So much stuff has happened since 2008. The last, at least for now, game from Action Forms got released and since then they were in “a stasis”. The same game got to be my second ever post that can be called a review or an opinion. Three years later me and DiodorOFF interviewed Igor Karev, as per link above, about Action Forms. And every hot summer me and my best friend used to replay the game just so we can feel the chills. It never failed. Yet, since 2012 I have not played the game and since then, I’ve gotten a widescreen monitor and, very recently, a GPU from nVidia, so now I had a chance to replay the game “the way it’s meant to be played” with the really beautiful PhysX effects turned on and running (almost) well. It was as if I was playing it for the first time again. It’s a shame that the game is still not digitally sold due to conflicts with 1c…
In 2008 the game felt like unlike anything, both visually and technologically. And to be fair, most of the “honest” technological tricks that Action Forms used in the game still look fantastic. Textures are layered in 3-4 layers just to show the stages of freezing and who cares if this is not the “optimal way of doing things”. Should we do very high resolution notes with text easily readable even without zooming in, without serious low-poly versions of the model? Yep, let’s keep that. I mean, sure, there’s enough crappy stuff here as well and humans still look pretty bad. Though, that said, even 4A in their far more recent and very advanced Metro Redux couldn’t make people look much better anyway. At least in Cryostasis they look stylized.
And the storytelling is so great in this game. Some awkward moments, some surreal cutscenes. Some overacting VA in Russian (and it’s the way to go, if you can somehow play the game that way and still understand it), yet the text is wonderful and it always hits the right emotional spot. The scenes and the framing, though, gosh. So many extremely simple visual ideas used in a fantastically smart way. I mean, sure, the game still looks good just purely from a technical standpoint, but its those interesting inventive ideas that stick out the exact same not aging way that some of the genius visual trickery was used in Silent Hill 3 12 years ago. Remember those amazing walls that “cry blood”, that basically no one has tried to copy ever since? Lots of similar stuff in Cryostasis. I mean, there’s an enemy who has a minuature jail inside his face. And a combat sequence where you’re shooting at enemies one the cinema screen. And then one of them comes outside of that 2D flat cloth screen into the room with you. Philosophic musings are mixed with sci-fi, metaphors with poems and prose by Maxim Gorky. There are some moments that feel a tiny bit too preachy, but they don’t ruin the rest of the game.
What isn’t good with the game and hasn’t aged well too, is how unbalanced it sometimes is. It’s a weird mix of survival horror elements with first person brawling and shooting and there are moments where you don’t feel like the game is being fair. It’s actually great that the AI of the enemies isn’t particularly bright, so you could have an easier time defeating them, since otherwise some sections would be just obnoxious. Enemies sometimes can spawn out of nowhere too, especially when the game expects you to look the other way. And some of the “mental echoes”, playable memories where you must change the past to change the present, are just completely unclear in what they expect from you. Yet if you fail, you have to restart the entire sequence from the start most of the time. The concept is great and there are tons of great moments, but that’s why the really bad ones stick out.
I’d love to see Cryostasis sold digitally again. Preferably patched, as it’s rather poorly optimized for multi-threaded CPUs. Even better if there was some Unreal Engine 4 remaster, with updated PhysX, no loading screens, rebalancing of the game… Yeah, I’d buy it at a high price. But I fear that there are very few who would care and the fact that you can’t buy the game isn’t helping to get it new fans. But it’s a fantastic game. And it really helps during these +35 Celsius days. Much chillier this way.
P.S. There’s a PhysX connected bug in the game, so it crashes when it’s turned on. One is with the dogs in the kitchen, and one is in the “final battle”. If you have a crash, try turning it off and proceeding past the scene before turning it back on.
P.P.S. Oh and yeah, this is still the only game that uses PhysX as an actual weapon! Water gun shoots water at enemies and looks really silly if you don’t have PhysX on – like a teeny tiny pee stream.