Well I've started the Metro 2033 campaign. I had to mess around with the settings and ended up with something around normal settings, but mostly dropping the DirectX from 10 to 9 is where i was able to get playable frame rates. Don't get me wrong it still looks good, but my monster machine's gpus are starting to show their age. Anywho...
Man is the setting freaky cool. Post-nuclear holocaust. Only about 1 1/2 hours into the campaign. How many hours should I expect? Also does it open up at all or does it basically stay on rails through the story arc?
It never opens up in to any sort of open world sandbox type environment. There IS freedom of movement during missions, but you can't just run anywhere you want.
I seem to recall spending 8-10 hours playing it through. I quite liked it aside from the stupid Library level with the legions of those stupid ape things... >:(
I don't mind shooters on rails honestly. I'm just there to blow away mutants not any sort of deep RPG iimmersion outside of the environment of the games setting.
It like Doom 3. Completely on rails, but a hell of a good game.
And a more on rails or structured game tends to be superior in the story department, simply because the devs know where you're going and can run the plot through that. I liked the story enough in this game that I tracked down the book, and I quite liked it as well.
My playthrough lasted 8 hours. It was OK, but I didn't really care for the ending bits. I much preferred STALKER to Metro 2033.
This game barely runs on my PC; I have to use the absolute lowest settings to be able to play it at all. :(
I got through about two thirds of the game in 10-12 hours. And just the opposite of SDR above, I preferred Metro to Stalker. Both are great, don't get me wrong, but Metro seemed slicker to me.
Going back in for some mutant slaying!