, and then relate them to the geographic coordinates, visible on the map by zooming in with the left trigger.
On our diary, the clues found, some useful tips and the coordinates of the places still to be explored will be hand-marked. The same clues, some of which have nothing to do with the Dyatlov Pass incident, are quite rare and scattered throughout the vast environment and it will be necessary to study them well and link them together in an attempt to reconstruct the mystery of Kholat Syakhl.
A very realistic system, which in theory should help you immerse yourself in the setting and in the fascinating investigations, but which is unfortunately ruined by some questionable choices in the mechanics: the rescue system, in the title of IMGN.PRO, abandons any check point or manual in favor of a questionable system that allows us to save our progress only in the rare camps and on the occasion of the discovery of the protagonists' diaries. In this way we will easily have situations in which the game will save our position many times within an hour, and then force us to wander for a long time without being able to save any progress, unless you want to go back until the last. camp, often very distant and difficult to find due to the aforementioned lack of any reference to our position on the map. Not to mention that, in the event of premature death, the uncomfortable rescue system often brings us back to repeating long game sessions, made even more difficult by the difficulty of orientation. And in Kholat we all die, quite rarely, but often in a frustrating way.
On our path there are in fact dangerous crevasses and traps capable of leading to an instant death (there is no vital energy bar) and often impossible to identify in advance. The exception is a deadly orange fog, clearly visible even from a distance and easily avoidable. In addition to this, among the snows there is also a mysterious creature, also orange, capable of killing our protagonist in an instant. The problem is that this creature is not signaled with any sound effect, growl or verse useful to guess its presence in advance and, except in rare cases, it will appear completely suddenly and at random, leading to a premature death and forcing us to repeat all the way back since the last rescue. There are very frequent cases in which we will die just because we literally ended up on the creature without realizing it in the least.
Despite these rather heavy defects, with a lot of patience and perseverance and at the cost of a continuous trial and error, stimulated also by the excellent setting, we will slowly begin to familiarize ourselves with the environment, learning by heart the details useful for orientation and the position of the traps. . The problem is that the IMGN.PRO adventure doesn't make much effort to pique our long-distance curiosity. Generally the first minutes (here we are talking about minutes, since Kholat takes no more than 4 or 5 hours to complete) of an adventure serve to create the right atmosphere and to provoke in the player the strong curiosity to see what will happen later. . Here, on the other hand, after a rather interesting first part, due to a certain repetitiveness, we continue only by pure willpower without any form of involvement or curiosity.
The beauty of the mountain at night
The technical sector of Kholat, in spite of its nature of independent development, is rather well looked after. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, the graphics engine of the IMGN.PRO title returns well-constructed and realistic snowy scenarios, with really good spikes in night situations and excellent lighting effects, beyond some slight pop-up effect and some uncertainties in the shift of the view solvable, we hope, with a future patch. In addition to the purely technical realization, Kholat is also distinguished by a very engaging atmosphere, in which every element of the scenery, from the disturbing and majestic lighthouse to the horizon up to the ruins of the rare buildings, is well inserted with the aim of creating a sense of anguish and disorientation, also accentuated by the desolate setting.
The attention paid to Kholat's visual sector has also been extended to the sound side, thanks to rather refined environmental effects, combined with the music of Arkadiusz Reikowski, never intrusive and always well inserted in the context, among which the "Farewell" interpreted by Elizabeth stands out McGlynn. The touch of class is represented by the narration voice of Sean Bean, which helps to make our adventure much more engaging, net of the defects in the mechanics we were talking about.
With such an interesting story behind it and a good technical realization, combined with the fascinating settings, the adventure of IMGN.PRO could have become one of the most interesting experiences of the genre. A very high potential, but ruined by obvious gaps in the gameplay and some unhappy, frustrating and inexplicable choices in the mechanics, especially in the second part of the game where interest drops a lot. Thanks to some positive elements, Kholat is not a complete disaster, on the contrary it has the advantage of wanting to exploit the videogame medium to tell one of the most fascinating mysteries of the last century, but it leaves the player with the bitterness of a great wasted opportunity.
► Kholat is a Horror-Survival game developed and published by IMGN.PRO for PlayStation Network, PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 10/06/2015 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 08/03/2016 The version for Xbox One came out on 09/06/2017
