Cryostasis is a first person shooter set aboard a frozen russian icebreaker, although first person puzzle may be more accurate. You will do your share of shooting as you explore the ship, using the well modeled weapons with you can aim with iron sights (No targeting reticle in this title!), but the emphasis is on finding the right path through the hostile environments, moving slowly and carefully, conserving energy, and solving the puzzles thrown at you via flashbacks where you briefly roleplay members of the crew before they died to prevent whatever killed them from happening. The puzzles range from simply ducking to dodge a blow, to safely navigating through an underwater corridor to seal a bulkhead, to disarming a crazed crewman with a rifle. The variety of tasks keeps things interesting, although the difficulty is very inconsistent, with some tasks being almost trivial while others will require multiple attempts to complete, or even to figure out what you are supposed to be doing. The Graphics in Cryostasis are appropriate and in some instances (lighting, shadows, ice and water effects) very impressive, while in other cases they look like a game from 5 years ago. In general the graphics feel slightly underwhelming compared to the processing power required to generate them. Occasional graphical glitching only exacerbates this effect. In addition, while there is a patch to utilize the Physx software package, I frequently encountered game crashing bugs which required me to turn physx off to pass them. The plot is minimal, and what there is tends to be incomprehensible - but not in a bad way. While none of the strange events are ever explained at all as the game escalates to a manic crescendo of insanity, the resolution works and I didn't feel let down or betrayed - only slightly confused. Combat is minimal, which is fortunate. Perhaps to enhance the "horror" feel of the game, most of the weapons feel underpowered and have staggering reload times. In a game with more combat this would be frustrating but in cryostasis the sparse encounters with enemies translate into workable, if unmemorable combat. The Physx patch introduces a new weapon which I would almost call game-breaking, as it trivializes combat against most if not all enemies - but it looks cool. The game benefits from short levels with good pacing, a memorable setting, and the interesting puzzle mechanic. While I can't say it's a "good" game, I certainly am glad that I had the experience of playing through it and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to the right gamer at the right price. 7/10

From Omega, "...Actually, "scary" is inaccurate. I think "What the hell was that?! Did that wall just move??? I wanna go home! WAHHH!" would do my feelings more justice. Despite being able to predict nearly every point where something would attempt to leap out and surprise me, again and again I found myself falling deep into the immersive storytelling of Cryostasis. In addition to the flashbacks and the ability to replay parts of the former crew's lives, a tale about a courageous leader named Danko is told along the way through a set of scattered postcards. The postcards come with their own narration, too, which is handy. Danko, like the captain of the North Wind, attempts to guide his followers to better lands. However, Danko makes some bad decisions that result in disaster, spurring his flock to mutate into hideous monsters and turn against him. The parallel storyline was a welcome treat since it served to solidify my interest in the game's main plot and it helped to keep me involved and wanting more..."