Fun and bugs in the land of ice.
I picked this up immediately and began playing through it. I'll describe both sides of my reactions.
Good
The game has an incredibly interesting story that goes along with it. This is, without a doubt, the game's strongest aspect. You are some random Russian sent to find out (And rescue) what happened to a Russian icebreaker. The game starts off pretty brutally, making you feel as cold as your character is, and giving you a fairly accurate picture of just how delicate life can be at a hundred degrees below zero. It also gives you some time to fight the cold before you start fighting other things... I liked that.
The overall action of the game does get a little formula-tic as you go along - with each new area, you have to find something to heat the area, melt the ice, and look for anything you need to do to get to the next area."Anything" almost always means A. Killing any enemies in the area B. Using your powers to go back and fix someone's mistakes, therefore saving them, and accomplishing something for yourself. However, this doesn't really get old. The game manages to keep a decent scare factor with the enemy placement and timing, though it can be somewhat predictable at times. And the "go back and save people" parts only lend more to the story, so even though that mechanic is rinsed and repeated multiple times, you don't really feel that you're quite doing the same thing over and over again.
The graphics are a bit of a mix. The ship itself and the envrionmental effects are amazing for my money. I almost always stuck around to watch the ice-coated walls turn to slush, then water, and finally dry; it was that well done. Some textures are better than others, and sometimes that was pretty noticeable, but I can't think of a modern game that doesn't occasionally fall prey to this.
Bad
First of, you should be aware of the technical problems that plague this game. You could easily find a whole smattering of threads, articles, etc about people having strange performance problems with this game. I never experienced any of that while I was playing it, however I will say that it has stopped working completely after upgrading to Windows 7, and Aspyr has been 0% helpful on that issue.
The only other glaring issue with the game is the fighting. If I had to guess, based on what I saw I would almost think that this game started off as a puzzle game, or any game that there is some "action" in, but that consists mostly of you running away from things, rather than a horror-shooter as it turned out to be. The reason I say that is because the gun-play is so bad. Guns themselves are hideously underpowered, and for a long time you struggle to find any kind of ammo. Not that that matters, because the iron-sights are so bad it's hard to hit anything even when you do have ammo, and you almost just default to your trusty wrench. It's unfortunate when survivor/puzzle type games and shooters meet but never quite understand each other. That's how the fighting feels in this game. Fortunately you do a lot more of the good, story-driven things than you do fighting, so it doesn't come close to ruining the game outright.
Overall, I'd say this game is worth a look if you haven't experience it yet. Don't expect a mind-blowing shooter because it's not one. Then again I don't think the shooting part of it was meant to be the most compelling. You can find it for cheap, but be aware that it might not work. : Thanks Aspyr, your reputation precedes you.