Fear in the nuclear ice breaking ship.
Publishers: 1C Company, 505 Games
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Release date: 27 February 2009
Genre: FPS, Survival Horror
Players: 1
System Requirements: OS: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7, Intel Core 2 Duo/AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2GB RAM, 6GB hard disk space, Nvidia Ge-force 8800/Ati Radeon HD 2900, 16-bit sound card
The plot is about a meteorologist, Alexander Nesterov who finds the wreck of a nuclear icebreaker called the North Wind in the North Pole in 1981. Alexander finds himself aboard the ship and starts, what we would expect any average meteorologist would do, investigating what happened to the ship and its crew. Along with the search for clues the “hero” will find drawings which are depicting a story of old times similar with the events taken place on the ship. The scientist will find himself fighting the crew members and the prisoners that were transported, who have undergone a strange metamorphosis both physical and psychological. He furthermore has the ability of changing the actions of fallen crew members, thus, changing the past, and in the long run, the future, don’t worry though cause this is normal, every meteorologist can read the memories of frozen dead sailors.
So anyway your main source of information is this so called Mental Echo power. In the official description it said that mental echo is - the ability to penetrate another character's memory and change the actions taken by that character in the past. This can involve saving people's lives by taking over their bodies in their memories and changing the course of history. Sounds cool, but errr I just think that’s it’s the best way that Action Forms found to tell you whats going on. Storytelling in this game totally sucks, all clues are given through this Echo power, which fails to keep you interested, cause lets face it: mutated Russians, the north pole, and nuclear stuff sound cool but won't keep you thrilled for much time, leaving you a gap, that the developers didn't manage to fill in time before you eventually quit the game. Like any good old Russian story involving nuclear crisis, ice and Russians that respects itself, so is this one, involving a captain choosing a perilous route through the Arctic, ignoring the, as we can already expect by the cliché of the story, warnings of the first officer. From this point on the story goes as every else : Captain fails to spot ICEBERG, ship meets iceberg, ship collides with iceberg, captain tries to correct his mistake doing the most stupid thing from all possible choices, ice gets mad and then BANG radiation and mutants all over the place. Some of the mutants are easily qualified as the weirdest you've ever met, you will actually have to fight with a guy resembling a tower.
Gameplay
The game is set in a nuclear ship wreck, which is out of power, deep in the North Pole as we already stated above, ice and darkness are everywhere in the ship making a perfect scene for a survival horror. Our scientist wields some melee weapons, i.e an axe, and firearms like the Mosin-Garand. Although it is considered a FPS, there is no targeting cycle, aiming must be careful, since you can’t take many hits and ammunition are quite scarce.
The plot takes part in extreme cold conditions. Instead of a health bar there is a body thermometer and an external thermometer. The max health that can be acquired is no more that the external heat. The internal temperature is the current health and it is decreased by every blow on our character. Health can be replenished at heat projectors, such as lamps, stoves and torches, so basically a guy hits you in the head with an axe but its ok cause you have your radiator with you.
The “hero” can run for a limited amount of time and do some minor jumps. This is logical, due to the heavy equipment and clothing the scientist wears and to the extreme cold conditions. His stamina is replaced overtime at a slow rate and at a faster rate while close to heat projectors.
The environments tents to get a bit repetitious, witch you will say its normal being on a ship and all that, but when it occurs to the degree that you can't say the difference between rooms anymore, well that’s something players rarely appreciate.
Graphics
Graphics are superb in this game. The ship’s compartments are highly detailed, which covered in ice and with the dim lighting make an excellent atmosphere. The games supports the Nvidia PhysX water graphics, the first time to be employed. This results in outstanding graphic effects when the ice melts from the walls of the ship when the heating is turned on.
The animation of the characters is not of any breakthrough, yet it is realistic with no exaggerations. The movements of the enemies are kind of numb, but it is due to the metamorphosis and the low temperature. All in all graphics are not to let you down!
Sound
The ambient totally feats with the cold and dark atmosphere. Every sound is realistic, from the heavy breath of the hero, the wind blowing through broken parts of the ship to the ice being crushed over the character's weight. Literally the producers did a good job on putting you inside the ship. The game doesn’t have any soundtrack, thankfully, or else the game wouldn't be as spooky as it is without any.
Summarizing, the game had the potential of becoming a great hit, but somewhere between storytelling and gameplay it lost its way. It gets really monotonous over time as the repetition of the fights and more-o-less the same compounds will tire you.
My proposal is to lust turn of the lights, maximize the volume and be alone. That is how you will get the max out of the game.
So the weatherman eventually saved the day but his story let us a bit chilly.
Prons: Nice graphics, chilling atmosphere, decent gameplay
Cons: Gets somewhat monotonous, not so scary for a survival horror
Plot 7
Graphics 9
Gameplay 6
Sound 8
Constitution 8
General 6,5
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| Zzz...i got a little bored |
The game is worth buying in my opinion. But, it would have been better if you could buy it with some of your friends to share the cost, since there is no multiplayer, because it is quite expensive for the average of what that offers.
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