A different experience and not your average FPS. There's a fictional universe built around anomalies and a post nuclear Russia that spans books, movies and games. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Lovecraftian universe in its ability to create related media in a variety of forms. Metro 2033 is based on the book of the same name, which I would argue is based on another book (Roadside Picnic) which spawned a famous movie (Stalker)... you can see how there's an entire world of content out there. I've even played the board game (Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl). I think that context is important to understand Metro; they spend a lot of time world building and have made certain game mechanic decisions designed to 'pull you in' to that world. Which leads me to my point - if that world isn't interesting to you, then this game will be a slog. It deprives you of much needed ammo, forces you to manage constantly running out of breathable air, unbroken masks, and medkits and also deliberately makes the UI more realistic (there is no HUD) and in the process less usable. You also spend a lot of time in relentless firefights with hoards of mutant animals that can regularly feel hopeless as your last bullets are spent and your last minutes of filtered air are consumed. And that's the idea. If you want to know what living in the Metro world feels like, you will get to experience it. I think they achieved their goal quite well, it will be up to the player if that is fun to them or not.

Played through the campaign. I really appreciated the unique WWI setting, and the changes that brought to Battlefield. The weapons were slow, clunky, and different than stuff I'd played a million times before. I also really liked that you got to play as different people as you moved from conflict to conflict, and the Bi-Planes were really fun. It loses some points in that the campaign is very short, but at the same time I was pretty much done with it by the time it was over. Give it a try for some quick WWI action.

Horror RPG's are a really underutilized genre, and this one was a lot of fun. The idea that citizens of London are resource to use for XP if you harvested them, but also would close off side quests and harm the status of the city (making it more dangerous and more expensive) was interesting and fun to manage. I also liked the Vampiric skill tree, and the blood (mana) mechanics. My only complaint is this game is incredibly chatty, if you couldn't skip dialogue by pressing a key I would have quit that game. Otherwise, highly recommended.