Kona II Brume is the sequel and follow-up to the story established in 2016 ‘Kona’ by Canadian developer ‘Parabole’.
It told the story of renowned private detective Carl Faubert who arrived in 1970s northern Canada, hired by the illustrious William Hamilton (a rich industrialist and head of the Hamilton mining corporation).
However, things aren’t at all what they seem with an intense freak snowstorm and William Hamilton being found murdered. The game lets you explore the setting of Northern Canada trying to unravel the mystery of Hamilton, coupled with a series of further killings by some supernatural force.
It was a psychological first-person adventure mystery, told through actions and a voice-over narration telling us Carl’s inner thoughts. It also had the element of survival to it, battling the subzero temperatures by finding wood and starting fires to keep warm. But it was also the local wildlife that would come as a threat to Carl’s survival. Wolves prowled about attacking you when you’d least expect it.
It was a fun and intriguing game. So it came as a nice surprise to see a sequel announced that would continue Carl’s story.
So let’s delve right in and see how Kona II Brume differs from its predecessor and how it handles the ‘Nintendo Switch’.
‘Kona II Brume’ picks up literally where ‘Kona’ left things in Northern Quebec Canada. Carl was running for his life whilst being pursued by the mysterious supernatural entity. He then hops onto a motor-powered boat to escape onto the lake away from it and head towards civilization.
We pick up Carl on the boat in Lake Mishaau as he stumbles across some empty and abandoned boats before being shot at and having to duck into the lake to swim for cover. You then stagger ashore, stumbling towards the light of an abandoned cabin and start a fire to get yourself warm. From here you heal up, have a rest, gather supplies and then make your way to Hamilton’s mansion.
The mansion itself takes up a good portion of the game. It’s big, it’s vast and it’s full of secrets to uncover. I took a lot of time exploring every room to make sure I had enough supplies and that I hadn’t missed anything. It is also here that you learn more about Hamilton and his life and business dealings. You also see first-hand that something horrific happened here with a slew of dead bodies (also some frozen) blood everywhere and abnormal damage to the home of the tycoon that could only be caused by something large and monstrous.
You also experience some hallucinogenic sequences, a bit like in the first game, where phantom wolves start to attack you. It’s residual chaos from whatever tore through the home in its path of destruction.
From the Mansion you make your way back over the lake and beyond to find survivors. You meet a small cast of characters from here and you even end up at Hamilton’s mining facility itself to explore a secret underground laboratory. It’s an intriguing story made all that more mysterious and intense by the brilliant narrative voice-over guiding you along your journey. The narration has changed hands between games, with Forrest Rainier voicing the first game and Adam Gold voicing the second.
I do prefer Gold’s voice as it sounds more like a narration you would here in an audible audiobook. It has more life and character to it whereas the former felt a bit bland at times.
Whilst on the topic of voice-over I did want to point out something that bugged me a bit. You have the option to switch between English voice-over and Canadian French. However, you don’t have the same option with the foreign voice acting of the characters you meet throughout Kona II Brume. You do have subtitles translating the speech for you, however, the characters talk so fast that I found myself at times stumbling to keep up and missing lines of dialogue leading me to have to either re-select the speech option (if in a conversation) or guess what was going on.
I get this may be a budgetary thing only having one set of voice actors native to the game setting, but we live in an age of accessibility now and it should be commonplace to be able to switch the audio language to one preferred by the player. It seems a bit lazy.
Now onto performance
‘Kona II Brume’ is a very good-looking game on next-gen consoles, but it runs surprisingly well on the ‘Nintendo Switch’. One drawback though is the load times. It is most noticeable (for example) when moving between the interior and exterior of the Hamilton mansion. On ‘next-gen’ consoles the switch is almost seamless, yet on ‘Switch’ you are met with a loading screen that at times can take up to 15-30 seconds. It’s a bit of a drawback and takes you out of the immersion.
There are other performance issues present as well. The frame rate isn’t always consistent with it dropping in heavily populated areas. Textures sometimes take an abnormal amount of time to pop in leaving a smooth plasticine-looking mess in their place. Character models look a bit clunky in places and look more like mannequins than people. I have experienced some occasional lag and moments where the game freezes too, however, it has never caused Kona II Brume to crash on me.
That being said, if you look past these issues Kona II Brume still looks and performs well on both handheld mode and in docked mode. It’s no ‘Alien: Isolation’ port, but it’s close.
Overall ‘Kona II Brume’ is a good continuation of the story set up in the first game, however, it doesn’t really bring anything different to the table. Yes, it’s a fun mystery adventure wrapped into a light survival game, but besides that, it doesn’t have much else to add to it that’s new.
While Kona II Brume does run well on the ‘Switch’ and looks good to match, the performance issues make it miles apart from its ‘next-gen’ counterpart.
It’s a good game, but not one to cry out about.
Kona II Brume’ Trailer
‘Kona II Brume’ is available on Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X and PC.
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