Cold Fear™

Recommended. A fixed-camera survival horror set on a storm-tossed Russian whaler whose rolling deck animates the entire level, trading modern polish for an idea nothing else of its era attempted, and mostly landing it. The swaying ship is the star: camera, balance and geometry all shift with the waves, and storm waves plus electrified floors make the open deck properly lethal. The arsenal climbs from pistol and shotgun through AK, MP5, speargun, grenade launcher and flamethrower, medkit vending machines and ammo restock rooms keep the economy generous, and document-driven lore (codes, valves, retinal scanners, diary pages) paces the chapters well. Inconsistent checkpoints sometimes abandon a whole chapter, a resistance bar doubling as stamina serves no visible purpose, and one trap-and-barrel room plus a chaotic second boss phase feel badly built rather than hard; judged beside its own generation rather than a certain famous rival, it holds up completely.

A fun survival horror game that is worth checking out if you like Resident Evil 4. The controls are a bit worse and the story/characters are pretty barebones, but I dig the premise. The final boss was infuriating and not fun. I recommend playing this with a Steam Controller because I can't imagine doing this with a mouse and keyboard.

Fun game, slightly janky controls but to be fair, better than most old games. I would've loved to have known this existed back in the day. Hopefully they add it back to the steam store so it can be purchased again. Would love a reboot/remake!

This review is solely written for the port of this game, not the actual quality of it. This port suffers badly from no controller support, resolution problems and etc. I had to play PS2 version instead of this one, so yeah if you really want to try this game PS2 version might be your best bet.

♥♥♥♥ controls and no manual saving. such a waste of money and time. good thing they delisted this garbage.

Cold Fear is Ubisoft’s response to Resident Evil. It’s an excellent survival horror game set on a rickety, rusty, and terrifying ship. The protagonist must figure out what’s going on and save his own skin from strange creatures. In terms of gameplay, it’s a fixed-camera title, very similar to the early Resident Evil games. The game is obviously best played with a gamepad; I don’t recall if it supports it natively, but thanks to Steam Input or Joy to Key, we can play almost any title that doesn’t require a gamepad. I absolutely loved this game and played it a lot on the PS2; I bought the Steam version just to have this version as well, and I’m glad I did, because unfortunately, as of 2026, it’s no longer available for purchase on Steam. If you’re lucky, you might still be able to find a few Steam keys. I highly recommend it, both in this version and the console version—provided, of course, that you can get your hands on a copy and that you love survival horror. If you’re a fan of the genre, well, this is an excellent alternative to Resident Evil—a game that, unfortunately, didn’t achieve the success it deserved, overshadowed, if I recall correctly, by Resident Evil 4, which had lost…