KURSK :Review

The tragedy of the sinking Russian submarine Kursk served as an inspiration to numerous films, books, and newspaper articles, and it was precisely this way that it affirmed the awareness of people around the world.

As far as times of the last moments of the submarine are shown in different media, this story tells his story has never appeared in the video game media so far. The same game Kursk is consciously defined as a member of the obscure genre of documentary games and believes that there is still something worthwhile to apologize in that event. Namely, through the interactive media of the video game, that tragedy could be the highest honor and also highlight its emotional aspect. Well, the question is - does Kursk succeed in doing this?

What is the game here about?

The story itself is already known to you because it really happened. On a summer summer of 2000, 118 crewmembers dropped down the ladder of a 154-meter long submarine and closed the door to the Russian area of Murmansk and Vidyayevo harbor. That day, a large military exercise took place in the Barents Sea area, where a large part of the ship and a lot of submarines, including Kursk submarines, were to be synchronized. Since the completion of its construction in 1994, this Russian military technologic fleet sailed for only one longer mission, so its crew had a poor experience. Nevertheless, thanks to its eminent status, the submarine has rarely been given the opportunity to wear and use the right weapon during military exercises. About half an hour until noon, one of the torpedoes in her hull fired and triggered a 1.5-magnitude explosion at Richter.



It is impossible to estimate what damage the initial explosion caused to the submarine, as two minutes later, a large number of headaches and new explosions occurred. The second explosion was 4.2 times the same ladder - as if you were detonating three tons of dynamite at the same time. An explosion was recorded on all seismographs to Alaska. Despite this, rescue services did not react at the same time, concluding that it was just part of the military exercise. Almost and so incredibly, not all crew members died for an explosion. Twenty-three surviving refugees looked for a relatively preserved ninth submarine section where they decided to wait for help. She was finally there, but thanks to the late response and communication problems, it took a week for the rescuers to finally reach the ninth section. Once they opened his door, they were flooded with space and nothing more than that. None of the crew members survived. You can counter-productive my involvement in the story details so think so that her knowledge throughout and out might hurt the enjoyment of the game, but that's not true. On the contrary. Kursk as a full narrative game does not succeed in realizing any of the possibilities of creating a suitable story - on the one hand, it fails to adequately showcase the tragedy of the event and get the player to identify with her characters, failing to create a dramatic story. Similarly, she does not manage to give a good historical, contextual insight into the event itself - which is a huge omission for the documentary tendencies. Playing Kursk without the foregoing means that a large part of the game is likely to be conducted with questionnaires over the head and they will be more and more playing longer. 



Presentation of the content is so huge of Kurska. As you can probably imagine, since it's a story-focused title and almost exclusively located on a submarine, playing here is mostly interwoven with other characters and the accompanying study of Kurska. While interacting with the inhabitants of Kurska and getting closer to them, the research is focused primarily on collecting various documents, photos, lists, records and kitchen recipes that should gain insight into the broader political and social context of that period. But while communication with the shipowners is reduced to empty and mechanical dialogs that almost endlessly end with a complementary task (take something to the other end of the submarine), the documents you encounter during the research are so fragmented, incomplete and overwhelmingly boring that ultimately none of these two options do not seem tempting. 

Gameplay is primarily aimed at collecting various documents, photos, lists, records and kitchen recipes.


Over the years, we have met a large number of "walking simulators" who, in this or the same way, have made the experience of playing and storytelling an innovative and primarily fun experience. But Kursk is the bottom of it in that respect ... no matter how awful it sounded. Long idle walkouts have been overwhelmed with reading periods of strange texts. The corridors are constantly repeated (because they are still a submarine), and there and there, during the tumult, they come to a crew member who repeats a line of dialogue in infinity. Occasionally, it is necessary to play a mini-game such as unlocking the door, hacking a computer, or, perhaps, somewhat ironically, sinking ships on the portable console. It is also ironic that swimming in this game is so bad that you intentionally drown it. The end of luck is never so far away because the game lasts for only three hours. If you are interested in why it is at all part of the game, then I'll tell you. If you do not want to know, skip the next sentence. That's because you're an "American Spy". That story ends and ends.



The only historical events that Kursk is known for are presented without their side effect. Apart from being difficult to identify with the characters you are a major part of the game, you're actually a courier, big moments like the explosion with your presentation look like a scene from a second-rate action movie. Although it is possible to finish the game without having to contact 20 of the initially survivors (the game has two ends depending on your decision in the last part of the game), once the first torpedo is airborne, you will have the mandatory action sequences in which you run away from the under the heavy pressure of the firing of a pipe, like Nea in the Matrix, will put you in a slow-down time beneath the flameproof tables, shooting the gun with the fire extinguishers. You know, all those things that happened that morning in the Kursus.

In mandatory action sequences, you will do all the things that Kurska probably did not do. 

Although mixing fiction and historical reality is by no means a bad thing, any attempt to "fly into the air" of initial documentary ambition seems to be forsighted and unconvincing - as if the creators themselves realized that nothing interesting was going on there so it is necessary to change it. Not successful, unfortunately.



Despite an uninteresting story and gameplay, the game still has a positive side except its short duration. For a title created in a "small" Eastern European study, Kursk looks pretty good. By playing the game, I read a comment from one of the players who said he would like to see if the submarines look like they were in real life so good. And yes, that's actually the very core of the problem that he finely hit because the Kurska interiors - regardless of whether they are any of the crew cabins or torpedo warehouses - look absolutely convincing. 


The submarine interiors in this game look absolutely convincing. 

However, this illusion is largely disintegrated when humans come from the (virtual) blood and flesh that have grotesque faces and animations from the best days of Oblivion. Kursk is extremely poorly optimized so playing it on a probable yet solid Radeon RX580 generally averaged about thirty frames per second regardless of the detail level, and there were also significant downsides. 

All in all, the biggest problem Kurska is, however, is that a huge event of historic significance fails to turn into a work that would leave the player a lasting or at least a consequent impression. While a large part of the games in the processing of historical material decides on excessive pathetic, Kursk ended up on the far side of the spectrum and succeeded in making events of that fatal summer day look like a usual morning cafe visit. You may find that there is some interesting detail in Kursku, but it does not make it difficult for you to be satisfied with both the lessons learned and those experienced, because neither the featured story leaves a trace, nor the gameplay elements are interesting to the extent that you can finally that this title really was worth playing.