Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason review

The freezing environments in which you spend the duration of Cryostasis are a peculiarly useful metaphor for the creaking, glacial game itself. On a marooned Russian nuclear ice breaker, meteorologist Alexander Nesterov must discover how this enormous boat came to be wrecked in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. The entire ship is rigid with ice, and Nesterov is constantly in danger of freezing to death or being attacked by the freakish zombie-like creatures that inhabit its 70 billion identical rooms.

The premise is so stark raving silly that it could have been fun. Apparently the extreme cold has caused the human crew to become mutant beasts, whether aggressive, bearded axmen or metallic-legged spider creatures.

But Nesterov does more than simply survive: he’s also imbued with the gift of Echo Memory. This means he is able to tap into the last memories of frozen corpses (because they were frozen, see!) and relive them. In doing so, he can change the decision that led to that shipmate’s death, and save him. For some reason. As if this weren’t daft enough, your agonisingly slow clomping around the metallic boat-belly is incessantly interrupted by flashbacks of events that happened before the accident (the plot!).