Ok so, hear me out for a bit here. The ice beam, in normal contexts, is a bit neat I guess. Instead of actually killing an enemy and making it Poof, you freeze it in place and it becomes usable as a platform. You normally aren't getting much mileage out of that though, except for in the Designated Ice Beam Puzzle Rooms with the little rocket parabeetle-esque enemies. (Why did Dread not have any of these btw. Dread literally had the ice missile and didn't even use it for a single puzzle, instead just "oh you can use this to kill this arbitrary roadblock plant now.) A lot of the time in a casual first playthrough, the freezing of enemies can actually get somewhat annoying.
Where the item gets really fun though, is when you are trying to completely sequence break the fuck out of the game, or in a randomizer where you don't have the tools you're expected to have but you DO have the ice beam. Intentionally manipulating enemy rage states, and limited patrols, to get them into the right spot to use them as a platform, is a VERY fun puzzle even though it is absolutely not intended by the developers whatsoever.
Come on, look at this.
https://streamable.com/826tyx
in this, I:
-wait for the enemy to get in the proper range
-melee counter the enemy with momentum, but without actually countering anything, to give it a large quantity of knockback without actually damaging it
-right after it's pushed against the wall, i freeze it in place.
-in this game, the devs decided that actually you shouldn't be having fun :( and made it so enemies larger than a single "tile" that are frozen don't actually become solid, and still damage you. i actually hate that they did this, because you literally get space jump right after you get ice missiles ANYWAYS. and space jump is just. behind a storm missile gate theres absolutely nothing that being able to freeze bigger enemies would help you get easier that just doing the vanilla path wouldn't. why did dread do this.
-i very quickly place a crossbomb in midair, and use it to give myself horizontal momentum, directly to the enemy. This lets me DAMAGE BOOST OFF OF THE FROZEN ENEMY, which was only there due to being frozen, as that area is firmly outside of its patrol.
-this dboost gives me enough verticality to have time to exit morph, and then walljump off of the wall to grab the item.
absolutely none of this is intended, as normally you don't have ice yet, and the item that lets you flash step is literally right below you. it is still incredibly satisfying to pull this off, even WITH all the limitations placed upon this freezing power by the game.
for another example, i will use something taken from a romhack.
https://streamable.com/wlx1zs
in this scenario, i have decided to disable literally every single one of my items, except for morph, ice beam, and the funky modded item that is only there for Plot. In this scenario, I have fallen down a waterlogged pit to grab an item, and now need to get out with just morph, ice, and super missiles. (I just want to say that doing ice beam shenanigans underwater without grav is SO aesthetic to me for some reason. Idk it just. is. It very much feels like you're doing stuff you aren't supposed to and I LOVE that.)
in this, i take advantage of the very overshadowed aspect of super missiles, that being that they KNOCK DOWN any nearby enemies that are attached to a wall. Using this, i can knock down an enemy, and then freeze it while it's still falling down. I then do some funky midair morphs because super is fun like that, and then again, take advantage of enemy movement patterns to climb my way up using only three super missiles (and also cheat a bit because i was tired and didn't want to rerecord the whole thing after not getting it first try after so long). This is very much not intended whatsoever and is so off the beaten path, but at the time I was working a bit on "hey so theres a randomizer for this romhack being in development. I wanna find some fucked up ice beam shenanigans." It feels like something out of its own dedicated puzzle game, and is just REALLY FUN to figure out. Honestly if there was a puzzle platformer all about doing fucked up shit with turning enemies into temporary platforms i'd buy it in an instant. If there is one PLEASE tell me.
Idk I just really like sequence breaking with this item and/or using it in places i'm not meant to have it yet.