Kholat

[crucifist]

Inspiré de l'incident de Dyalov (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_col_Dyatlov), Kholat propose un simulateur de randonnée d'horreur. :O
Apparemment plus proche du film interactif que du jeu bourré de gameplay, il propose au joueur de rechercher ce qui a pu arriver aux alpinistes morts dans d'étranges circonstances.

Trailer:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM0tk9Qsw54

[Koma]

Premiers retours : "c'est aussi chiant que Slenderman".

Après le jeu marche plus ou moins auprès des joueurs selon vos affinités avec simulateurs de ballade à très forte ambiance. Ce qui déçoit évidemment ceux qui s'attendaient à un Amnesia-like pur et dur.

Et il reste plutôt joli accessoirement.


It's more in the line of Dear Esther than Ethan Carter, but contrary to what The Chinise Room did, you are free to explore the open environment. To do so, you only have a map, a compass, and a bunch of coordinates. The realistic approach to exploration means you don't get to see where you are on the map as in most games.


This title had an interesting start, but is a very demanding game and requires higher-end machines to run properly.

Other than that, you as the player just explore, pick-up notes and keep an eye open for any slender-man type of monster that may be waiting for you in the dark.
No... I'm serious.. That's all there is to it.


Le gameplay c'est Slenderman en légèrement raffiné. Donc, cela signifie une zone plus ou moins large avec des "pages" disséminées ça et là... zzZzzZZzzz Vous devez les récupérer et éviter en parallèle d'être attrapé par des ... "entités" zzzZZZzzzZZZzzz Une belle déception pour moi qui attendait ce jeu et projettait des foules de choses et possibilités.
Votre exploration est un peu plus constructive et gratifiante que dans un slender, de jolis évènements, des entités un peu moins obsessionnelles (oui c'est plus simples) des pages avec un minimum de substance mais qui demeure le seul élément de narration. Check point à chaque page, des zones plus subitles aussi mais, même si je comprends bien qu'on ne s'amuse pas à sauter gaiement quand il fait -20 et que la mort est au bout du chemin, je me demande comment on peut prendre du plaisir à explorer sans sauter, avec un sprint limité et avec des tonnes d'obstacles (cailloux, arbustes, arbres, pentes trop fortes.. tout ça, c'est bloquant "trouvez un autre chemin" ...


The plot of the game takes you to Kholat Syakhl, literally “Dead Mountain”, where you retrace the events in search of an explanation. Armed only with a map, a compass and a flashlight, you set out to traverse the mountains in search for newspaper articles, diary entries and other reports to uncover the mystery of the incident. And you obviously do it all by night.

If you read the above paragraph and thought to yourself “This sounds an awful lot like the Slenderman games”, you’d be in the correct ballpark. You’re running through the wilderness in search of a variety of documents. And there isn’t really much that’s chasing you throughout most of it. Where Kholat manages to really become scary is with its atmosphere. And it does so without artificially putting you in a dark environment. The mountains are brightly lit by a full moon and your flashlight – should you ever need to use it in the bright environments – has no annoying degrading battery that for some reason runs out in five minutes real time.

No, what makes Kholat scary is the fact that it manages to invoke a haunting claustrophobia. Even though ironically most of it takes place outside in the wide open mountain range. Maybe this is a particularly subjective observation on my part, but my favorite horror stories – The Shining, The Thing, At The Mountains Of Madness – all take place in remote, wintry environments, in which the location and the weather themselves are equally as eerie and threatening to the protagonists as the horror that stalks them. The feeling of isolation probably resonates with me a lot for some reason. All that makes me appreciate Kholat far more than most other horror games and it meant I could be fully immersed in its world.

It would’ve been too good to believe however if the game were an atmospheric mood piece for the player to experience without encountering hostility. During our excursions we cross paths with a bunch of specters who aren’t particularly fond of us wandering around. Encounters with them usually only last a couple of seconds, since directly engaging them leads to death. Running away is only a semi-viable option, since running in deep snow is very tiring for our character and they usually manage to catch up.

Besides this, the game does have a few more drawbacks to it. First and foremost, the game contains very little actual gameplay. It’s largely a very literal example of a walking simulator. In addition to that, the game doesn’t give the player a lot of direction. This is especially a problem at the very start of the game. We begin the game at a deserted village without any indication of where we’re supposed to go. The player has to bring his own hunger for exploration in order to eventually find the correct path to the tent where the alpinists found their ends.

