Tuesday

Cryostasis – If only it wasn’t scary

Filed under PC

I don’t like scary books or movies, and I hate scary games. I have kids, I’m terrified enough as it is, I don’t need to willingly scary the shit out of myself “for fun” in my free time. The whole horror genre just doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest these days, and from all that I thought it would be a great idea to try Cryostasis – The Sleep of Reason. Brilliant.

Here’s the short review of this title, from someone who doesn’t like games like this at all. If you’re into scary stuff and atmospheric/claustrophobic horror stories set in imersive and believable environments with an unfolding storyline that is more more than just “Doom 4″ then you’ll love this thing. I don’t,  I didn’t and to be honest, the only reason I decided to try it at all was when I read a review that said “this game will bring most systems to their knees”. Anyone who has overclocked their system is going to take comments like that as personal challenge, and I was installing shortly after reading it.

I initially tried out the Physx Tech Demo (video here), which ran very nicely giving me an average of 40fps (min 25, high 120) with everything maxed. This demo is pretty impressive looking with all the water and what not, and it ran really well on my rig. “Bring it”, I thought as I fired up the full game install. Bring it, indeed. I first ran the full game at version 1.0, which is minus any of the fancy advanced Physx stuff. Max settings, high frame rate, no problems. I’ll say this, it’s a very attractive game for what it is. As you may read elsewhere I’ve not seen any other game do cold better than this. The graphics, sound and overall atmosphere pull you into this frigid nightmare very effectively and I guess the fact that the game was made in Russia helps that aspect out some. The story unfolds in a unique way that makes you want to keep going, and it’s got a very particular feel to it. Not an FPS exactly, not a puzzle game either but this odd mix of the two that is really pleasantly different. If it wasn’t for the scary aspect I’d be all over it. Continue…