Date:
Monday , June 01, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Cryostasis Gameplay Performance and IQ

Cryostasis arrived from Russia this spring, mostly to hushed anonymity. NVIDIA seems to want it to be a PhysX showcase, but is it really up to the job? Come with us as we find out, using seven of today's best video cards.

Introduction

For many Americans, Cryostasis may be the first exposure to developer Action Forms and publisher 1C Company. Action Forms is responsible for a small number of games, most notably the Carnivores series of dinosaur hunting action games. 1C, on the other hand, has been a part of distributing PC games in Eastern Europe for nearly 20 years. Developed by Action Forms and distributed by 1C Company, Cryostasis comes to the United States by way of a partnership with Aspyr Media, Inc.

Cryostasis

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Cryostasis is a first-person action game set in the Arctic Circle during the early 1980s aboard a Russian nuclear ice-breaker ship, The North Wind. The player-hero, Alexander Nesterov, is a meteorologist, sent via a sled-dog team to investigate what happened aboard the ship.

Alexander has only a few basic melee weapons and some frozen Russian firearms with which to defend himself from the undead crew. Unfortunately for Alexander, they have unfortunately undergone a series of bizarre mutations in the extremely cold and radioactive environment of the derelict vessel.

Cryostasis is a story-driven single-player game without a multiplayer component. The story is somewhat character-driven, but only to the extent that you are meant to recognize some of the key characters, but not necessarily empathize with them. Some of the more interesting tasks which Alexander must undertake involve stepping into the memories of the trapped crew-members, in an attempt to free their souls from their frozen tombs in a process called "Mental Echo." Doing so will render obstacles passable, and progress in Cryostasis is essentially impossible without completing these memory sequences. Luckily, the player gets as many chances as it takes to get it right.

Cryostasis is a completely linear game, with each puzzle having only one solution. There is also no selectable level of difficulty in this game. These two facts ensure that just about every gamer will have the same experience in Cryostasis.

The entire game is spent solving puzzles, killing mutated zombies, and searching desperately for a source of heat from which warmth can be restored. The only form of Health in Cryostasis is body heat. If you run out, you will die. Restoring your heat involved finding a warm light bulb, a generator, a space heater, or even a pile of burning embers from a campfire by which Alexander can warm his hands.

The Technology

Cryostasis uses Action Forms’ own AtmosFear engine, version 2.0. Unfortunately, the "Engines" menu item on the Action Forms website goes to an "Under Construction" page, stating "A new engine information will be available soon." However, a little search-Fu tells us that the AtmosFear engine’s various versions have powered every game that Action Forms has made.

Looking at Cryostasis’ graphics menu, we were able to learn a few things about the engine. Most importantly, it supports NVIDIA’s PhysX and Microsoft’s DirectX 10 technologies. In fact, NVIDIA’s nZone website has some information about Cryostasis:

. . .Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason is specially designed for the NVIDIA GPUs. . .

The nZone website recommends at least a GeForce 8 series GPU for Cryostasis.

The Video Cards

Included in this evaluation are seven video cards; four from NVIDIA, and three from AMD. From NVIDIA, we are using a GeForce GTX 295, a GeForce GTX 285, a GeForce GTX 275, and a GeForce GTX 260 (with 216 shaders.) From AMD, we have the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the Radeon HD 4890, and the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Given that the game is clearly optimized for NVIDIA hardware, we expected this game to be an uphill battle for the AMD GPUs.