But even prior to that, the game puts another obstacle in our way. We find ourselves in a blinding snowstorm in which we’re supposed to find the actual camp of the victims. The whole screen is white, you can barely make out where the ground stops and the blizzard begins, though luckily after a bit of aimlessly wandering around and eventually finding the tent, the weather clears up.

However this lack of direction turns into a strength later on in the game. When we receive the map of the mountain range, a bunch of geographic coordinates have been written onto it. Though you’ll have to figure out where they are yourself, because specific locations only get added to the map once you’ve found them. What turns this relatively simple objective into a challenge is the fact that your own position doesn’t get marked on the map. You’ll have to use the compass and the map itself to keep track of where you are, so it’s vitally important that you don’t become lost.




The game promises 4 to 6 hours of gameplay. I completed it in 3, collecting everything and exploring every location (yes, there's something i missed as seen via achievements, but this is due to the confusing nature of the map than anything else).

Next up, the art displayed is not anything you'd see during the game, not that there's anything wrong with it, but the art direction could've gone crazier, seeing how good the enviroments are.

Now for the gameplay, it's mostly one of those walking simulators you might remember, and people compare it to Slender a lot, which is pretty true. You sometimes get chased by spooky shadows that you can easily outrun and after an hour or so they become not much of a threat. Sometimes they managed to spawn right in my way and gutted me withot remorse.


Now for the sad part. As all these games go, the first hour makes you curious and sets up a good premise, with eerie stuff that's going on and overall juxtaposition of alien horrors and harsh, grinded in reality enviroment.
But then as you collect the notes and articles that hype you up, you're only going to be let down. Maybe it was the path that i chose to explore the map, that put me through some of the best parts of the game first, but the story started to fall apart pretty fast. With things built up and never getting any closure it's not clear if even the devs made up their mind as to what's actually going on and what role the protagonist or the Sean Bean (Who's not narrating a lot, i might add. Certainly not enough to placate this fact as a selling point) play in this. The premise was cool and uncovering that, or even seeing the glimpse of the horrors described in the notes would've been way better.

The gameplay is nothing special, you go around collecting notes and sprinting around from scripted dangers, you can crouch but can't jump, and it really unveils the level design being way more linear that it seems at first
There are no survival mechanics that could've made this more of a game, and your main enemy will be your map.

Was it art? Not really.
Was it an exciting videogame? Not really.
Is it a great story? Not really.
Is 3 hours of gameplay a good amount of content for 20 bucks? Not really.



Basing a game around the events of the Dyatlov Pass Incident should be a solid premise, and make an amazing horror game but that doesn’t exactly happen when you dip into Kholat. Instead you get a pretty boring, and frustrating game that feels like a chore to progress through, and doesn’t offer much in terms of excitement or enjoyment.

You’re thrown into an ‘open-world’ environment that looks gorgeous, I won’t deny that. Kholat is one damn good looking game, thanks to Unreal Engine 4 and the amazing environmental work that was done on the game. The mountains look foreboding, and unnerving especially when I came across two giant skulls carved into the face of a cliff. Sadly, that’s about all that Kholat really offers in term of a horror experience. Through-out my time spent with the game I really only found myself feeling creeped out by certain parts of the environment.

The enemies weren’t exactly terrifying, and were more so frustrating, or downright annoying to deal with. They work pretty similar to how Slenderman works. A slow-moving, possible teleporting (it seems like they can teleport in front of you which is downright annoying) entity that stalks you the entire time while you collect notes. Seem familiar? That’s the core concept of Kholat in a nut-shell. Explore a creepy environment, collect notes, and avoid the entity that is stalking you. Even the entity seems to be confused during the game as well. I often found myself watching the entity stop chasing me and just stand still, or change direction and start walking away from me. Where’s the fear in that? And you’re most likely to be killed by the environment, which offers no sort of warning when you could die. It’s more like a random, gotcha sort of incident which is horrible. Kholat doesn’t exactly bring anything fresh, or new to the table in terms of an experience, which again is a bummer considering how good Kholat could of been.

The game also allows you to fast-travel at campsites that you discover which is a glorious feature that I’m glad was implemented due to how agonizing, and boring it is to traverse the environment after a while. This mainly stems from doing a ton of backtracking, and walking in circles.

Then again, this could be intentional due to the disorienting environment and this could possible be what the victims of the real-life incident felt before their untimely demise. Sadly, it doesn’t work and just makes the game boring and again, feel like more of a chore to play. That and the entire movement system in the game is pretty godawful. You can sprint for what is maybe a few seconds before tiring out and moving at an extremely sluggish pace and it takes a fair bit of time to be able to sprint again. It makes the moments where you need to run-away from the entities, and the “orange fog” that tends to chase you to be frustrating.

