Well done game featuring the kind of flat, slow and frustrating quest of a character I couldn't care less about.
Although you learn quickly how to control, fight and interact, gameplay was everything but fluent. The game seemed very slow to me. I’m not talking about graphic performance, but the average pace in which you advance on the story and on the confusing paths of the ship. For long periods of time, I simply remained bored, even when I stumped into a monster or two; after a while, everything seems flat, slow and unattractive.
I hated not being able to find my way, or any map for that matter, and I stayed away from this game for entire weeks because I got stuck at a certain point. It’s not that I was very stuck; I just didn’t feel like looking around for an answer. The story is OK, but when you are on a survival-horror game and you don’t feel a lot of horror and you couldn’t care less for the survival of your character, then something is not right. A darker, more laidback and more veteran main character with a touch of irony would’ve been much better for the game than this arrogant Nick Carter clone with full cheeks and the look of someone who hasn’t faced one atrocious thing in his whole life.
One thing I absolutely liked about this game, besides the ship’s outdoor atmosphere (at first) was the sound. It sounds like it was very carefully designed, which is always good. One thing I absolutely hated was not being able to save. I mean, moving sloooowly along endless and confusing doorways and hatches that take forever to open is not a very funny activity itself, but losing about an hour of progress earned with boredom just by being swept off the deck by a random wave is way too much.
The game is not always boring, it can even be exciting at some points, but only the first time you get there. Lose, and you’ll be sent 40 minutes back to a save point, beat monsters that come out exactly form you know where, go through the tedious environment and then back to the exciting point, only to discover that it isn’t that thrilling anymore.
Many of the things I disliked about Cold Fear are common to every game of this genre, but this game has some particular flaws of its own that practically killed it for me: average story, unnecessarily slow rhythm, awfully antipathetic main character, uneven storytelling (which is rather short), monotonous graphics and some points of frustration.
I believe this game will be well received by fans of this genre, because it has every required feature plus innovative atmosphere and great sound. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else, at least not enthusiastically. There are tons of worst games out there; however, this game didn’t amuse me, scare me or excite me… and I will forget about it very quickly.