Elektro Demon
Banned
So I never played Cryostasis until now. Yesterday I finished the game and it's really good. A bit rough but very unique.
DEVELOPER: Action Forms
Platform: PC, Windows
Year: 2009
INTRODUCTION
Cryostasis sleep of reason came out 2009 exclusively for the pc. Microsoft windows to be precise. I'd like to say it made a big impact in the world of video games, but sadly, it didn't. It's a surprising title, you rarely see games coming out exclusively for the pc. There are games like that, but they're very rare. The biggest problem with cryostasis is that it ran like utter dog at the time of it's release. It was a very demanding game. Luckily, it's now an old game, so you can play it with all of it's bells n whistles. You would think that. But we'll talk about that later.
STORY
So what's this game about? Cryostasis takes place in the 80's on a Russian nuclear powered icebreaker called the North wind. You play as a metereologist named Alexander Nesterov and you're supposed to come aboard the ship but after arriving you then find out that the ship has been shipwreck since 1968 and the whole crew have gone bizzare mutations and transformations.
You have mental echoes through out the game. Basically you can alter the events through this mechanic and reverse the fate. It's a cool mechanic. Through this mechanic, the whole plot is presented to you. You'll slowly start to piece out what exactly led to the ship being shipwrecked and all the events that transpired through out this time. It makes no sense in the beginning but as you delve further it all starts to make sense. It's an interesting story too. It's about a captain ignoring the warnings of his first officer and relying on his years of sailor experience instead of technology and weather instrumentation. And since this is a nuclear power vessel, once the ship finally hit ice and chaos ensued, well, you can already imagine what's gonna happen next. That's as far as I'm comfortable talking about the story without treading into spoiler territory.
GAMEPLAY
How is the gameplay? Well this is a first person shooter. It has a mix of melee combat and gun combat as well. The melee combat is a bit clunky, I have to say. It works but ultimately it feels like a watered down version of Condamned criminal origins. You can block attacks with the right mouse button and you attack with the left mouse button. There are different combos of sorts, you hold a for walking left and then press attack, you're gonna perform an attack that's aimed left. It's an okay combat system but it's very clunky. The melee weapons are cool. You get a broken valve as a weapon, an axe and a chain wrapped around your hands. Interesting design. Then there the fire weapons. You get a solid repertoare, first one you're gonna get is the mosin nagant. It fires one bullet per shot and it's a slow weapon. The time between shots is big. But the realod time. My god, this is the slowest realoading weapon I ever saw in a video game. And I love it. It adds a feeling of tension and a strategic element. Then there's the mosin nagant scoped version, which is the same gun but with a scope attached to it. Then there's the Tokarev SVT which is a semi auto gun and this was my favourite weapon in the whole game. The lamest weapon in the game is the flare gun by far, it does absolutely no damage to the enemies. I really don't understand the purpose of this weapon. The only automatic weapon in the game is the ppsh. And it's quite useful against some tougher enemies. The most interesting weapon has to be the water gun. Yeah, the water gun. Since the game takes place in a very, very cold place, pouring water on someone is a deadly thing to do. And the water gun does just that. The only downside is you have to be almost point blank range. The ammo for this gun are the icicles you find hanging of the ceiling and other things in the game. I like how there's no ammo indicator in the game. The game just shows you the satchels of amunition and bullets. You gotta count them yourself. It's very cool. Weapons are clunky but I believe it was designed this way on purpose. You're not a military guy and you're wearing a lot of artic clothes so it makes sense. I gotta say, the movement in this game is very slow. Really, really slow. I dig it, and it makes sense. Yes, you can run, but your stamina drains quite fast. The main mechanic in this game is the heat system. So you're on a ship that is shipwrecked in the middle of the north pole. So you know it's cold as a whore's heart. Basically, you have to search for sources of heat, lights, ovens, fires, etc. That sorta stuff. And there's no health in the game. You replenish your body heat, health and stamina at these heat sources. It's a cool mechanic, I admit. I like the environments. It's all frozen and covered with frost and icicles. Really cold design. But as cool as the environments are, they're a bit claustrophobic and cramped. And this can sometimes be a problem when dealing with the enemies. The enemy design is cool. You're basically killing crewman. Mutated crewman. They vary in design, they go from regular looking dudes to a heavily mutated mutant with some strange wings on their back. Later on in the game they start to wear guns. That's where the big flaws come out. The environments are cramped and the whole combat system is clunky as hell. It's all manageable till there's a single enemy, but when there's more then one, it becomes a tedious task.
So I mentioned the mental echoes. You come across a dead body and you enter in his footsteps via this mechanic. You'll try to change the fate through these mental echoes. Most of them are pretty interesting and sometimes involve a simple puzzle. But it's all on rails. There's no freedom and you have to do everything the game wants you to do. But they are cool sequences. I especially like the one with dogs. So basically the crewman was eaten by dogs and you have to change that fate. You go in the mental echoo and avoid the dogs. It's really disturbing.
Some people are classifying this as a horror game. Well, I would disagree. It's more of an atmospheric action game with elements of horror.
