Cryostasis, for PC

Rating: 7.8/10; Good

Recommended for fans of Horror, though FPS fans may not find enough action here.

Cryostasis is a hybrid first person shooter-survival horror. The premise for the story is located on the back of the box and in the manual, but not within the game, which is disappointing. I cannot remember if I read the manual years ago when I first got the game, and did not bother to read it just before playing. I had no idea what was going on, as there is no narrative whatsoever during the opening and first level. The story picks up later as you “mental echo” certain corpses to experience the past from their perspective and try to prevent their deaths.

The atmosphere in the game is excellent, and everything complements the spooky, chilling desolation the game portrays. From the crunch of walking, the creaking of old metal walkways, the biting wind blowing from outside, and even your own breath to the visual effects such as ice covering the surfaces and hanging down as icicles (both of which can melt in real time if the heat is raised!), fog of your breath and frozen condensation on your goggles. Also the slowness of the game, from the extremely limited stamina to the slow movement and reloading speeds; I know I would have a hard time moving around and using a gun if I was cold and wearing heavy winter clothing and gloves. All of this combines into a sensation of COLD. You should get chills from playing this game just because of this portrayal of the environment. Add to that the chills from fear and spookiness. The enemies are frightening and are often scripted to perform actions that create psychological horror or jump scares, with the latter having a good chance of a cheap instant death.

Despite all of that though, the game is rather easy. Heat sources are plentiful, and you can usually backtrack to heal. Enemies are never encountered when you are forced into low health without access to heat, and enemies generally appear by themselves. If you have to fight multiple enemies at once, they usually have delayed spawn. Getting hit by the enemies does not hurt all that much, so there is little fear of death (other than those corner camping jump scare axe wielders). Ammo is also plentiful. The game needs difficulty settings. I would have enjoyed a harder difficulty with less max health, less ammo and more enemies. A bonus arena survival mode or something outside the main game would also add to replayability.

Much of the challenge in the game comes from the mental echoes. Some are very simple, while others come with time limits and wrong actions. There were a couple that stumped me and I had to look up online, while plenty took several tries to figure out. There is no penalty for failure though. The final boss fight is a mental echo, and it completely throws the rules of the game out the window. On the plus side, you can freely retry the fight without penalty, while on the minus the entire fight is confusing and makes little sense.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and am glad that I purchased it as I believe more games like this should be made. It loses most points on the lack of difficulty and replay.

Pro

• customized keymapping
• excellent setting, visuals and sound effects
• ice that melts in real time as temperature rises
• icicles that can be knocked down
• good ladder controls; I never once fell off a ladder (unlike some games)
• ammo is represented on screen by the bullet, box or clip (rather than just a number like most games)
• sniper scope shows what it is pointing at when you are not aiming, and aiming down it does not change the view; you literally raise the scope closer to see what is there
• melee combat is more than just pressing the attack button (there are specific moves/combos and block)
• save anytime
• objectives are usually highlighted by colored lights
• plenty of things to do both in the present and mental echoes that are interesting that are not about shooting things (the puzzles)
• lack of in game music helps the setting

Con

• no opening story in game
• sound glitched when outside the ship; static distortion for a while and then mute until I went back inside. Too many sound channels maybe? I did not have the latest patch.
• extreme cold environments which kill you if you spend enough time there; the time to death is too quick because you pretty much have to take a flawless route through or die
• ammo pickups are deleted if you pick them up without being able to carry the full amount (the excess is deleted)
• ammo pickups dropped by enemies are deleted upon game load
• the valve weapon is lame. You cannot use the pipes that some enemies use, or the shovels on the walls
• the axe cannot block
• no effects on enemies for precision shots. Seems like no bonus damage for headshots, or damage penalty for limb shots. No crippling or stunning for shots to vital areas (like reduced accuracy for a shot to the hand)
• no melee attacks with guns
• some of the voice audio was difficult to understand and required subtitles on (when the voice was coming through a speaker in game rather than a nearby person)
• having “aim down sight” and “use” bound to the same key is odd
• no difficulty settings
• entire concept of the final boss fight, and how you do not use any of the guns and ammo you have collected up to that point
• ending consists of 3 mutually exclusive mental echoes and it is not apparent that you are making a choice between the 3. There is no reason the developers could not have had to experience all 3 and then go to the ending

