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The whole game is set post nuclear war, so everything looks terrible. By terrible I mean damaged or destroyed. Visually the game looks excellent. Everything appears corroded, damaged, broken, busted, mangled or wrecked. Infact it reminds me of my neighbors backyard, however I digress.

Quite a few levels include weather effects aswell, such as strong wind, radiation type haze, smoke / fog.

Monsters have average detail quality, however the humans are quite detailed and have a broad range of animations. All very good.

Weapon reloading is fantastic. Each gun has unique characteristics and some even use some very interesting ammunition all come with their own reloading style. Some like the Bastard Gun has a very complex reloading sequence, and the repeater shotgun must be manually reloaded for each round. So the reloading is not a fast process for most weapons, but it is detailed with animations and sound effects. Top Rate.

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Due to the nature of the game design / period it is set, everything is pretty much the same colour. Now technically this isn't a bad thing but just thought it was worth mentioning. The textures used in the game are not highly polished or clean, but that is to be expected based on what they represent.

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This is a typical FPS style game in which you'll be often out numbered and be required to constantly switch weapons, because switching weapons is faster than reloading for some guns, until you can afford to upgrade (buy better) weapons.

You have the option of playing most missions with full noise (ie shoot everything), or you can be covert and avoid the booby traps, stay in the shadows and kill silently. This however only works on the human targets, the monsters are a little more adapt at finding you and then separating your organs into piles based on tastiness.. You are equipped with a watch which includes 3 coloured LED's. Green, Yellow and Red. These colours represent your detection rate. So keep it in the green as much as possible.

Monsters usually telegraph their location by growling and screaming, however they don't always appear straight away, so that helps keep up the great tension. However when they do come it's usually in hordes and you better have your weapons fully loaded.

Human Enemies are smart enough to take cover when you're shooting at them. If you are traveling with a NPC and one of your objectives is to protect that NPC then thankfully in most situations where fighting humans is involved those NPC's will take cover and hide and only come out once you've dispatched all the bandits.

This linear designed game relies heavily on scripting. This is to be expected and thankfully it's not too blatant. However while waiting for doors to be opened from the other side always expect to be pounded by waves of mutants. As mentioned the mutants are usually screaming and roaring quite a lot, so you certainly know which direction they are going to come from, however some also use the ceiling, so keep an eye out.

You have the ability to scavenge from the dead, and quite frankly it's a must because ammo is very limited in this game and the number of enemies is vast.

In some missions you are required to obtain certain items before you start the mission, so when you goto start you are asked if you are ready to proceed. This is excellent because it may not have been clear that this action/character was going to end the current mission. So the prompt gives you the option to continue exploring. So many games fail to include such a simple feature like this.

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If you're playing covert and you are discovered, all enemies in the near vicinity know your exact location. Even if your watch shows Green LED, and you now move to another location (without being seen) the instant you appear they are already firing at you. This wears thin after a while, however it has become the "standard" feature in just about every FPS game released in the last few years. I would prefer if the AI of the enemies was not so "ALL KNOWING" all the time.

This linear designed game relies heavily on scripting and in some missions you're presented with wave after wave of mutants. It wasn't until I ran out of ammunition for every weapon that I was carrying that I realized the waves were not going to cease. It appears on a few missions that the waves of mutants will continue until you achieve the objective. This can be a good and a bad thing. I've placed it in the bad simply because it's not always immediately evident this is the case, so you end up using quite a bit your ammo before you realize. and ammo in this game is quite precious because it is also used as currency .

Another small aspect with the scripting, is sometimes people die or events happen and you're just not sure if this was scripted to happen, so it doesn't matter how good a player you are it would always happen, or if there was something you could have done to prevent it from happening. Maybe this is a good thing because it shows just how believable the game is, but at times you're often left wondering. Should I reload and try that sequence again - what benefit would there be if I could keep that NPC alive?

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This game introduces the use of a recharger in order to keep your battery powered equipment functioning. Night Vision is the primary equipment because once the battery is flat you can't use it anymore, so you must switch to the recharger and constantly crank it by clicking LMB. however do this away from enemies because you can't fire your gun at the same time. You can recharge at any time, so you don't have to wait for the batteries to become flat, you can constantly top up the charge when in a quiet section of the game. The Head Lamp also requires batteries, however if the primary battery runs flat (which you can recharge with the recharger) the light will still function but it's not very bright at all, but atleast it's still usable. You can enable the light and still use your weapons as the light is on your helmet.