GRAPHICS
When this game came out in 2009, it was a stunning looking game. But it also ran like a dog on machines of that time. It was a very un optimized game. I remember back in the day, I came to friends house and he was playing this game. And he had a beastly rig for that time. It ran at 20 frames per second. It was that bad. I think the game holds up today, graphically speaking. Everything is sprinkled with frost and it adds to the immersion. The textures are sharp and can still pass today. It's a really good looking today, even if it's 11 years old. I adore the physics system in the game. Everything moves around, boxes, oxygen tanks and other inanimate objects. I love it. I'm a sucker for game physics. So the performance. Since this is an 11 year old game, you think this wouldn't be an issue to run on any modern rig, right? Boy, you're wrong. I first booted the game and set everything on max. And it was a slide show. I was getting around 15 frames per second. I was shocked. So I thought this is maybe because I'm playing the game on an AMD card. Remember, this game uses the Physics API by Nvidia. So I turned off that. It didn't improve anything. I had to google what was going on because the game was unplayable in this state. I found that you have to turn off Nvidia Physics and also switch to using shader model 3,0. 4,0 shader model causes these performance issues. So I did that and it ran great. Locked 60fps with everything maxed out, well, except Nvidia physics and that shader model. It was all great until about 2 hours before the game's ending. Then it started to crash heavily. Everytime it crashed I got a message saying something like couldn't load the texture not enough video memory. And I was shocked. How can there be not enough memory. My vega 64 has 8 gigabytes of video ram. There were no cards that had 8 gigs of vram in 2009. Then I had to google that again because I was close to finishing the game but I was unable to do so because of these crashes. The solution is to set everything in the options to medium. And I did that and was able to finish the game. But this really pissed me off. I'm fine with lowering details in a modern game but lowering quality in an 11 year old game. That's some BS right there.
And there are quite a few other technical problems. Falling down through textures. That happened twice on me. Also the enemies clip through objects and doors. Not a big problem but in a game that wants you to get immersed as much as possible, these types of glitches really pull you out of the immersion.
THE BAD
clunky combat
a bit claustrophobic environments
many technical problems and glitches
the ending is just pure BS
CONCLUSION
Should you play Cryostasis if you haven't already? Well, I think it's worth playing. It's a slow paced atmospheric game with unique mechanics and it has a really interesting story. It's an 8 hour long journey through a big wrecked and sunken ship. If you can overlook some of the technical problems and some jank in the combat, I think you're gonna really enjoy this game. If I had to give a score to this game, I'd give it 7.2 outta 10.
And if you're too lazy to read, you can watch the review in 4k. My own.
DEVELOPER: Action Forms
Platform: PC, Windows
Year: 2009
INTRODUCTION
Cryostasis sleep of reason came out 2009 exclusively for the pc. Microsoft windows to be precise. I'd like to say it made a big impact in the world of video games, but sadly, it didn't. It's a surprising title, you rarely see games coming out exclusively for the pc. There are games like that, but they're very rare. The biggest problem with cryostasis is that it ran like utter dog at the time of it's release. It was a very demanding game. Luckily, it's now an old game, so you can play it with all of it's bells n whistles. You would think that. But we'll talk about that later.
STORY
So what's this game about? Cryostasis takes place in the 80's on a Russian nuclear powered icebreaker called the North wind. You play as a metereologist named Alexander Nesterov and you're supposed to come aboard the ship but after arriving you then find out that the ship has been shipwreck since 1968 and the whole crew have gone bizzare mutations and transformations.
You have mental echoes through out the game. Basically you can alter the events through this mechanic and reverse the fate. It's a cool mechanic. Through this mechanic, the whole plot is presented to you. You'll slowly start to piece out what exactly led to the ship being shipwrecked and all the events that transpired through out this time. It makes no sense in the beginning but as you delve further it all starts to make sense. It's an interesting story too. It's about a captain ignoring the warnings of his first officer and relying on his years of sailor experience instead of technology and weather instrumentation. And since this is a nuclear power vessel, once the ship finally hit ice and chaos ensued, well, you can already imagine what's gonna happen next. That's as far as I'm comfortable talking about the story without treading into spoiler territory.
