Cryostasis Sleep Of Reason Gameplay

[Alma Wass]

Alexander Nesterov is a meteorologist who was scheduled to get back home from his station "Pole 21" on board the nuclear ice-breaker, "North Wind". However, upon his arrival, Alexander discovers that something terrible has happened and all the crew has gone mad in the frozen coffin of a ship. Through numerous flashbacks and scattered notes Alexander gradually uncovers the mystery of "North Wind", and is endowed with the ability to give her crew a new chance to survive.

Cryostasis is a first-person shooter with elements of survival horror. The game's progression is largely linear; encumbered by the cold surrounding him, the protagonist slowly moves through the abandoned corridors of the ship. Most of the enemies in the game are mutated humans, which can be dispatched with melee weapons or firearms. Ammo is generally very scarce, and the player often has to rely on survival tactics in order to stay alive.

Alexander possesses an unusual ability called "mental echo". With its aid he can travel to the last moments of any deceased person's or animal's life and try to make a difference through his actions. In those interactive flashbacks, while the crew still struggles with the cold, Alexander must try to change the past, thus allowing himself to progress in the future. For example, in the last moments of his life, an unfortunate sailor tried to reach a pump station to prevent the flooding of a section of the ship, and failed. But Alexander can give him a second chance, revealing a new passageway for himself.

Another unusual feature the game possesses is the addition of a body temperature gauge. The cold is Alexander's worst enemy, so one of the main goals he has is not freeze to death. To recover some heat, the player must restore sections of the ship, bringing back the power and heating Alexander's hands with numerous torches, light bulbs, working generators and even atomic reactors.

Here is game that shatters every conception of what a story in a video game is capable of. Nothing gets in the way of it, and everything else is secondary to telling the extraordinary story of a Captain, a Crew, and a Ship. Yes, gentlemen, this is very well the closest thing to Moby Dick in video game form.

The graphics of this game rival Crysis on maximum settings. Ice melts into water dynamically. Shadows looks phenomenal. Most importantly the game's art style looks unique. I can't think of another game that explores the interior and exterior of a ship so well.

Audio design is especially good as well. Headphones or a good surround system are required. Every gun sounds loud and powerful even though most of them are 50 years old. The ship echoes reverberate throughout the corridors. Each enemy has it's own distinct sound. Overall it is flawless.

All this however, is secondary to the story. The tale of an icebreaker trapped within the shackles of glacier near the North Pole. Every character portrayed is realistic, flawed, and somewhat virtuous. It is the only game I have ever seen where there is no true antagonist. You do fight enemies, but they are a symptom of a much larger problem the begins within the minds of individuals.

This is foremost a mystery game then, as you play the role of an outsider who finds himself on the frozen ship. But the game will never hand the answers to you. It is up to you to decide what happens and the meaning behind it.

The Bad
Because of the slow nature of Cryostasis' unveiling of it's story, it's gameplay suffers. It is repetitive and slow. It would be unwise to play this game simply for a quick run through a Russian horror game. It could hardly even be classified as a horror game because the horror is never explicitly shown. The horror of this game is terrifying because it speaks to the real life deterioration of the human mind in a crisis. How the ego and paranoia eventually rust and corrode every individual's mind. Do not go in expecting typical horror game scares.

This game is a performance hog like few others. An 8800 GT is a minimum requirement to be able to play this properly.

The Bottom Line
Understand that this is likely the most metaphor packed story ever committed to gaming. In my personal opinion, it is also the best. If you are looking for a comparison, it's closest would probably be Silent Hill 2.

Expect to think on this one, and examine every detail you see carefully. If you play this passively, it will be a forgettable title. But if you do take the time to seriously think about the events that occur, it will be among the most memorable journeys in gaming history. You will be thinking about this game long after you finish it. Were this story adapted from a Russian novel, it would be studied by English professors and academics for centuries to come. It really is that good, that unique, and that memorable.