There is no ability to upgrade your equipment (guns, armor) however at certain towns you'll find markets which will allow you to purchase better equipment. There are other things that you will have to keep stock of aswell, health packs and most importantly Gas Mask Filters. Quite often the game will require you to traverse large areas of toxic environment. The only way to do this and survive is by wearing your Gas Mask. The filters will eventually wear out and you have a watch which shows the current status of the installed filter. You can manually switch out the filters anytime you choose or the game will automatically switch out the filter once it's spent. What is really cool is when the filter is about to expire your breathing becomes more labored and the Gas Mask screen fogs up distorting your vision.

Also during combat in these toxic areas you would be advised to take off your Gas Mask as it can get damaged and then you're in a world of trouble if you can't find a replacement. When a Gas Mask is required you will hear your breathing change and you have a minute or two before you start getting sick enough to die. So you can sustain a short fight with your mask off before you need to equip it again. I think this is a fantastic aspect to the game.

On the topic of buying things. There is no money. The currency in this game is military grade bullets. There are two types of ammunition Prewar and Postwar. the Prewar ammo is the military grade stuff and is very effective, if you reload your weapon using military grade ammo it will be much more devastating and do a lot more damage than the postwar ammo, however it is in much more limited supply, so I would suggest keeping it for trading. You can also goto the bullet exchange (found in the markets in some towns) where you can exchange ammo for weapons you don't have or don't want to use for any other type of ammo that you do need, or indeed for military ammo. The exchange ranges are not very good, but still, this is a great idea.

You are provided with a compass and a journal which will indicate the direction you need to go and show you what your current objective is. Each time this is updated you here a paper rustling sound effect. You need to equip this journal like you would a weapon, so you can't fire and use the journal at the same time. You are also provided a lighter, I'm not really sure why because the headlamp is much more effective.

There is no ability to upgrade your character, and all events and conversations can be skipped if you wish. Only some animation sequences can't be skipped but they are all fine because that's plot related aspects, such as you being forced to fall off the train etc.

Weapons are all quite good and you have a maximum of 4 classes, with each class allowing you to carry only one weapon. An exception to this is the knife. You can carry a few throwing knives aswell as one stabbing knife. All other weapons are shooters and will require that you drop the current weapon in exchange for another. You can not sell your weapons, you can only upgrade the current one.

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In the markets where you can purchase new equipment the trading screens are not all that nice. They are pretty rudimentary and clunky, however they are effective.

It would have been nice to allow you the ability to carry an additional weapon, not for use, but for selling at the market. There's a few good weapons scattered through the levels that if you had the option to sell at the next market you come across would help your financial crisis. This is only a minor thing because with good management and a skilled aim, you can survive on what the game currently provides.

One Anomaly I encountered is that monsters have the ability for NO-CLIPPING. This means they can run through you and as the game is hard enough at high difficulty level, I just found that quite annoying. In once instance I was at a truck. It had an enclosed trailer and only 1 of the two rear doors were open just enough for me to walk through. just a bit further into the level I encountered half a dozen monsters, so I run back to the truck to take cover and stand just inside the doorway hoping to get the monsters in a choke point so I would only have to fight one at a time. Well alas to my surprise it didn't work, I ended up fighting all of them at once because they could run through each other and therefore all attack me at the one time, plus had the ability to run through me, so now i had monsters also behind me that could not have got inside this truck any other way. There were no other openings for them to get inside the truck and considering the monsters are easily double the size of a human it's even more surprising / annoying. I will try and obtain a screen shot of this event.

GAME SAVING There is no option to save in this game. It saves automatically at checkpoints. You see a spinning cd when a save has been completed. Using checkpoint type saving can see you repeat a difficult sequence a few times. I didn't experience this very often, unlike other checkpoint saving based games, however it's worth mentioning now incase, you the reader, have issue with this saving method. Personally I would prefer the option to Quick save when I want, however auto checkpoint saving can be of benefit if you die and you forgot to save recently...

Next issue with loading is consistency. I was in a room looking around, scavenging I see .44 ammo, 2 x clips of shotgun ammo, 2 x 5.45mm ammo clips. I then reloaded which restored me back to the last checkpoint (which was when I entered this room), now I goto that same body and what is there to scavenge is different / less. I now only have 2 x shotgun clips and 1 x 5.45mm ammo clip. I'm not sure why this type of thing needs to be random. At other intervals of the game I noticed weapons were different too. It's not a major annoyance because you shouldn't die, therefore so you shouldn't need to reload. hehe.