GAMEPLAY
How is the gameplay? Well this is a first person shooter. It has a mix of melee combat and gun combat as well. The melee combat is a bit clunky, I have to say. It works but ultimately it feels like a watered down version of Condamned criminal origins. You can block attacks with the right mouse button and you attack with the left mouse button. There are different combos of sorts, you hold a for walking left and then press attack, you're gonna perform an attack that's aimed left. It's an okay combat system but it's very clunky. The melee weapons are cool. You get a broken valve as a weapon, an axe and a chain wrapped around your hands. Interesting design. Then there the fire weapons. You get a solid repertoare, first one you're gonna get is the mosin nagant. It fires one bullet per shot and it's a slow weapon. The time between shots is big. But the realod time. My god, this is the slowest realoading weapon I ever saw in a video game. And I love it. It adds a feeling of tension and a strategic element. Then there's the mosin nagant scoped version, which is the same gun but with a scope attached to it. Then there's the Tokarev SVT which is a semi auto gun and this was my favourite weapon in the whole game. The lamest weapon in the game is the flare gun by far, it does absolutely no damage to the enemies. I really don't understand the purpose of this weapon. The only automatic weapon in the game is the ppsh. And it's quite useful against some tougher enemies. The most interesting weapon has to be the water gun. Yeah, the water gun. Since the game takes place in a very, very cold place, pouring water on someone is a deadly thing to do. And the water gun does just that. The only downside is you have to be almost point blank range. The ammo for this gun are the icicles you find hanging of the ceiling and other things in the game. I like how there's no ammo indicator in the game. The game just shows you the satchels of amunition and bullets. You gotta count them yourself. It's very cool. Weapons are clunky but I believe it was designed this way on purpose. You're not a military guy and you're wearing a lot of artic clothes so it makes sense. I gotta say, the movement in this game is very slow. Really, really slow. I dig it, and it makes sense. Yes, you can run, but your stamina drains quite fast. The main mechanic in this game is the heat system. So you're on a ship that is shipwrecked in the middle of the north pole. So you know it's cold as a whore's heart. Basically, you have to search for sources of heat, lights, ovens, fires, etc. That sorta stuff. And there's no health in the game. You replenish your body heat, health and stamina at these heat sources. It's a cool mechanic, I admit. I like the environments. It's all frozen and covered with frost and icicles. Really cold design. But as cool as the environments are, they're a bit claustrophobic and cramped. And this can sometimes be a problem when dealing with the enemies. The enemy design is cool. You're basically killing crewman. Mutated crewman. They vary in design, they go from regular looking dudes to a heavily mutated mutant with some strange wings on their back. Later on in the game they start to wear guns. That's where the big flaws come out. The environments are cramped and the whole combat system is clunky as hell. It's all manageable till there's a single enemy, but when there's more then one, it becomes a tedious task.
So I mentioned the mental echoes. You come across a dead body and you enter in his footsteps via this mechanic. You'll try to change the fate through these mental echoes. Most of them are pretty interesting and sometimes involve a simple puzzle. But it's all on rails. There's no freedom and you have to do everything the game wants you to do. But they are cool sequences. I especially like the one with dogs. So basically the crewman was eaten by dogs and you have to change that fate. You go in the mental echoo and avoid the dogs. It's really disturbing.
Some people are classifying this as a horror game. Well, I would disagree. It's more of an atmospheric action game with elements of horror.
GRAPHICS
When this game came out in 2009, it was a stunning looking game. But it also ran like a dog on machines of that time. It was a very un optimized game. I remember back in the day, I came to friends house and he was playing this game. And he had a beastly rig for that time. It ran at 20 frames per second. It was that bad. I think the game holds up today, graphically speaking. Everything is sprinkled with frost and it adds to the immersion. The textures are sharp and can still pass today. It's a really good looking today, even if it's 11 years old. I adore the physics system in the game. Everything moves around, boxes, oxygen tanks and other inanimate objects. I love it. I'm a sucker for game physics. So the performance. Since this is an 11 year old game, you think this wouldn't be an issue to run on any modern rig, right? Boy, you're wrong. I first booted the game and set everything on max. And it was a slide show. I was getting around 15 frames per second. I was shocked. So I thought this is maybe because I'm playing the game on an AMD card. Remember, this game uses the Physics API by Nvidia. So I turned off that. It didn't improve anything. I had to google what was going on because the game was unplayable in this state. I found that you have to turn off Nvidia Physics and also switch to using shader model 3,0. 4,0 shader model causes these performance issues. So I did that and it ran great. Locked 60fps with everything maxed out, well, except Nvidia physics and that shader model. It was all great until about 2 hours before the game's ending. Then it started to crash heavily. Everytime it crashed I got a message saying something like couldn't load the texture not enough video memory. And I was shocked. How can there be not enough memory. My vega 64 has 8 gigabytes of video ram. There were no cards that had 8 gigs of vram in 2009. Then I had to google that again because I was close to finishing the game but I was unable to do so because of these crashes. The solution is to set everything in the options to medium. And I did that and was able to finish the game. But this really pissed me off. I'm fine with lowering details in a modern game but lowering quality in an 11 year old game. That's some BS right there.
And there are quite a few other technical problems. Falling down through textures. That happened twice on me. Also the enemies clip through objects and doors. Not a big problem but in a game that wants you to get immersed as much as possible, these types of glitches really pull you out of the immersion.
THE BAD
clunky combat
a bit claustrophobic environments
many technical problems and glitches
the ending is just pure BS
CONCLUSION
Should you play Cryostasis if you haven't already? Well, I think it's worth playing. It's a slow paced atmospheric game with unique mechanics and it has a really interesting story. It's an 8 hour long journey through a big wrecked and sunken ship. If you can overlook some of the technical problems and some jank in the combat, I think you're gonna really enjoy this game. If I had to give a score to this game, I'd give it 7.2 outta 10.
And if you're too lazy to read, you can watch the review in 4k. My own.
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