Turning The Spigot - Year 2: Week 37 - Cryostasis

The sun is shining and the birds are singing but Turning The Spigot is chilling out in the Arctic with this week's overlooked gem!

Cryostasis: Sleep Of Reason



Year: 2009
Platform: PC
Rating: Cool as a cadaver
# of Players: 1

Cryostasis is an interesting Russian adventure/horror/FPS that has been overlooked by far too many people since its release about a year ago. It channels a bit of the vibe of a game like Bioshock moreso than your average FPS in a very good way.

Set in 1981, you play as Alexander Nesterov, a meteorologist who is sent out to investigate a derelict icebreaker trapped in the ice in the midst of the Arctic. After your dogsled ditches you in a crevasse, you make your way into the ship and have to unravel the mystery of what happened to the crew and also survive a hostile environment that is gradually sapping the heat from your bones.


The harsh frozen setting of the game is the first thing that sets Cryostasis apart from your average FPS. In much the same way that Bioshock surrounded you with the creaking underwater city of Rapture to give you a sense of place, the North Wind is a constant presence as you make your way through its ravaged hull and fight to keep warm. Warmth is actually a replacement for the standard health meter in this game. You won't find health packs scattered about but instead need to search for sources of heat to stave off the incessant chill that pervades the ship. Thankfully, you can warm your hands on lightbulbs, generators and even the occasional torch wedged in a bulkhead. The heat sources are scattered about plentifully enough that you're never left feeling like the game is cheating but there is usually just enough distance from one heat source to another that you will be thankful to find it, especially if you've had a dust-up with one of the insane crew members who wander the corridors of the ship.


Cryostasis' other trick is that not only do you have to survive the icy confines of the present day North Wind, but you also will use Alexander's "Memory Echo" ability to hop into the penultimate moments of various doomed crew members and try to change their tragic fate so that things will change in the present. The game is quite forgiving when it comes to these sections of the game and you basically have unlimited chances to fix their fate. Once you do, more of the story will be unveiled and paths that were once closed to you will often be opened to allow you further progress into the bowels of the ship.

The combat system is a mix of first-person brawling (think Condemned with scrounged materials from the ship) and some actual first person shooting. You rarely come across more than one enemy at a time but as your are a meteorologist and not a super-soldier, you have to pick your battles carefully or you will end up like so many of the frozen corpses littering the ship.

Unfortunately, Cryostasis seems to suffer from some of the same technological glitches that a lot of games coming from Russia seem to suffer from. I've had trouble loading up old save files on my Steam copy of the game and was forced to restart the game from scratch the last time I played it. It is also very system intensive and will require a decent PC to do the game justice.


Another note of interest: Cryostasis also has the distinction of being the first game to use Nvidia's PhysX water technology and you can see how different the game looks depending on whether you have that feature enabled by clicking here.

You can buy Cryostasis on Steam for $12.99.