Cryostasis - PC

Cryostasis isn't actually an FPS game - but it's not a puzzle game, either.In format it is mostly FPS - go through the level, kill the bad guys, discover the secrets, etc. You have to solve some puzzles along the way as well.It's 1981, at the height of the Cold War. You play a Soviet meteorologist who has been called home - but on the way you discover a Soviet nuclear ice breaker, abandoned in the ice... a ghost ship. During the game you'll be bombarded with boring history lessons, telling the tale of an ancient tribe in a spirit-infested forest, which supposedly explains how this became a ghost ship.Everything is very bland. Even if you have a first class video setup ( NVIDIA GeForce 9500  or a  NVIDIA GeForce 9800 , etc), things are going to seem a bit bleak and bland - because the whole game takes place on a ship encased in ice. It's mostly grays and blues. Textures, shaders, and layers are nice, yes, but they're lost in an ice-enshrouded background. The only real color is in the few areas where you have light; otherwise, everything is a bleak grayish-brown which tends to blend together after a while.The "mental echo" is interesting at first, but if you've ever seen the TV series  Quantum Leap , then you know what it's about: you have to relive the last minutes of somebody's life, and try to fix what they screwed up. Some of the "Echoes" can be frustrating, because you need to do them exactly in a specific manner, with very few clues how to go about it.As far as spooky is concerned - it is supposed to be a semi-horror game, after all -  F.E.A.R.  has it beat by a mile.Replay - once you go through it the first time, there's nothing left for you unless you want to go through the fights again. There's only one difficulty level, only one way to go through each level, and no multiplayer - this is basically a one-shot game.Pros: great graphics (though bland), sound and environment (blinding snow and whipping winds). Realistic, if ancient, weapons. Fairly easy to maneuver, though you'll definitely want to change the default controls to something you can work with.Cons: slow gameplay. Bleak environment. No real enemy AI. For a supposed 1980's Soviet nuclear ship, the technologies and weapons are of WWII vintage. No crosshairs!The patch: even though the company site doesn't recommend getting the patch unless you have a high-end graphics card and Vista, you should get it and install it because it has several bug fixes, as well as the new Water Cannon. However, even with the patch and the correct settings, the game tends to lock up and crash in level 11.It's not bad, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you've done everything else and you're looking for something different. If you prefer fast-moving shooters like "F.E.A.R." or "Far Cry", then you probably won't like this.One of the nice things, of course, is the fact that there's no DRM - nothing in any form. (Take that, Sony!) You don't even have to have the DVD in to play, which is unusual.

Cryostasis is a great example of a game that probably wouldn't be made by a larger, big-name developer, as it defies tropes left and right. It's a survival-horror game with fast-paced combo-driven melee combat. It's a first-person action game with largely bloodless, realistic violence (see the teen rating). And, while it wears all the trappings of a cold-war sci fi game like STALKER, it's actually pretty deeply rooted in fantasy. Your own character has magic psychic powers, the enemies you face (former members of a marooned ship's crew) are strongly implied to have been transformed into monsters by the sheer power of their own apathy, and as you use your psychic link to the past to undo more and more of the harm you encounter, things get- well that would be a spoiler. Suffice to say this game's big bad is the polar opposite of sci-fi, and while the game itself is unbearably grimdark in places the ending is actually remarkably happy.The challenge to Cryostasis is that not all of the game really works. There are some moments of genuine horror- when you travel into the past of one doomed sailor you must paddle a raft through a lightless flooded hold, with monsters crawling from the icy water to kill you at all turns. As you turn to look for the enemy, your raft's meager floodlight casts a dim yellow glow across the facades of rusted metal and eerie lapping water. It's super spooky- yet moments later, in a second flashback, the same crewman must navigate below the water in a ponderous diving suit a la the Abyss. This segment should be even scarier, yet the tension is completely gone. Similarly, while being rushed down by monsters in the present is scary at first, combat quickly becomes a matter of performing the pattern of attacks and dodges that each enemy requires to beat.Still, a lot of thought obviously went into the compelling plot of Ctyostasis, and it's definitely different from what usually passes as horror. I would recommend it to fans of games like Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth or Undying, although it is more linear and less action-oriented than both.PROS- Good graphics, especially the water which is quite realistic. Tight art style makes otherwise samey locations interesting to look at.- Eerie compelling narrative that makes a surprisingly small-scale story very involving- Genuinely spookyCONS- Leans heavily on the PhysX middleware system so ATI users will have a plainer experience- After a while, the different rooms in the ship start looking kind of the same- Combat is sort of flat- As other reviewers have noted, requirements far exceed what you actually get visually

Pretty good game wanted to play it forever, finally found a copy. However the game was buggy at times and crashed, but otherwise was an excellent game.

Ce FPS est vraiment bien fichu, la lenteur voulu, les graphismes excellent, un scénario original. On passe vraiment un bon et stressant moment.

Graphismes moyens, bugs.

FPS Original mais un peut court, c'est domage, l'idée est bonne.Un fusil de sniper dans un bateau c'est pas très utile, il aurrait mieux value un fusil à pompe