Yeah, I know–great holiday game.  At least the first one was set in wintertime.  So far, it seems a lot more polished than its predecessor, but at the same time that makes it feel less like I’m playing a game and more like I’m watching a movie.  There’s a level where you come across a downed plane in the post-apocalyptic cityscape that really reminded me of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: follow NPC, listen to exposition, mash button to get into a place, watch cutscene…

Having said that, the game’s story is more interesting than C.o.D. and it does include a stealth mechanic that makes the game a bit more challenging than the average military FPS.  One of the things I liked about Metro 2033 was that you didn’t have to play it a certain way.  I got through it despite doing all the wrong things–like not using stealth, charging blindly through the neo-Nazi shootouts in the tunnels, fighting the weird glowing monsters in the nuclear reactor place instead of taking out their nests.

Also, although the horror element seems to have been lessened in this game, they have included one thing that makes it far scarier than the first one: spiders.  I dislike spiders, and the ones in this game are really creepy.