Korsakovia

Korsakovia is a hl2 mod by the developers of the fairly well known interactive story "dear ester" from college social research something or other developer the Chinese room.
Before i go any further, let me say that i loved Dear Ester, and that Dear Ester is getting a remake fixing some of it's flaws, such as overall navigation.
both games share several of the same problems, from the root issue of the developers creating a narrative weakly supported by game-play elements. You can't blame them based on the budget, and they're definitely two of the most interesting hl2 mods out there, but it is fairly disappointing. In Dear Ester, the simpleness of the game (basically, just walk) and the lack of any other distractions made the dialogue easy to hear and gave plenty of time to consider.
In Korsakovia, while the mood is just as good and the narrative much more defined, and there are some great visual gags, several problems draw away hugely from their enjoyablility.
First off, the enemies.
The smoke monsters patterns are hard to predict, cause disorientation when they hit you(which is the same effect as another non damage effect), make loud noise (often during dialogue) are hard to see (i swear i was getting hit by a invisible one several times) and are overall just freaking annoying.
They add little to the plot and barely anything to the gameplay, and i found them to be the least creative part of a otherwise good game.
Combine this with sometimes needlessly disorienting map design (the cramped hall levels, particularly when you have smokies all over.
This sort of game requires heavily on a mood being built up, and it felt like those problems just went to hell with the mood.
It seems like someone decided "real" game elements had to be shoehorned in at some point, to make the game less similar to Dear Ester, while just having it be the same concept with story and new mood would have been great.
It's definitely worth a download, but after Dear Ester it just felt like a bit of a letdown-not quite a real game, and not quite a survival horror game.
If you're looking for the latter play they hunger (both the directors cut and original, if you feel like a annoying challenge) and if you're looking for the former, well then Korsakovia is still worth playing.
I sound like im coming off pretty hard on it, but it is still great, especially if you're bored with traditional fps fare.