mgeorge on 12/1/2010 at 18:58
Quote Posted by mothra
with so many discounts you could just buy, try and if not working, play it later. Just turn off physx and use a lower resolution and you should be fine. What I can't predict is how it behaves on single-core machines, I only saw it running on 3 different dualcore-setups.
From what I understand it only utilizes one core either way according to their website. And I think one of the reasons so many people have problems with it.
But I don't have a powerhouse system by any means and I'm able to play it fine, although there are slowdowns here and there. The thing is though, the gameplay is fairly slow most of the time, so you don't need a million frames per second.
I'm loving the game so far, although I'm only on chapter 5. The story seems pretty cool, although I don't understand what's going on yet. I just hope it has a coherent ending.
mothra on 13/1/2010 at 10:34
the ending - or better, endlevel, not the story itself - was surprising and confusing the first time I played it but made perfect sense afterwards and now is one of the better bosslevels I played, not in execution but context/symbolismn. such a cool game.
Judith on 16/1/2010 at 16:53
The more I play this game, the more I'm disappointed. I was thinking this will be something like Penumbra on the icebreaker but then it became a poorly executed shooter :erg: Also, the performance is pretty bad, which is weird, judging from the environment - mostly simple rooms with pipes, grates and hatches.
Game is focused on exploration, saving "frozen" souls and pressing a button from time to time, all that really changes is your weapon arsenal. There's no sense of progress or change after a few chapters: just another room, another button, another enemy.
The ambiance is great, though, I love those shaders where ice melts on the walls and equipment, it looks stunning.
Malleus on 16/1/2010 at 17:03
Keep playing, don't give up. The story will get more and more interesting as you progress. I say don't judge it until you've seen the end.
Judith on 16/1/2010 at 17:11
The story so far seems to be a parallel between the traditional legend and the events which taken place on the ship, so nothing really fancy, but I was surprised when I got to the reactor room and seeing just a dark hole there... I thought that I'm able to restore lights/heating due to its functioning, so now I'm suspecting this might be "it's all in your head" kind of twist, not too original either ;) But I will finish it definitely, at least out of curiosity :)
EvaUnit02 on 16/1/2010 at 18:20
Your prediction is dead wrong, BTW.
catbarf on 16/1/2010 at 21:48
When I did the mental echo with the reactor worker, I was prepared for having to repeat the same process to fix the reactor, while getting attacked. When I opened the door and nearly stepped over a chasm, I was stunned, and then got the stupidest grin. The game knows the cliches.
Judith on 17/1/2010 at 00:52
Just finished it, but the amount of frustration turned the victory to "finally I can uninstall this crap and move on". It was a great opportunity to make a terrific game - wasted. Watch the spoilers ahead.
The idea for a story is pretty good. English translation and voiceover kills it a little, but this is nothing in comparison to frustration caused by inconsistency in core mechanics, map gameplay and level design. And the frustration grows the more you get towards the end.
The best communication between the player and the game is at the beginning. There's your body temperature, air temperature, you have to keep yourself warm to stay alive - fine. You get some primitive blunt weapons and the fighting is hard, which is obvious, your moves are constrained by your outfit and you're not in a perfect condition due to the temperature. Taking damage = losing your heat rule seems a bit weird, but it makes some sense when it comes to melee combat, you just get so exhausted by being beaten so you can't go any further and freeze to death. You don't even formulate such thoughts in your head, as it all seem to fit.
It changes when you get firearms and loose small portions of heat when shot (remember that at this point player has no idea about the whole plot/ending). This breaks the immersion awfully, IMO, it's just ludicrous.
So is the "set" of environmental tools, limited to 2 things actually, doors/hatches and a button. The way the game communicates the usage of those things to you is a total disaster at best, resulting in TONS of trial and error gameplay:
1) Some doors can be opened, some not. There is no consistent difference between which type is which. For sure, you can't open those without a handle. Those which have a handle/opening mechanism can be opened - or not. Sometimes the same door in a location cannot be opened, and after a while, can - e.g. when you wait for a monster to spawn and kill it.
