1953 KGB Unleashed Review

Based on actual research that the KGB was conducting at the time, this point and click adventure game sees you, the protaganist, waking up stranded in a recently abandoned secret research bunker under the streets of Moscow, with no recollection of how you got there and no idea how to get out.

The story unfolds through finding and reading memos, research papers and letters that you discover while moving through the bunker, that slowly reveal what has been going on in the secret KGB research installation. You are also haunted at times by a mysterious disembodied voice transmitted through the tanoy system, leaving you vague and cryptic clues as to what the current situation is.

Getting out of the bunker involves, as with all point and click adventures, solving various puzzles to progress further. Locked door? Oh look, there on the floor is a discarded power angle grinder, that you apply to the locking rods and “Hey presto”, it isn’t locked now. My only issue with that particular puzzle was that I’m not accustomed to searching for Russian power outlets, and so was not sure what they looked like.

Some of the puzzles in this game are quite convoluted with a number of steps to them. Transversing back and forth between different rooms and involving a fair amount of thought and applied logic, but at the same time none of it seems out of place or contrived, and it instills the player with a great sense of satisfaction when the answer eventually falls into place.

The game is played from a first person point of view in a still 360 degree perspective, and the cursor (an oversized toggle switch) emits a red light when you are able to interact with something in the environment. Sometimes that is just moving forward in the room, moving between rooms or actually zooming into objects like machinery or electronic equipment that you need to operate.

The first thing that stikes me about this game is it’s atmosphere, within the first two scenes, the games sparse, minumalistic approach coupled with the great haunting soundtrack (from the same composers that created the music for Metro 2033), make you feel tense and expectant. It’s dark subject matter makes for a dark and shadowy game, and the developers have really brought that out well. Even to the point where at times the game is quite claustrophobic. I don’t mind admitting that there were two separate times in this game where I experienced the full blown “creeps”. Although in retrospect, playing this game alone in the house after midnight might not have been the greatest of ideas on my part.

The second thing that strikes me is that game is quite short and took me just under three hours to complete and although a resonably intense and enjoyable experience, doesn’t seem to have any great replay value as there isn’t any side stories or quests to be discovered. Every clue you find is directly related to the main plot and there isn’t any superfluous objects to be pondered over. To counterpoint this though the game retails as a digital download for 19.99 EUR.

Originally released in 2010 as ‘Phobos 1953’ in Europe as sort of prequel and back story to a movie called Phobos, 1953 KGB Unleashed I think suffers slightly from being being ‘transmuted’ into English and I found that the voice overs, although acted and delivered well, were just a little off putting purely due to their very American accents.

Although this type of game is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, it’s certainly been well made and thought out, and worth a look on those rainy days between big game releases.

Tags: 1953 KGB Unleashed, KGB, moscow, phobos 1953