Minion21g on 3/10/2009 at 18:01
I finished korsakovia today. I'm not surprisingly just as lost as I was during Dear Esther, but maybe I'm trying to find too much meaning in these stories. korsakovia is a mindtrip with lost, wild levels and simple objectives. The tvs and collectors are your only enemies. Beware the energy behind the screen.
Once again, the chinese room has put together a crazy story with even crazier characters. Their ability to develop characters during the advancement of the story continues to impress me. The two characters of korsakovia are very well-developed. Like in Dear Esther, you never actually see the characters. All you have to work off of is their voices, and the little bit of character model you see in game (i.e. copper hands), to bring them all together. Even then, when you think you might have some vague notion of who (or what) the characters actually are, they throw you some line of dialog that makes you think you're wrong.
korsakovia's creepy too. It's always dark and there's plenty of interesting rooms to visit. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who's claustrophobic either, because there's a lot of tight corridors. Some of the rooms are just wierd. Furniture spins around a television with each piece attached to a beam of blue light. With larger rooms, there's more furniture. Sometimes you have to climb the furniture to reach your crowbar, your only defense. I think the most disturbing thing I saw was the victorian style photographs of the dead, framed and hung on the walls. You'd see them everywhere. It was very creepy to turn and catch one with your flashlight. I don't know why it was but I found staring at the portraits when I found them.
I stuck with korsakovia primarily to hear Christopher's take on the end of the world; how the signal spills out of the television, and the collectors come to take him away. Moreover, As Dr. "Christine" Greyson descends into delusion and madness, I speculated more about her role in the story. By the end, she's Christopher's sole collaborator. She agrees with his views and assists him, or assists the player I should say. It makes me wonder if Christopher is just speaking as her, or if she actually accepts his delusional mindset thus becoming more delusional herself. As the game progresses, she asks about the environments your character walks around in, for example she'll ask why the hospital is flooded as you enter the flooded Intensive Care room. Sometimes, I wondered whether she was becoming the player character itself.
I'd like to give some sort of "review" per say, as korsakovia is something you play. As I've already said, your objectives are simple; find your crowbar and survive. However, I don't think that's the real point behind the "game". It's artsy and probably shouldn't be considered as a game anyway. So, I'll recommend it for one of those rainy days when you have nothing better to do. Perhaps, it's more for one of those days when you feel like stepping outside of reality. Either way, take what you do in the game with a grain of salt and I wouldn't recommend playing it all in sitting. There's plenty of opportunities to take a break.
Briareos H on 3/10/2009 at 18:08
Quote Posted by Minion21g
Moreover, As Dr. "Christine" Greyson descends into delusion and madness,van HellSing on 6/10/2009 at 21:28
So a few days ago I actually went and bought the Orange Box. My excuse is that I got it at half-price :p
After a day and a half of updating and fixing Steam (oh how I love thee!), I was ready to play Korsakovia. I'll just repost here the comments I posted at the moddb page:
Quote:
I've been playing the mod bit by bit recently, taking it slow. So far, it doesn't resonate with me on the same level as Dear Esther, but that's completely understandable, since it's a very different affair in terms of both gameplay and design. Dear Esther achieved a great feeling of "being there" on the island, reinforced by limited movement speed (you don't run all the time in real life, do you?) and lack of fighting. Korsakovia is both more traditionally "gamey", and takes place in an environment that very quickly becomes quite abstract and detached from reality. It's still great though at what it does, so far I'm quite enjoying it (that might be a bad choice of a word for this story, though, heh)
Funny thing: I've seen a lot of people complain about the HEV clipboards on the beds in the hospital. I had a completely different reaction: they did throw me off, but not in a "meh, randomly reused assets" way, but in a "Hey, this doesn't belong here, what's going on?" way, much like the more disturbing posters on the walls. In fact the clipboards even made me develop a pet theory that the mod indeed takes place in the same world as Half-Life 2, and that Christopher's experience is somehow connected to the chaos of the portal storms. I know this probably wasn't intended, but who cares, thinking up such alternate interpretations is too fun! Heh, at this point I should probably mention that one of my favourite game series is Silent Hill :P
And speaking of interpretations and analysis, I was struck by some similarities between Christopher's ramblings and those of the Dear Esther narrator: both have an obsession with some sort of signal, both mention restarting hearts etc. Once I finish Korsakovia, I think I'm going to carefully read through the scripts to both mods to look for more stuff like this.
And, of course there's the DE concept art on a wall at the hospital - easter egg or something more? ;)
june gloom on 12/11/2009 at 04:14
Jesus that looks so much better than the "my first HL2 map" that the original was.
Thirith on 12/11/2009 at 07:26
God, those are gorgeous! I love it when people manage to get amazing things out of old or ageing engines. And the atmosphere in those shots... Definitely glad I decided to wait checking out Dear Esther until the redone version.
EvaUnit02 on 12/11/2009 at 08:19
Dethtoll, you should send the guy a polite email asking for him to include subtitles or closed captions.
Aerothorn on 12/11/2009 at 10:20
I don't get it. This artist, in his free time, is creating a Source game (modification of a game) that looks better than any commercial Source product. Wow.
Wonder how much this will raise the system requirements?
SubJeff on 12/11/2009 at 10:37
With the Dollar to Real Money exchange rate what it is at the moment I wouldn't even thing about it if I were you.
As well as this gfx update I hope they sort out some of the sound issues too; overlaps, stutters, cutoffs etc. I'd love to play this again. Its a real Sunday afternoon game.