When scavenging from bodies you will find that numerous clicks with the mouse are required to collect all items. if there are 5 items on the body, then you will be required to left mouse click 5 times? Is that really necessary?

Also when in a fire fight with bandits they can continue to fire for what seems indefinitely. However when you kill one and then scavenge the body majority of the time you'll only recover 1 or 2 bullets from their weapon? That seems a little ridiculous.

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The Plot / Story I found to be compelling with the conversations all interesting, I found myself wanting to listen to them all. The characters you interact with, I found myself having a vested interest in and wanted to help keep them alive or out of trouble. This is quite a stark contrast from other games where I was happy to shoot some of the characters myself rather than listen to them for one more second.

There are a few smaller conversations about what some of the characters are involved in, but that doesn't yield any sub missions.

The Plot takes a turn as you progress through the game and "The Dark Ones" constantly interrupt your game play. The Game goes into a type of dream state, which unfortunately you can still die in, however they are not hard to navigate through (other than the last aspect which had me stumped for a bit). Why am I mentioning this in the Plot Section? Well because this aspect eventually forms the whole point of the game. Quite frankly I was happy with the original aspect of the game, which was just survival, and when this changed to *** SPOILER so I won't mention it *** ... I was a little bit annoyed.

Overall it has a better story / plot than many other Linear FPS games out there.

There is no good vs evil aspect in the game so there's no consequences for your actions, until the final sequence. Those consequences we may not know about until the sequel, that's assuming the sequel will read your saved games? (such as Mass Effect 2 does)

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The plot is easy to follow, but I didn't really care for where it ended up. It seemed to have no real conclusion. Well actually I should rephrase you are presented with a choice at the end of the game and one choice clearly has a conclusion but the other doesn't. However there has been news of a sequel so I'm unsure if this was why the game ended as it did or not...

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The levels look great, for a post-apocalyptic environment where everything is destroyed or decaying. Many levels look similar however there are enough that are unique (but still consistent along the same theme) that the game is not boring or dull to view.

You have some ability to interact with the environment, such as power switches, door crank wheels etc. and there's the odd puzzle that requires interaction with the environment.

Other environmental factors are traps and debris. In some missions it's important for your survival to stay quiet. This means you should avoid stepping on broken glass or kicking objects. You will also come across traps which you'll have to avoid, or early alarm systems (cans on strings). I thought this was a great idea to include as well as the light meter on your watch. So it's not enough to just stay in the shadows but you also have to watch where you walk.

Lets make no bones about it though, this is a Linear game and as such all limitations apply. Now this is not really a bad thing because the game still gives you options to explore and take cover. Most levels are multiple height, so options are available. Of course this also gives mutants options to attack you from different levels aswell.

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Lots of invisible walls, where it looks like you should be able to go, but the game won't let you, even though you should be able to jump over that item or crawl under it. There is no way you can. This is one thing that is becoming more and more common in games these days.

Some levels are very linear and there's absolutely no options other than the one that is presented to you, but in other levels you have a little bit of movement space, but still only one exit point. For example when in combat with bandits you can use the bridge / walkway above, or you can wade through the water below, so you have some alternative paths, however to exit from that particular scene / area you only have one exit point. There are many bottle necks in the game. These are being mentioned in the bad, but they are only just mild aspects.

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Excellent. The monster sound effects really add to the atmosphere of the game and your weapons sound good.

Reloading includes numerous actions and sound effects and when in towns there's numerous conversations going on, plus the dialogue with the market traders is good.

Sound Effect volume levels are all nicely balanced.

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What?. There is none. Ok maybe I should make something up.. ok..

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No problems evident. You get a reasonable ability to adjust video settings and the keyboard binding is divided into numerous sections.

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When binding keys, if you select a key to be bound to this action, if it was previously bound to another action, the game provides no prompts or alerts it simply binds this key to the new action, and the previous action is now unbound.

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Mouse is supported in the menus, and the menus are easy to navigate with the main menu being quite nice and showing you additional animations when you hover over each option.

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When in game and talking with the Market Traders, the selection screen is a bit cumbersome to use, as you need to use the arrow keys to navigate through the products and then the mouse buttons to accept or reject the offer. You also have to use the reject mouse button in order to exit the trading screen.

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There are plenty of items to collect throughout the game, which I would recommend you do because you'll need those items to help you stay alive, especially if you like playing on the highest difficulty settings as I do.

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You're only provided the same items as available throughout the game. There's no additional missions or information to uncover, no sub plots and no special items that I could find. Just more of the same stuff.