Cold Fear is a 2005 survival horror third-person shooter video game developed by Darkworks and published by Ubisoft for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows.

The game is centered on Tom Hansen, a member of the United States Coast Guard, who comes to the aid of a Russian whaler in the Bering Strait and finds a mysterious parasite has turned the crew into zombie-like creatures.

Discovering the involvement of both the Russian mafia and the CIA, Hansen sets out to ensure the parasites don't reach land.

To make the ship roll realistically, the developers had to write a completely new program (dubbed the "Darkwave editor") to allow them to control movement on both the vertical and the horizontal axes.

Due to the random nature created by this, the player character required nine times the number of animations usually seen in third-person games.

The game's soundtrack was composed by Tom Salta, with Marilyn Manson contributing a song from his 2003 album The Golden Age of Grotesque.

[5][6] Although critics were generally impressed with the environments and the opening scenes, they found the game too short and felt it failed to live up to its promising beginning.

[11] The first half of the game is set on a whaler in the middle of a storm, and the conditions on the deck affect the degree of control the player has over Hansen.

There are also numerous environmental hazards on the deck which react to the motion of the ship, such as swinging electrical wires and crates hooked up to ropes.

Players can find ammo and health packs distributed throughout the game at certain predetermined locations and also by looting the bodies of fallen enemies.

[15] The game begins with a Navy SEAL team deploying on a Russian whaler, the Eastern Spirit, in the Bering Strait.

Seeing his team is gone, CIA Special Agent Jason Bennett, who is supervising the mission from another location, orders any other government vessel in the vicinity to investigate.

The crew of the Ravenswood split into teams, but within moments of boarding, only one remains; Tom Hansen, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, currently serving in the United States Coast Guard, who hears his shipmates being killed over the radio.

These experiments led to the discovery that exocels could re-animate recently deceased humans, and the creation of an antidote to counter infection.

[17] Hansen heads to the radio room to request help, but instead he is answered by Bennett, who tells him that Yusupov is on board and must be captured for questioning.

Hansen soon finds Bakharev, who tells him that to disable the radio jammer around the rig so he can contact Bennett, he will need Anischenko to get him past a retinal scanner.

Hansen learns that Kamsky and Bakharev were under orders to make the exocels as dangerous as possible, which they had succeeded in doing, but without any way to control the resulting creatures.

[22] On October 6, however, Ubisoft announced they would be publishing the Darkworks developed game in March 2005 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC.

Once the ship's movement reached a certain angle, Hansen and any other characters on deck start to slide, and have to compensate in whatever direction was necessary relative to their position.

According to Levastre, this meant Hansen required nine times the animations usually seen in third-person games (center, front, back, left, right and four intermediary positions).

Inverse kinematics were then used to create the nine directional animations, with the engine calculating the level of character compensation depending on the angle of the ship.

[13] Marilyn Manson contributed to a song to the game; "Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth", from his 2003 album The Golden Age of Grotesque.

He praised the opening of the game, arguing that, like Hansen himself, the player feels a strong sense of disorientation as they get used to being on the ship in the middle of a storm.

She argued: "Atmospherically, Cold Fear is derivative and predictable, which is a shame considering that it is, at times, an enjoyable action game".

He praised the graphics and sound, but concluded: "With so much attention paid to the environments, Darkworks almost made a great game.