2) Buttons, very similar case. You push a lot of them, you actually don't know why, for most of the time. Because they're glowing, and turning something on. Sometimes it's heat/lights, sometimes it's some machinery or hatches, but for most of the time there's no visual clue for their function, except for the few rare cases of control panels, when you might suspect what you're actually doing. What is worse, there are situations when you have to push the same button the second time, e.g. after killing a monster in a room nearby, and game gives you absolutely no visual hint or no reason to do it - pure trial and error, again.
3) Monsters and overall scariness. Before firearms there was some fear involved, melee fights were difficult, encounters weren't too frequent, there was some thought in creating the atmosphere, often you heard things before seeing a monster, the ambiance was great and sound design definitely contributed to the great mood of the game. But after getting a rifle (am I not too biased, seeing this as a "turning point" in the game?) the monsters appear in greater numbers. Often they are spawned nearby, out of the blue. The "horror game" mood disappeared due to "ha! gotcha!" trick, used much too often. From the second half of the game I don't recall being scared at all (Doom 3 had the same problem).
4) Many other situations, where game designers expected the player to know what to do without having it properly communicated through the surroundings or game interface. Rescuing frozen souls often had this problem, I had to restart most of its sections it a few times to find a clue what to do next. These days, when map gameplay is something iterated and thought over for hours and hours, it's almost unbelievable that Cryostasis' devs didn't even try to minimize the amount of complete player failures here. Usually the time-frame is so short that you have to give it another try or two, to actually notice the possibility of doing something. This is awfully wrong, design-wise.
But that wasn't always the case, I also liked how the game rewarded perceptive players. I remember the situation with the aquarium, later in the game, where you were given a proper visual clue in the present to what has happened in the past and you knew what to do. On the contrary, the scene with drowned worker by the hatch and the bear escape was a series of WTFs for me. Also, finding the way to win the last fight, short time-frame to learn what to do and a lot of trial error before that.
Generally, a lot of my actions were clear to me AFTER I did it, just as if the developers assumed I played the game once already or had their knowledge about it, which is really an amateurish mistake, often seen in PC mods. Frankly, I didn't expect such basic design mistakes from a retail game.
All in all, this is great waste of setting and nice plot idea, IMO :(
Malleus on 17/1/2010 at 01:15
Geez, you played and analysed it like a game designer. :) I never thought of those things - when I play this game (even if I just load a save to check something) I'm immediately lost in it. Couldn't care less about the randomness of openable doors, having to press random buttons, or scariness.
But it's kinda funny you tried to make up a physical explanation for the heat=life mechanic in a game that let's you travel back into the past/memories of the dead and change their fate. :) By the time that game mechanic was explained I already figured that something's not right about this, and these things are not to be taken at face value.
Also, I thought trial and error was the point of (some of) the mental echo scenes - after all, often the characters themselves didn't know what to do to survive.
Judith on 17/1/2010 at 09:39
Thanks :) I only did it because the game reminded me that I'm playing it, which is one of the main things that games should avoid :)
It's true, as amateur level designer I read a bit about those things, especially when it comes to stealth games and shooters. Some of these ideas or principles stay at the back of my mind and surface from time to time :) I guess some parts of this analysis were driven by frustration, I should have waited until today's morning and give it some more thought ;)
But, the main rule remains the same: repeated player failure shouldn't be one of the main parts of gameplay design, because it leads to frustration. Shooters take partial failure into account, giving you health packs/time to regenerate. Stealth games like Thief have a very thin margin for failure. When you're detected, you do not have much time before you get killed, but designers give you at least one "zero failure" path, you just have to take your time, observe the environment and look for the "flaw in the security system" (places to hide, guard path and the area he covers at one time, etc.) to exploit it.
And what is the most important, the designers don't assume you know the map you just entered, they always try to communicate with you, in a more or less subtle way. Even the games set in some improbable and crazy worlds have some basic set of consistent rules.