The Good
Natural disasters have always formed great plot devices for many stories told. They served to bring out the best in human beings, let them explore their courage and willingness to stand up to the most devastating forces of nature. Heroic feats, indeed, considering what a marvelous villain nature is cut out to be. Faceless, relentless, devoid of any kind of motivation and morality, a perfect adversary for our brave protagonists. Cryostasis definitely belongs to those numerous stories of valor and self-sacrifice, but it does have a one important distinction.

I guess, it has to do an unexpected side effect of its videogame heritage, that is belonging to an immature, struggling medium basing its lackluster stories in escapist realms of fantasy and science fiction, other two popular teenage pastimes. What I am trying to convey here is that realistic would be the last word used to describe Cryostasis. Apart from other disaster stories it is firmly rooted in supernatural, it gives an Arctic cold an embodiment, it summons the monstrosities out of the ice and generally reeks with the elements of the worst kind of fiction. Which, amazingly, works in its favor, giving it a leverage needed to be a much more interesting deal, than simply another man vs volcano type of story all over again. As famous Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson has once put it: There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.

And, personally, I have no problem with that. Even more so, I feel that those blank spots in the story are there for a reason. It's refreshing not to have everything explained and cataloged, something many developers have been guilty of. Trust your audience with doing some thinking on their own is a nice motto to have indeed.

At this point you might be asking: Alright, I get all that pseudo-philosophical bullshit, but how does the thing play. Is it any fun? Does it look good?. Well, the short answers are yes and yes . The longer ones are as follows:

With all its rich arthousey ideas and content, it's surprising to see Cryostasis not shying away from the technological advantages made in recent years. Which is something I applaud with tears of joy in my, otherwise manly and emotionally secure, eyes. Regardless of what some folks say, technology is great, bumpmapping is great, four layered textures are great, dynamic fluids are also fantastic and motion capture is simply the second best thing since French Baguette, to choose another bread allegory for a change. Sadly, it only becomes apparent when all those fancy words are translated into haunting atmosphere of the icebreaker trapped in Arctic glaciers, long forgotten by its God and people, in the middle of nowhere, at the time of nowhen. Cryostasis presents a great union of artistry and engineering, and shows that one shouldn't exclude another, but rather help and enhance each other instead.

As far as core game mechanics go, Cryostasis is rather straightforward. A first person shooter with the health meter, window dressed as a temperature gauge and mental echoes, which on closer inspection reveals itself to be nothing but interactive flahsbacks, all of which are obligatory in order to proceed. It all plays and controls itself rather well. Just don't look for any serious gameplay depth here for even the Bioshock is a monster of incomprehensible complexity compared to this game. To its credit, Cryostasis doesn't position itself as a hybrid of any sort, so no black points from me.

On the closing notes of the Good section, I'd like to give some deserved praise to the music. Thank you for not being there. That's right, apart from the closing period song, the game is virtually musicless. On first glance it might seem as a pretentious gimmick of some Dogma 95 enthusiasts. Upon completing the game it became clear that the music is not there not for the purposes of purifying the experience, but rather for the silence to stand in as its rightful ruler.

The Bad
Oh, such a splendid game I gave you a picture of, didn't I? Wouldn't it be a shame if it all crumbles to dust in this section? It, certainly, would, so let's keep it as brief as possible.

What is bad with Cryostasis? The answer is much more precise than you might think. It is all in its third quarter. Somehow, the developers thought it would be an awesome idea to give the player a rest from all the story, symbolism and hidden meanings, which mercilessly bombarded poor gamer in the first half of the game. They didn't anticipated, however, that the game has absolutely no chances of staying above zero while stripped of the very things that make it so charmingly appealing in the first place.

It's pathetically linear. Each room has just two doors, one for entrance, another one for the exit. Other hatches, somehow, lost all their handles. Ironically, having trusted us with thinking, the developers deviate to trust our vestibular systems and navigational skills.

It's painfully repetitive. The game takes place on a atomic icebreaker, an industrial soviet beast of machine, created with absolutely no regard for aesthetics and variety. Combined with the design notion , that the door should only open after a nth wave of respawning attackers, it starts to get on one's nerves rather quickly.

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