I suspect that in a few hundred years time, we're going to experience some major event that results in society needing to be completely rebuilt. When that happens, historians are going to mistake fiction for historical texts. They'll think aliens built the pyramids, Robin Hood actually existed, and we once fought off the galactic empire.
With Kholat, historians in the future will now know that the infamous Dyatlov pass incident was of course caused by monsters. Not an avalanche or experimental Russian weaponry being tested without first checking to see if anyone might get caught in the middle of it: monsters. Teleporting monsters. Teleporting eldrich horrors.
So what exactly is Kholat? It's a first person indie horror that claims to expose 'the truth' about the Dyatlov pass incident the same way Roland Emmerich 'exposed' the 'truth' about Shakespeare...in that he went what we analysts call 'coo-coo bananas' and started just randomly making up facts.
I made a terrible mistake with Kholat. I got excited about it.
The trailers and marketing proposed an atmospheric trip through the Russian mountains in the footsteps of the ill-fated mountaineers who never returned. It was said to be an exploration into the depths of humanity, a harrowing journey into the wilderness. And it has Sean Bean! These are all good things. It sounds like a Russian Silent Hill...but in the mountains.
The game itself begins great too. The visuals ooze atmosphere from every orifice. This is technically an 'indie' game, but it looks better than many contemporary Triple A titles. I think my graphics card almost exploded trying to render the falling snow, the footsteps left behind me, and the blizzard soon obscuring them again - making me become lost in this world. It looks gorgeous.
It sounds great too. The soundtrack is well orchestrated, and the sound design itself further sucks you into the atmosphere. When the game first started I was content to stand there at the empty train station drinking it all in like a particularly snowy martini.
Then the actual game began.
There's a nice intro cinematic that tells you what happened during the infamous incident, then you walk around for a few moments before finding yourself in a cave which drops you into a blinding blizzard which eventually leads you to a campsite. Then you summon a daemon.
No, really.
The game completely eschews any mystery right off, which defeats the whole object of the game. The idea is your supposed to find out what really happened to the victims of the incident, but within the first hour you're basically told: "they were all killed by Satan." Mystery over! Can I stop playing now?
But despite this game taking an immediate dive for the supernatural, the whole experience still revolves around collecting random documents and audio logs scattered around because this is 1959 and I guess before people could spill their brains online they had to just leave them lying around on paper. It's jarring to be fleeing from Satan whilst screaming "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!!" then tripping over an extract from the real-life autopsy of one of the victims.
Collecting nondescript yet story-essential objects in a fairly open environment whilst pursued by a teleporting monster? That's the basic premise to every single indie horror game ever made. Markipiler has already begun a 'Lets Play' series of this game, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Pewdiepie posts a video of this game some time soon. Although, maybe he's already recorded one but decided to not post it because even as a trashy jump-scare fest the game fails to excel.
When the monster finally does show up, it's a huge anti-climax. It's not scary because it doesn't have a clear face and it's mostly silent. In the best horror games, the enemies are nearly always attached to an iconic sound that alerts you to their presence. Silent Hill had the radio static, Amnesia had the low growls, Eternal Darkness the delicious sanity mechanic, Thief: Deadly Shadows the weeping of the restless inmates, Half Life 2 the heavy breathing of the poison zombies, the hiss of the poison headcrabs, and the howl of the fast zombies. Alien: Isolation has the beep of the motion detector, and just about every foe in System Shock 2 has a unique sound attached to it so you can hear them coming round the corner. Even Slender has that video static to warn you what's about to happen if you don't leg it.
This has nothing, really. There's the typical orchestral sting that must by federal law accompany a cheap jump-scare, but whilst I was certainly startled by these I was never scared. In-between the monster attacks, the game doesn't really bother trying to do anything especially creepy. There's a few areas where the mountains look like skulls, but this trick is used so often it becomes almost cute. No wonder Sean Bean sounds bored out of his mind.
Also, no jump button? Really? In a game that involves climbing mountains, you'd think the ability to not have your feet glued to the floor might be a good idea. In fact, the in-game guide advises that you'll only be able to reach some places if you jump. So why can't I jump, game? Several times I saw a shiny thing and decided to climb down to get it, only to realise that now I can't backtrack now. Even more often, I would try to navigate my way through a pile of rocks or a small ledge to no avail. These obstacles only went up to my knees, but of course I couldn't get past them. Because, as we all know, the one thing mountaineers never do is climb mountains.
Couple this with how the English translation isn't bad but is still kinda dodgy ("fast travel saves the game progress"), and the whole experience feels like more effort was needed here. It feels like the team behind this built an excellent environment and excellent sound design before realising that they needed to make a game around all this. So they quickly looked on YouTube to see what sort of games people film themselves playing whilst screaming effeminately, and copied from them. Normally I wouldn't really care, but I'm disappointed because I went in expecting something unique and left with something I've seen done much better several times before.
I don't know who to blame: the developers or myself. For now let's just say both and leave it there.
