My Steam review from Feb 6, 2022

First I wanna address the elephant in the room. This game is racist. It presents Moscow as this mono-ethnically Russian city. In reality there are significant populations of Caucasian and Central Asian ethnic minorities living in Moscow, let alone smaller communities of other ethnicities. To give perspective to the foreigners, this is the equivalent of setting a game in Los Angeles or New York and having only white characters.

Now to the actual game. I feel like, I can't really comment upon the gameplay much because there isn't much to comment upon. It is pretty generic. I played for an hour, and most of that time was spent walking around claustrophobic hub areas with confusing level-design and talking to people. There was also one turret section and one actual gunfight, which was alright I guess, but kinda boring. I really didn't find anything about the gameplay that wasn't done better in other games. It was a little frustrating though that the enemies can shoot you with incredible accuracy in complete darkness with no flashlights on.

Speaking of darkness, this is probably the darkest game I've ever played. I cranked up the gamma to the max and still wasn't able to see anything that isn't right next to a direct source of light or in the range of my flashlight (which is pretty small). People tend to call Doom 3 too dark, but this one really takes the cake. At least in Doom 3 the flashlight has a wider range and the level design is more intuitive and better lit.

The real meat of this game, as I understand it, is supposed to be the story. Because that's seemingly what the game is shoving in your face the entire time. I quickly realized the writing was cringy and generic, and the voice-acting is terrible, so I stopped paying attention. But unfortunately, the game wouldn't let me skip those scripted scenes where you're being told something while you can't move. You also can't skip the completely unnecessary hub areas, which are linear af and serve no actual purpose. Worth pointing out that I played the Russian version, so the writing in the English version may not be this obnoxious, but it must still be pretty basic in its essence, unless they heavily altered it. The Russian version feels like it's written by young people who are trying to imitate the way the older generations spoke, while also imitating the Hollywood style of writing. It's just painful to listen to. And when I say writing, I mean not just the main story, but also all the NPCs you encounter in-game. They feel inauthentic, so they fail to create a sense that you're bring surrounded by real people.

And, from what I can understand, barring the story and the world-building, this game really doesn't have much going for it. The one hour I spent on it felt like a drag. I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna waste any more time on it.

The one thing I liked about the game though, was the graphics. That being said, for 2010 it's not the prettiest looking game, yet it's very demanding. I was getting between 25 and 50 FPS on my computer. Meanwhile the aforementioned Doom 3, which came out 6 years earlier, looks better and runs perfectly. For a more contemporary comparison, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, a 2014 remaster of a gorgeous open-world game from 2012 runs better on my computer than this. The fact that 90% of this game is covered in darkness, doesn't do it any favors either.