Surpassed my expectations. Terrible optimization annoys, but the game makes up for it with its unique atmosphere.
+ Amazing visuals
+ Weapons fits the game perfectly
+ Among the best atmosphere in a video game ever
+ The North Wind is beautifully realistic
+ Incredible Design
+ Lots of ice
+ Great story-telling
Cons:
- Terrible optimization and lots of technical issues
- Many bugs
- The story can be hard to understand
- Could have been atleast one more weapon
- Flare Gun is basically useless
- No blood or gore at all
This review is based only on the single-player experience.
Since the Game has no multi-player. Only single-player.
A few first words though, if you do not have much Patience and easily gets bored unless there is constant stimulation, Cryostasis is probably a bad choice for you.
Story:
Cryostasis is a game of high complexity. In fact, once you beat the game you will either understand everything or nothing at all. Let us take it from start: The main character Alexander Nesterov is a Russian meteorologist accidentally caught inside an old Russian nuclear ice-breaker called the North Wind, frozen in the ice desert, in the Arctic Circle, 1968. Its crew has mutated into horrible ice zombies for reasons you do not know as well as why the ship got damaged and stranded there. The game is a story about a drama of a Captain and his Ship.
The game starts right by the ship and unfolds it mysterious secrets as you play. Most of the story is told via flashbacks of the crew and the captain, but you will also pick up notes from then to then that gives some additional information. The game starts slowly but its atmosphere makes it exiting almost all of the time. At first it will seem like an average survival horror but you will notice after a few levels that every single level is better than the last one. So if you played the demo it probably does not justify the game. And the combination of the atmosphere, the story, the flashbacks and the Great level design makes it truly a creepy game from time to time. Most horror games nowadays are made so you can feel how desperate the developers are about actually making it scary, but in Cryostasis the horror comes naturally. Good enemy placements and great sounds sets the mood perfectly for the settings.
You do not find a game like this very often. It's the horror of the unknown, with the questions wondering the origins of the monstrosities fueling the player to carry on.
Sounds pretty good, uh? Well, truth is, the story is amazing to the one who understands it. I have played through Cryostasis twice and still do not understand everything, most people gets lost in the story during the later part of the game but i managed to get it quite well. To appreciate the story in Cryostasis fully you should need to know some about Russian mythology and have read some Russian novels (the game is Russian). Otherwise it can feel a bit blurry (like it did to me at first). However, even if it requires some thinking afterwards and a lot of knowledge about philosophy, anyone who wants an interesting story will probably appreciate it and get quite immersed in the story. Another thing is the last levels of the game, it will truly surprise you more than you can imagine. The unexpected ending is almost alone worth playing the game. That is, if you got immersed in the story.
Graphics:
The graphics in Cryostasis are simply amazing, every thing looks very detailed and the environment are full of small objects that really shows a complex level design. Almost every texture is covered in ice and uses very good shaders to make them even better.
Most of the design can feel repetitive at times since most rooms looks like all the other rooms. However, since you are onboard an icebreaker ship, it is just realistic, the North Wind is an identical replica of a real Russian nuclear icebreaker and i doubt the designers of the ship took into consideration when designing that a video game might take place on it. If everything was different all the time in Cryostasis it would be nowhere near a replica.
Another thing in Cryostasis is the textures, they usually are at a low resolution but contains a lot of detail, and during certain parts of the game it seems they actually used some really ultra high resolution textures. All characters are well modeled and the animations are quite realistic even if not smooth all the time. The game uses minimal lightning effects or special effects, instead having some high quality suptile effects that makes the game look great even though you do not know what exactly makes it look like it does.
It also has Motion Blur, Depth Of Field, Water refractions, Water reflections, Water caustics and advanced PhysX physics.
Something really impressive is the way the ice is modelled. Environments are so well Detailed. If it is frozen in a room, everything is crystallised in ice. And if you turn on a strong heat source in that room (an engine, generator or such), the ice thaws out realistically. Often in the game you will see wet, dripping walls and floors With Water.
Yet another impressive thing is the realistic player reactions to the enviroment. If it is warm Alexander breathes slowly, if he runs or has recently been outside he will breath faster and you can always see his breath. If he gets cold the screen will be icy and when outside in a snow storm the screen is covered in snow, as well as weapons.
The only problem is how bad optimised the game is. No matter how good Computer you have the game will not run smooth. It sometimes feels like the game is capped at a bad framerate. However, at a low enough resolution or with a powerful enough computer you could atleast get a framerate that still leaves the game very enjoyable. One of the reasons to this is that game does not support multi-cores. If you have a single-core Processor it will use that core, if you have a dual-core Processor it will still only use one core, and if you have a quad-core Processor it will, you guessed it, just use one core. Another thing is that it forces the player to use the highest DirectX Level. If your PC supports DX10 you will have to play in DX10, which drains more performarence than DX9. I also seems to have issues with Sli/Crossfire graphics cards, sometimes it will only use one of those cards and sometimes the cards will both just work at 50%. It also is sensitive to over-clocking from personal experience. But aside from all this, With a weak computer you should be able to run at low settings smooth enough, and with a really strong computer you can probably play the higher settings with only small amounts of lag.
