Platforming, combat, some puzzles, and a few collectibles. Zero replay value and a major difficulty spike at the very end. Buy it on sale.
OPERATION TURBO PANTHER IS A GO! I wonder if my old pirate version saves work with this release.
"Normal" runs are downright sadistic with none of the game mechanics supporting the gameplay in a meaningful way. Jumping is too floaty and inaccurate for this kind of platforming and especially for avoiding spike pits. There's no reliable source of anything, be it money drops, item drops, or healing. Expanding on healing, you heal either by consuming food, by paying an increasing amount of money at health shrines, or finding and using life-leeching blessings and weapons. Food is difficult because item drops are random and rare, same goes for blessings and weapons, and lastly, shrines heal a fixed 100 health points - hell, they might even not be there anyway. Procedurally generating levels means shrines can get blocked by terrain which requires explosives to clear away. There's also the "Jumper" enemy type which can blow up terrain and shrines, the latter of which will muck up your run. Certain enemy types continue spawning in after clearing the initially placed enemies. Neutral adventurers also spawn in regularly, and their AI is atrocious. They regularly set off the aforementioned Jumpers and usually take item drops - the latter applies to items you'd want to upgrade at the altars as well, turning AI companions from meat shields into nuisance. Spike bombs stick to them as well, so plan your throw well if there's a wall you want to blow up and there's an NPC zooming around you. The best method of melee combat I've found is running around like a headless chicken swinging away in hopes of 1. you hitting something and 2. enemies missing you. Custom mode can be configured to mitigate some of these issues - turning off spikes and enemy types, for example - but it fails to alleviate the core problems and also turns off progression. I don't mind difficulty but this is bad game design. Play Risk of Rain, Spelunky, or Terraria instead.
The sequel to Metro 2033, Last Light is a mixed bag. It's got great athmosphere in the claustrophobic tunnels, the vast and hostile surface, and the desperate stations. While the plot and writing is nothing special compared to pieces like Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium, or Arcanum, it's perfectly adequate. The weapon attachment system is vastly improved here. A silenced and a scoped AK are no longer two distinct objects but variants of the same gun. Add or remove them at weapons shops as needed. Now for the ugly. The old Ranger mode lost all its merits with enemies still taking the same amount of hits than before with the player's max health and ammo drops decreased. It also takes the third weapon slot. The checkpoint system is a horrible match for this kind of game where you might want to re-think your tactical and plot decisions. So your stealthily thrown knife missed your target's head, struck the wall, and now everyone's after your ass? Tough luck, back to the start of the current section. The English voice acting is awful, even worse than STALKER's, which is particularly bad here since this game has a lot more lines. Don't switch to Russian, because you might miss a lot of background conversation which have no subtitles BUT listening to which gives you a positive karma point. Or just give you extra info. The former is necessary to achieve a good ending, the latter to survive to the end. Some of the characters were twisted to caricatures of themselves. Miller from a pragmatic soldier to a genocidal maniac, Khan from a tunnel hippy to a complete crank raving about phenomena... Achievements don't work. There's a good game under all this, but expect heaps of frustration.
