I kept seeing this title pop up around the internet with favourable comments, so I decided to satiate my curiosity, support a smaller developer and dive into this FPS over a weekend. The game presents a fairly original story and atmosphere, along with a unique time-warping mechanic which is just fun enough to keep things interesting and elevate the game above mediocrity. The game is mechanically quite solid, with most guns being fun enough to use, and I enjoyed the simple yet various ways you could upgrade your abilities and weapons throughout the game.
Although the basic narrative was satisfying, I found the distinct lack of an end-game boss of any sort totally jarring, and I spent much of the last level or two withholding the use of my big guns due to anticipation of some kind of major boss or challenging series of scenarios at the end, but no such thing ever came. I also felt the time-warping mechanic never truly saw its potential, but that might be me expecting a little too much from a game released in 2010. In addition, the PC version suffers from a horrendous tendency of textures failing to load properly, so you frequently find objects coloured in only a dozen or so gigantic pixels.
Ultimately, if you’re an FPS nut, love your Russians, monsters/mutants and find the time-warping mechanic highly appealing (it’s not revolutionary by any measure), then sure, pick this one up. But playing this in 2014, it all feels a bit dated and there are LOADS of other top quality shooters released in the past 4 years that you should most definitely spend your time with first before considering this title.
Strongly advise any experience FPS player to play on Hard difficulty setting; otherwise you’ll find the game too easy.