Cryostasis Game Review Author: faceless105 -- Posted: 2011-02-07
Cryostasis was released to the US in mid 2009, and is one of the first semi-modern games I've seen in a while that takes advantage of Nvidia PhysX.
The Plot
The game takes place on a nuclear class icebreaker in 1981. So everything is modern, just not all that up to date. When you enter the game, you are Alexander Nesterov, a Russian meteorologist, who comes up on the ship frozen in place, and you have to work your way through fighting spirits of the fallen crew. As you play through the game, you are given visions of what happened to the ship and how the crew died. You're also able to flash back to a number of their deaths and help correct their wrongs. In the end, you're able to jump back in time and help to save the ship from disaster in the first place.
The game play
Overall, the game play was smooth. The controls were very standard, and camera was just like you'd expect it to be. Additionally, as I mentioned above, this game takes advantage of the PhsyX phisics of Nvidia, so the graphics are pretty nice looking as well, and I'll be honest, the water looks a bit more realistic than most games.
Cryostasis also took a bit of a unique twist with health system. Instead of having the standard hp scale, you live and die from heat and cold. When you're being attacked by spirits of the crew for example, it starts to drain the heat from you, and you're able to heat yourself back up whenever you come across a fire on the ship or things as simple as a light bulb, but it'll only heat you up so much.
Overall, I think I started out somewhat excited for this game. They make references to dark spirits, and the developers did a nice job of creating an eerie feel to everything, but as the game progresses, it felt very slow, and even a little redundant with how you'd have to keep going back to aid the crew in their flashes of the past. The weapons also took a while to develop. After being a little over an hour or so in, I was upgraded to the smashing weapon of a pipe, which lets be honest, is not the fast pace we'd all love when we're playing these games. Although, it does admittedly make it a bit more realistic, lol
Pros
- Graphics were pretty thorough, especially when you're standing outside the ship and snow is falling everywhere and you're overlooking the water.
- The story and game play largely create a unique feel for user with the fact that you're the only the only one alive.
Cons
- Story development can seem a bit slow at times.
- If you're not using a Nvidia Graphics card, you'll have to download the PhysX driver to play the game.
Here are a few screen shots form the game to help everyone get a feel for it.
* Note: as you can see, the images are kind of creepy, but notice the profound lack of guns?
I did also want to include this youtube video from gamers gate. Its almost purely game play video, which is the best way to give everyone a feel for this.
Overall this game was an alright game, but probably not something I'll pick back up any time soon. But for the price, it's definitely worth it.