It feels like this was intended to make players feel tense and scared but all I felt was severe annoyance, which isn’t a good thing. You want players to have fun, and feel terrified. Not annoyed, and angry at poorly designed mechanics.

I’ve only put around 3 hours into Kholat and I can tell I’m nearing the end-game area. The story seems to be expanding, but is still extremely convoluted with no real direction. What am I doing in the mountain? Why did I decide to come here? Who the hell are these entities walking around? The game offers really no explanation for anything, and even Sean Bean seems like he didn’t want to be there, and maybe even he too was confused by the entire ordeal.

In the end, would I recommend Kholat?

That depends. At $21.99 (currently on sale for $19.79) I wouldn’t. Maybe if the game were to drop to around $10 I’d be happy telling people to pick it up, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending a bare and a non-enjoyable experience like this for that kind of a price-point.

Kholat had a solid premise, and some unique concepts but it sort of failed to deliver. It has amazing visuals, and the setting is great but it really just falls flat on delivery.

Pros
Awesome setting, and based off of a spooky real-life event with the Dyatlov Pass Incident.
Gorgeous visuals, and at times can feel really uneasy while traversing through the snow-ridden, blizzard like environments.
Sandbox-ish?

Cons

Not much meat to the game. More of a Slender clone by walking around, gathering notes, and avoiding some slow-walking/teleporting entity.
Sean Bean’s narration feels a tad phoned in.
The story is extremely convoluted, and the game doesn’t really have any sense of direction.
The game is more frustrating then it is fun. The deaths you experience are more so random, and put on a more luck-based feel. Maybe you’ll randomly get killed by the environment with no warning.
Doesn’t exactly feel like a horror game, and more so feels like an adventure narrative sort of experience in the veins of Dear Esther.

Sadly, Kholat just isn’t all that great of a game and for that price-point I’d recommend you check it out if it gets a price drop. I was really excited for Kholat as I’m super into the Dyatlov Pass Incident, but the game didn’t fully utilize what it could of with these events and sort of just falls flat.

Le jeu est à 9 euros sur Nuuvem si le prix vous rebute sur Steam. A 3 euros l'heure de jeu, j'attendrais une promo cassée pour ma part.

[Goji]

C'est chaud, Kholat.
Voilà, ça c'est fait ^^

[Herr Peter]

C'est chaud, Kholat.
Voilà, ça c'est fait ^^

Je voulais faire aussi ce malheureux calembour, mais j'avais trop honte pour ça. Merci de porter le bonnet d'âne à ma place ;)


Sinon le jeu est chouette, j'adore l'ambiance et l'histoire initiale, mais clairement le fait de se coltiner un monstre, bof bof.

[Ckao]

Ah merde, c'était un monstre à Dyatlov? Elle m'a toujours impressionné cette histoire.

:emo:

[Tchey]

Je m'étais intéressé à l'histoire à quelques occasions, ça donne des idées pour du jeu de rôle. Par contre, le jeu vidéo là, bof, il ne m'attire pas du tout. Mais c'est chouette de voir une base réelle sur de l'horreur.

[BigBisou]

Chouette jeu d'orientation, l'histoire on s'en fout en fait. La balade est plaisante, on doit constamment deviner où on est pour aller où on veut. L'interface minimale est un vrai plus, mais il vaut mieux garder papier & crayon à portée de main ! Sans rien noter, impossible de savoir si on a tout vu.

Le truc qu'on peut pas deviner: il y a un total de 27 documents à trouver avant d'avoir vraiment fini le jeu.
Il n'y a aucun moyen de vérifier sa progression dans le jeu, d'où l'intérêt grandissant de tout noter. Sinon gros découragement en fin de partie.

Le fond de carte vierge haute résolution: http://i.imgur.com/QEZwr9s.jpg
À imprimer d'urgence pour transformer un walking simulator pas clair en chasse au trésor trippante.

Le playthrough idéal:
- chercher activement les campements, pour pouvoir se téléporter et explorer chaque "région" en venant d'un chemin différent.
- ne pas ramasser les documents trouvés au hasard, ils serviront de points de respawn pendant la vraie exploration - mais NOTER où ils se trouvent.
- quand la liste de coordonnées sur le plan est barrée, passer à la chasse aux docs.
- garder les yeux ouverts et NOTER les indices (y compris l'endroit où on les a trouvés).

Sinon que dire, Sean Bean sert à rien et le fait divers dépasse de loin la fiction. Achetez-le pour l'exploration !