One of the most epic horror game ever!!!!
Story-The story follows a meteorologist who is sent to investigate or rather board a nuclear icebreaker,North Wind.However when u arrive at the ship(rather unpleseantly) u find that the ship is abandoned and the crew have been transformed into strange monstrosities.The story goes parallel in 2 ways..one is the actual story which happened on the ship and the other is an old tale narrated by an old woman which as time follows happen to have a relationship with each other.The narration and pacing with which the story is told is one of the best things ever seen in a video game and makes u question urself about its significance and why the designers wanted u to see it according to their perspective.U also encounter flashbacks in certain parts of the ship which r really very well done and its never an overabundance of information.
Enemies and Combat-U won't encounted a hoard of enemies at once but rather one or two at a time.Nevertheless to say its still challenging due to the fact that u are given weapons which r very slow and take a long time to reload,As the game between events of 1960's and 81 u'll find WW2 weapons such as the mosin nagant and the ppsh.The game designers gave an authentic feel to the weapons in the sense that they fire realistically and recoil as much as the reload really takes up to 7 seconds.The enemies in this game are basically zombie like creatures with various metal parts on them like locks,chains,keys etc (and believe me..they actually do represent something in this game...i won't say what u have to find it by urself).The scares really work in this game the old fashioned way and there are a lot of jump out of ur seat moments.For those who complained that the combat was clunky don't understand the word "survival horror".
Gameplay-The gameplay involves mainly going from the bowels of the ship and investigating the coz of its demise.One of the most interesting features in the game is the "Mental Echo" ability.It makes u step into the shoes of the dead crew members and alter their mistake due to which they died.This changes the past thus changing the future.U'll do this from time to time and it really adds a lot of tension especially when the room is flooding with water or when a rifleman zombie is abt to shoot u and u have nothing to defend urself against.
Another nice feature abt this game was that there is not a traditional health system.U have to find heat sources like lights,heater etc with which u can warm urself up to withstand the terrible coldness of the ship.Thus,the main enemy becomes the environment itself and it really adds that tense feeling when u r constantly searching for a heat source and facing cold and fighting enemies at the same time and when u find one its so satisfying.
Sound-This is the best thing i have heard in this game.The occassional cranks and creaks of the ship's parts really makes up for its age.Basically there is no music in the game except for the main menu theme and the rest of the game u hear only ur footsteps,the occasional sirens or moans of the enemies and the howling of the wind outside.When u step out of the deck the sound of the storm echoes past ur ears as u rush for the nearest entrance before u freeze to death and its so brilliantly done.U have to play it to hear it.
Graphics-The graphics in this game are incredible especially the water effects.When u switch on a heater in a particular cabin u can see the ice melting and the water slowly drizzling from the walls and reacts to the reflections from various light sources.Basically the graphics in the game are confined to water effects and their reflections and that's what the best thing abt it is.Not to mention the Physx effects of water droplets are brilliant.But according to me and a lot of ppl this game is rather poorly optimized due to the reason that it lags sometimes on pc's which meets its recommended requirements.Also it dosen't support a multi core processor and there is no patch still out to correct it which means affinity has to be set everytime to make it run proper and it still lags a lot.However i have seen a little performance improvements on some high powered processors.And apart from a few hiccups the game runs fine for me on medium-high settingsYet if it was optimized well it would have ran on the highest settings available.
However,its flaws in performance should not let u distract from playing this game as its simply a masterpiece and once again its not meant for all people.If u like games which slowly renders the plot,has a great claustrophobic atmosphere and has some real scare moments..this is the perfect game for u.
I hope Action Forms make more games like this and i wish them all the best for their future projects. :)