Super looking forward to it. Last Light and S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 will make for lots of atmospheric scary fun

Oh, god, Jelly Level was the worst. Talk about unprepared: I had about fifteen shots across three guns. And the dude... just barreling through it like nothing bad was going on.

Another thing I'd like to see in Last Light is the Shadow People or whatever they were called; the ones that represent something that happened in the past. The Nosalis and Kid one was wicked eerie.

I'm really excited for this, but my only issue is with the story, and that it's following Artyom again. Which doesn't really make sense with the ending of the novel.

I liked Metro 2033, had very creepy atmosphere and haunting locations that made me stop and wonder for a moment. The engine is beyond gorgeous, the ammo barter system was pretty clever, and the weapons were interesting (though very limited.) However, that said, there are several issues I hope will not return for the sequel, though I won't hold my breath... It was such a shame that an otherwise excellent game would be marred by such bitter disappointments - design decisions that are so old they almost seem like Cold War relics themselves:

- Invisible walls. Even minor detours are not possible, and some of the most bizarre areas have them: a foot-high rock pile outside? Impassable. A small fence up to your knees? Impassable. Once I managed to hop over a railing to land safely on a lower section (allowing me to snipe my enemies from behind) but when I tried to move back towards the main platform - an empty path in front of me - I couldn't do it, and I couldn't go back up either. Had to reload the whole level because I was completely stuck. It gets even worse outside when certain "invisible walls" kill you instantly: instead of jumping into a shallow gulley, which leads directly to your objective, the game punishes you for not following the designated path exactly. Which leads me to...

- Bad checkpoints. You could get shot by the very last guy on a level and be forced to do the whole tiresome sequence again. Or worse, sometimes you'll be walking down a tunnel, expecting to be able to turn back to finish what you were doing (collecting ammo, exploring side passages, or just admiring the sights) when without warning you'll wander into the next level with no chance to return.

- Cutscenes. Everytime you remove control from the player and just make him watch, it stops being a game. Heinous waste of the game's potential, and really jarring.

- Invulnerable enemies. Another way to stop your game from being a game: change the rules for "dramatic" purposes. Doesn't matter how many flying demons you've killed with your bare hands, if the game doesn't want you to kill a certain creature, don't even waste your ammo on it. Which, of course, completely svcks the tension out of a scene - you just sit and watch and wait for it to be over.

- Slow plot delivery. Towards the end of the game, when you're following the other guys into the control center, I was running circles around the NPCs cursing how [censored] slow they were! Like a bunch of first-year drama students hamming it up on the stage, painfully wooden dialogue, and drip-drip-drip slow. At this point I just wanted the game to be over already, but it seems like they saved all the plot for the end, where it sits like a lead weight on the action.

- Quick-time events. Have these ever been done well? Maybe a couple of times, but certainly not in this game. Example: you're falling off a ladder. Tap F to save yourself! Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap... Congratulations, you are safe! But at no time did I actually feel in danger, that's the problem. QTE's are a pathetic minigame addition, a vestigial feature of token gameplay with no place in a FPS. They simply do not add any depth to a scene, nor any sense of control to the player - quite the opposite, in fact.

I really wanted to like Metro 2033 all the way to the end, but about two-thirds of the way through I was already bored and all of the above was really starting to grate on me. It was such a shame: a beautiful game that tries so hard to limit that beauty with unrewarding exploration and little chance to admire it. I slogged through just to see the ending, which wasn't really worth it in retrospect - there was nothing explained, nothing learned, nothing achieved. But, then again, there was also nothing lost but time, and at least the sunset (sunrise?) was gorgeous.

Same reaction.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I never had an interest in the game until I watched this video. So hilarious. I'm gonna go buy it now.