STASIS

In a simple equation Stasis could be summed up as: Stasis = Superb production (amazing writing + great atmosphere + inspired art design + novel story) Would recommend any day.

There's a lot of outside 'inspiration' in Stasis, but the game never quite lives up to the reputation of the titles that it imitates. It wants to be 'Alien', but sub-par writing and gameplay means that it falls well short of the mark. On the technical side of things, the game is so-so. The highly detailed, atmospheric backgrounds are definitely the game's strong point, and for a while, it almost feels as though it can coast along on this alone. On the other hand, in-game animation and cinematics are clunky and unimpressive. Audio is a major weakpoint; the music and SFX aren't bad, but the voice acting is rather dreadful. Storytelling is where the game really falls apart. Stasis leans on its inspirations to a fault. There's a long opening pan over the spaceship (Alien), interactive surgery (Dead Space 2), and an elevator blocked by biomass (System Shock 2 – and in Hydroponics to boot!). There's a lot of appropriation, but it's deployed in a mindless scattershot way, and none of the borrowed material ever meaningfully contributes to the atmosphere or story. It isn't helped by the writing, which veers between simply mediocre and absolutely dreadful. Characters act arbitrarily and without motivation, the tone varies wildly, and the final, ridiculous twists would make M. Night Shyamalan proud. Gameplay-wise, the entire game is undercut by passivity of the genre. The protagonist can certainly get killed, but it's almost always the direct result of player action. Despite the omnipresent gore, there's nothing in the shadows out to get the player; once you realize that you can wander around safely, the game loses any capacity to inspire fear, regardless of how many dismembered corpses it puts in your way. The rest is the usual adventure game puzzle solving, with the usual dose of find-the-pixel item hunting and occasionally baffling leaps of logic; it's par for the course for genre veterans, but predictably irritating for everyone else.

This is the embodiment of sci-fi horror when it comes to adventure games.

I could pray to all the the gods in all cultures and this TRASH game will still crash on start up

It's... playable, but that's the best I can say. The storyline is similar to other sci-fi horrors (especially Dead Space). So we are exploring (again) a derelict space station. And we are not alone. Nothing original, but it's acceptable. The visuals are mediocre - this is one of the games with great looking screenshots, but once you play it, you see mostly crude animations. Hard to tell which elements are interactive, especially when there is no way to highlight them (I know it's a "late" standard, but still it should be present in a game from 2015). Worst part: the puzzles are weird and doesn't make much sense. There are some hints hidden between lines of multiple journals and notes scattered around the place, but it doesn't really help. You'll get stuck quickly, sometimes the game will tell you directly what to do, but your goals will often be unclear. Path to achieving them - even worse. Sadly, although I really liked the idea, I can't recommend this game. It had potential, and at some point was pleasant to play, but it's not enough.