This era of half-life wannabe walking simulators didn't age well I feel. The way of progressing in the game is every now and then you have to fight a zombie in a clunky melee combat, and you need to replay the memories of ghosts to clear a path, which I guess are considered puzzles, if puzzles are defined by "Do this flashback in a specific series of events to be granted passage", truth be told calling anything in this game a puzzle is too generous, I don't think doing trial and error trying to recreate an event is a "puzzle", that is just doing a series of things.

Usually you do a smaller, more claustrophobic half life platforming segment, I once had a friend who joked that when a FPS game is a "puzzle platformer" the only puzzle is it is puzzling you continue to play the game! Because I wouldn't really consider it a puzzle either if the puzzle is just "I wonder if i can jump here or go in this direction".

A lot of the game's value can come from it's atmosphere, but I think you would have to be searching really low for atmosphere in a game if this is your only option, the atmosphere is ok, better if you are ok with muddy nintendo 64 graphic presentation of ice, seriously, why is everything so muddy, the game looks older than what it should be mostly because of it's theme set in a frozen ship.

I bought this game 1 year after it was released, and only now 13 years later, do I finally get to play it, what a steam moment, I for sure cannot refund it by any means because the 6 month refund period is gone, it might be a little hard to run on modern computers and crash a lot, just do this: run settings on low, and hope for the best, my game has not crashed since putting everything on low, I'd say getting through the first forced cutscene segment is the worse.

A very subpar shooter with really weird and janky design. I don't like the weird/horror aesthetic of the enemies because its jarring, (I'm seeing this done a bit often in eastern european FPS type games) but they are scary and freaky so it works I guess.

Don't be misled here but story-wise this game is reminiscent a bit like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Metro 2033 This game is rather story-heavy but has a very odd and disconnected one. It's not explained how the protagonist has his powers to go inside the corpses of crew members to relive their past and make choices altering destiny. (This is the best part about the game, these are short puzzles that are fun and satisfying) The ending is also probably one of the weirder endings I've seen in a video game, But actually quite good (and worthy of game designers looking at to emulate) Overall I did like this narrative but it could have used more work. I dislike media in which the protagonist has experiences in which you as a viewer are also left wondering if it was literally happening or the character is just mentally ill or hallucinating/imagining things.

There are nice touches here and there but generally everything else about this game is crap really. The combat is that shitty Doom 3 formula of going into a room to get a scripted attack sequence going. Except your weapons in this game all suck. You have three melee weapons (I don't know why one wasn't enough) and a few other janky weapons that have an almost improvised feel. It's very easy to miss and your weapons are all slow firing and leave you exposed. Fortunately, you only usually have to pick off one enemy at a time, there are moments where you got to do this in waves though. The trouble is the game is very easy to die, you have a health meter represented and recharge by heat, that's a cool concept but it leaves you in a constant state of having a different level of health at different times. the saving and reloading takes one out of immersion, which really would have been a good thing for this game to have focused on (along with improving the narrative)

All in all it's a subpar game that does do something different but i found that wasn't enough to actually redeem it. its flaws glare quite hideously and it's strengths are tentative and soft. It relies so heavy on atmosphere and story but fails to really deliver those due to it's crudeness. Still, it managed to come up with some cool ideas, and its in a genre that seldom comes up with anything new. Third star for creativity. I'd recommend it if you can stomach the thought of a cut rate bio-shock with a Eastern superstitious story-tone to it in the same vein as metro/stalker. That's probably the best way to describe the game.

Oh, on win10 had some crashes, but not terrible. worked out of the box. YMMV.