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Cryostasis: not made by Crytek
Topic Started: May 1 2009, 03:25 AM (278 Views)
Renegade
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what
Cryostasis is a first-person horror game set somewhere in the arctic around 1965 (or present time, dunno they never specify but you use ww2 era weapons so it's probably my first guess). It was supposed to be some kind of tech engine for PhysX iirc, but eitherway it turned out to be a pretty cool game.

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In Cryostasis, you play as a junior assistant in a research trip gone awry (i'd like to play a game for once where things go exactly as planned). The main character wakes up in a frozen ship in the middle of nowhere, unable to remember wtf just happened. But not to worry, early on there are flashback sequences showing how you ended up there (complete with fluffy puppies! :3).
You must then navigate the bulk of the ship and uncover the cryo-horrors that await!! This is the premise, in a nutshell.

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The game plays and controls like your typical first person shooter, but comparisons with the genre end there. The player character moves VERY slowly, since after all we're in sub-zero temperatures here and you're supposed to be cold and tired. You can sprint for a few seconds but that's it. Sprinting is controlled by a stamina bar, which regenerates slowly as you walk around. The health system is interesting, as it's not health at all but "Warmth". Sounds ridiculous but it works out okay. Besides stamina, there are 2 stats you have to look out for: Temperature and Warmth. The entire ship has different temperature readings, and if it's lower than your current warmth, then you will slowly lose warmth until it matches the temperature. Warmth is also your health bar, meaning getting hit makes you lose some of it. You can never die just walking around though, since there are only a few sections of the ship which have below 0 warmth. To recover warmth, there are numerous sources of heat throughout the game. You just walk up to 'em and lay out your hands to receive the awesome yellow rays of power. Could be torches, desk lamps, pieces of wood, fans, pretty much anything that moves.

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The game isn't very dark. Most of the time there's just enough light to avoid using the flashlight. Which is a good thing considering how awesome the visuals are. Well awesome if you've never played Crysis before, but STILL PRETTY GOOD OKAY. The problem here is a lot of the rooms look the same. Realistic? Yes. It's a goddamn ship after all. Fun? Maybe not so much.

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so where's this horror aspect i'm not scared yet???

Enemies in the game appear to be zombies: Posted Image

I haven't finished it so there's probably some big reveal at the end of what they really are, but for now we'll just call 'em zombies. Except this dude, he's called Blow Torch Man: Posted ImagePosted Image


Combat is rare, and more focused on 1 on 1 encounters. In fact you gotta run away from the first enemy. Shortly after the player acquires the ability to use Fists and the game turns into a first person brawler. Other weapons include chaining your fist, a motherfucking valve, an axe, and a neato rifle. The rifle is powerful but ammo is sparse so it's important to make every shot count. PRO-TIP: use it against Blow Torch Man, goes down fast.

As you navigate the ship, you find out more about the backstory through supernatural flashbacks. They're either manually triggered by corspes or they just show up randomly. Now later on you come across a very neat feature: TIME TRAVEL.

No, really. When you find a corpse with his hearth bleeding neon red, you can go back to shortly before his death and re-write history so he doesn't die. Okay he still dies but his soul is "saved". Yeah, start drawin' up some parallels with christianity.

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Anyway, when you save a soul your character is improved. I have no idea how or what so don't ask, just take the games word for it and go beat shit up harder.

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An interesting gameplay aspect is once there's a heat source in a room, the ice melts around it and temperature goes back to normal. It's something you expect to happen but not in a videogame. Little details!

And to conclude:

-There are no bullshit check or savepoints. Save whenever you want! Quicksave/quickload. This takes away from some of the scares later on since it takes all of 1 second to quickload, but there ARE INSTANT DEATH TRAPS in the game so I guess it balances out.

-Performance wise, it's pretty sluggish. On my rig, phenom 2 tri-core 2.9GHz and geforce gtx 260, fps was ranging around 20-30 with details maxed out. If you have an ATI card or anything older than GT200, make sure to turn hardware physics off.



Overall, fairly impressed by Cryostasis, it's definitely something different.
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Killer Kitty
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Wizardry 9
Looks pretty cool, thanks Ren for the always-awesome picture-filled game rundowns which everybody loves.
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