Gameplay:
Alexander has a special ability called 'Mental Echo' which lets him experience and change the last few minutes of peoples lives. You get to do small side missions that if completed properly, change the person's past and also help you progress in the present. If you fail, you can always try again. It almost always includes saving the persons live. This can differ from simply escaping a room about to be filled with water in the past so the one who now survives opens a doors that still remains open in the present so the player can procced, to defeating enemies in the past. You also get to operate many things in these Echos such as cranes, Fixing the Nucleal Reactor or Using a diving suit to go underwater and repair broken pipes.
Another feature in Cryostasis is the health system, to recover health you need heat. This can vary from generators and engines to lamps and heat pipes. This actually adds to the atmosphere since it really makes you care about the tempature, if it gets cold enough you will start taking damage. And this will also make you pay more attention to your surroundings since the heat sources are not always in sight. If you see a turned off lamp, there might be a button to turn it on somewhere, but if you only look for working heat sources it will get harder. When you find a heat source you can refill health based on how warm it is. This also means that you need to save as much health as possible until the next heat source.
Now we come to the combat. You will be able to carry every weapon you find, but you will mostly find melee weapons, rifles and one submachinegun. For the first few levels you will have nothing but melee weapons, including an axe with a considerable weight that makes it slow to swing. Later you will find a Mosin-Nagant M1891 Rifle, that will be your primary weapon during the game. The Mosin rifle is the Russian variation of the german Kar98K, but much slower, if you have played a WW2 game you have probably used that weapon (the kar98k). You will also find a Tokarev SVT-40 Semi-Automatic Rifle and a PPsh-41. But that is about it. There is a scoped Mosin Nagant to be found, but since it fires even slower, reloads slower and the scope is always covered in ice making it easier to aim without it, you probably will not have much use of it. There is a flare gun too, but the flares does only light up and does not hurt enemies and since you can toggle a flashlight on and off while using weapons the extra light becomes quite useless. The flares does stick to enemies however making them weaker and can therefore be killed faster, but even if you fire a flare and then only need 2 mosin rounds to kill him instead of 3, you still fire a total of 3 shoots including the flare. And since there are only 14 flares in the entire game to be found, even if you found a good use of the flare gun you would not be able to use it for long.
There is also no Crosshair in Crystasis, instead you will have to aim using Iron Sights. All the weapons reloads very slowly making combat very intense, it you miss a single bullet your chances of survival decreases slightly (since it s hard to reload in -60 degrees tempature). Most enemies will just fight with their fists, but later on they will start use axes and guns themselves. And toward the end the will start to look and act really creepy.
The movement is very slow, fortunately, enemies will also move very slow. You can run for like 2 seconds at the start of the game, but as you save peoples lives in the past you will grow stronger and be able to run faster, run longer, recover stamina faster and take more damage.
There is probably only about a hundred or so enemies in the entire game, yes, that is pretty much all. But since enemies are a challenge every time and always make a unique entrance, adding to the already high level of cinematic quality, that should not be much of a problem. The game is focusing on atmosphere, story, and design after all.
One thing that could be better about Cryostasis is that blood could be added.
Sound:
All of the sounds in Cryostasis are very well made and fits the game exactly. The weapons has realistic sounds, Enemies have everything from creepy and scary sounds to detailed high quality voices.
I have the European version of the game so all the Characters voices have been dubbed from Russian to English. So while i can not judge how the Russian voices sounds i can tell that the English ones are great. They really speak with a true Russian accent, so well that i in fact almost believes Russians dubbed it to English.
Other sounds are also highly realistic, when outside in a snowstorm it really sounds like the sounds were recorded during a real snowstorm. When you open doors you can hear how the ice on the door breaks. Cryostasis may not use to many sounds but every single one i have heard have been of amazing quality.
Many sounds also helps create a good atmosphere and makes a lot of the frightening feeling in the game.
Replay value:
I would say there is little replay value. I played through the game twice, but that was since i actually liked the gameplay a lot, and to better understand the story. If you really want to be able to piece together the story better or likes the gameplay, then you might want to play again. But since the game relies heavily on its atmosphere, which decreases with 95% the second time through, do not expect that you will want to replay the game. Overall the game is pretty long, much longer than the average FPS. So even if you only play through once, the first time will feel just enough.
If you want an action game with a constant stream of bullets, then stay away from Cryostasis. If you want a truly creepy and unique survival horror with the best atmosphere and design i can think of, amazing visuals and great story-telling while you do not mind if the shooting is quite minimal, then Cryostasis is the game you been looking for.