How you view this game will almost certainly depend on you.
Who you are in Cryostasis is never made completely clear. All you know is that you are trapped on a frozen Russian nuclear ice-breaker and you have the ability to enter the minds of dead bodies you encounter and change the past so that they don't die. Unfortunately you do not run across a whole lot of corpses during the course of the game so you don't often get the chance to delve into the minds of the dead. This is especially unfortunate because some of the best gameplay moments happen during these flashbacks, not to mention almost all of the story is derived from these all-too-infrequent visits to the past.
Beyond retroactively saving the dead, you spend the rest of your time traversing the massive frozen ship and occasionally fighting zombies. Yeah, frozen Russian zombies. And these are fairly fast-moving and intelligent zombies at that. Beyond having the common sense to take cover and set up ambushes for you, they have an annoying habit of being unerringly accurate with guns, although you do not encounter gun-toting zombies until half-way through the game. After beating a zombie to death (again) with a slightly frosty steam-valve or putting a couple shots into one's head, you can recover your health by warming your hands by a fire. That's right. In this game, staying warm is the only way to stay alive. No health packs or magically regenerating health, just plain old heat. Although this may seem absurd to most gamers, keep in mind that other games let you patch up a few hundred bullet holes with a tourniquet, so leave your common-sense at the door and try to enjoy a somewhat unusual healing mechanic.
After you have fought off a handful of zombies and saved some poor souls from death, you may find yourself actually paying attention to the story, and here is where the game gets wacky. Not only is your character and his ability to save the dead never explained, but you will also find yourself collecting snippets of a side-story that has seemingly nothing to do with the task of scouring the frozen ship. Even at the very end of the game, you will never quite comprehend exactly what has happened or why. And let me tell you, the last hour or so of this game has got to be the most bizarre, semi-philosophical, quasi-existential experience I have ever had while gaming. To say that nothing makes any rational sense is an understatement. If anyone has actually played this game and beaten it, I would love to hear some ideas of what the ending (or the whole game, for that matter) is all about.
I find it difficult to collect my thoughts and present a conclusion for this review. On the positive side, this game does have some amazing moments and the ability to traverse the past and save someone from death really has to be one of the coolest gameplay mechanics I have seen. However, the convoluted, nearly nonsensical storyline and lack of any extras or multiplayer support really dampen what could have been a classic. Basically, if you want to explore a mind-numbingly complex story and like your FPS slow and methodical, you will probably find a lot to like in this game. If you are anyone else, just back away slowly and look the other way.