It's easy to imagine Cryostasis with more fleshed out ideas and see it as a must buy. But its not the case.
Unfortunatly, the game falls a little bit flat.
The graphics of the game are a mixed bag, coming with superb snow and ice effects, well done weaponry and proper lightning. Yet, the interior of the boat feels a little bit too bland at times, and the character models are blocky and animates oddly. The whole thing is a supreme computer hog ; it'll ask you to have a NASA computer to run perfectly well ( even in super tight levels, wich is inexcusable ). Look, i run Crysis on ultra high and it has better framerate than this game. Devs should really release a patch, this is almost outrageous.
The sound design is very well done, except on one hand ; there's like five voice actors in the whole game. They're all good ones, but seriously, you'll hear the same voices over and over, even if they're meant to be different crew members. Maybe its due to the english voice overs costing too much ?
The story is a hit or miss. For me, its a huge miss. It wants you to assume a lot, and on almost every aspect of it. The game doesnt give you a clear shot at how it ends, and its uncessarely metaphorical. By the end, I felt zero accomplishement and just yawned at the whole '' plot twist ''
The gameplay is well done, and the weaponry is cool. Except for the hit impact, wich is just marked by a glowing red spot on the enemy. Hit detection his bad, because you'll have to hit them when they recovered of their animation if you want them to stagger away. And since your weapons are super slow, you'll have to time it right otherwise you'll get slapped to death. The whole thing about absorbing heat should be a little bit more explained, because there's clearly no way that a human being could reheat his body with a light bulb.
The game will cripple its pacing with loads of storyline on a tribe who fled some barbarians, and by doing flashbacks. Some are fun, but some others drag on for way, way too long and completly negates the will to go through the game again. At one part, you'll have to open switches to change the reactor's batteries. It's super tedious and immensely useless.
Oddle enough, I missed two of the weapons you could use during the whole game on my first playthrough. I had to manually replay the levels to find them, because the game does nothing to help you find these '' special weapons '' and if you miss them, just too bad. So keep an eye out for the flare launcher ( totaly useless since you'll find like two clips for it during the whole game ) and the water gun ( totaly useful )
By the end of the game, I told myself '' so this is the end, well, i dont even feel like i've reached that point '', because really, you roam in the same corridors until the game decides it stops doing so. You'll do the same, exact thing from the level one to the last. Kill a few enemies, do some flashbacks, grab ammo, open doors. It never innovates and there's no bossfight either. Well, if you call the last encounter a boss fight, that could be one.
Cryostasis is a nice try, but it could have been tons better if it stayed a little bit more simple and provided what it does best : tense firefights and the feeling of being completely overwhelmed by nature's wrath.