Cryostasis is a very different kind of horror game from what we are usually served. While giving you many tools to defend yourself, it also makes you feel extremely vulnerable at any given moment. As in the Penumbra series, most of the time the most favourable option is to evade the monsters altogether and to prowl away and hide. Aside from dealing with numerous adversaries, the player has to maintain body temperature by lighting fires and melting ice. It is set on an abandoned ship in the middle of Antarctic, and the player takes role of an untrained government official trying to find out just what the hell happened. Oh, and it was the first game in which water changed states in real time? When Cryostasis was first released (by a small Russian developer, mind you) it was compared to Crysis with good reason, but in terms of textures and physics, it outperformed the pompose game by a huge margin. Not to mention it was way better gameplay-wise. So why didn't it catch on and become a well-known and well-sold title? For the same reason Shadow of Chernobyl didn't. Bugs and the overall lack of polish. Right now, the game is perfectly playable with most -if not all- bugs corrected, but be warned: it's a scary and immersive title, and you will be terrified. Try playing all the Stalker titles, followed by Cryostasis and then Metro games one after another. There is an off chance that you will turn Russian and a bottle of quality vodka will appear on your computer table. Are there any unheralded gaming gems that you think deserve to be on this list? Share your own picks below.
