Metro 2033

[PizzaSHARK]

I was insanely annoyed that the guns actually require mechanics to use. None of them are just 'put ammo in and fire'. They all have their quirks - at least anything other than the basic pistol, anyway. Drives me insane. I spend far too much time focusing on making sure I'll be able to fire into the fray when the time comes, when I'd rather be enjoying the game itself.

All of the rifles are spray and pray. The automatic shotguns have a slightly unusual reloading mechanic but just holding down R will ensure you fully reload them. None of the pneumatic weapons are good for prolonged fights so most of the time you're just gonna overpressure them right before sending an arrow into the back of someone's head, and then swap back to something else.

I did find it unusual that they were such sticklers for realism on the automatic shotgun loading cycle but the revolver apparently comes with an unlimited number of speedloaders that are always ready to go.

[Solazz]

I think it's a great game. Wonderful atmosphere with a nice setting. Apparently, I'm a huge wimp, though. I thought it was pretty scary.

Also going to have to agree with people on least giving the Russian voice overs a try.

[edgecrusher]

Yeah, I might do another playthrough with Russian voices and a more difficult setting. Though to be fair, it's pretty easy to mask mediocre (not terrible, but mediocre) voice acting when you don't speak the language : P

[Wilian]

I like the setting and the atmosphere of the game but there are few things that keep putting me off it.

First of all it's heavy as hell to run, with no graphical fidelity to back up the enormous requirements to run it smoothly on max settings with HD resolutions. Expesially so since the levels are very small to begin with so there isn't much to load up.

Which brings up my second gripe, levels are small. Way too many loading screens keep popping up as I play on, which is one of the remnants of a game designed to run on lacking memory capacity of a console.

Then of course the other console centric stuff like small FoV and mouse acceleration, but putting past those it's one of the "poorer" console ports I'd still recommend playing just because the rest of the game carries itself quite well.

[PizzaSHARK]

I like the setting and the atmosphere of the game but there are few things that keep putting me off it.

First of all it's heavy as hell to run, with no graphical fidelity to back up the enormous requirements to run it smoothly on max settings with HD resolutions. Expesially so since the levels are very small to begin with so there isn't much to load up.

Which brings up my second gripe, levels are small. Way too many loading screens keep popping up as I play on, which is one of the remnants of a game designed to run on lacking memory capacity of a console.

Then of course the other console centric stuff like small FoV and mouse acceleration, but putting past those it's one of the "poorer" console ports I'd still recommend playing just because the rest of the game carries itself quite well.

I haven't noticed mouse acceleration and FOV can be corrected by editing the config files. It uses a 45 (!) FOV by default, but you run into weird graphical quirks at anything higher than about 50 degrees. You do want to increase it to about 50, though, because that'll help ensure your light meter, pressure gauge, and that sort of stuff actually stays on-screen the entire time.

You also want to enable vsync. Apparently the game prepares everything as though you'll be using 3D displays, which means when you aren't it's creating double the frames and then dropping what isn't used... vsync apparently forces this to be disabled, which results in a pretty huge net gain for framerates.

By the way, the game doesn't get harder on ranger difficulties... it gets easier. You're still starved for ammo on regular hardcore, but because it's not being designed to be "everyone dies in one good hit", monsters still take 50 bullets to bring down. On ranger? One headshot from the revolver puts them down. Lack of crosshairs is irrelevant since shotguns aren't precision weapons to begin with and you'd be using ironsights for everything else, anyway.

The only thing I've noticed that's harder on ranger than regular is knifing people in the back, and there's really only a couple of places where that's even relevant. Everywhere else you can sneak by without fighting or just go in guns blazing.