Great story, but moves at a SNAILS pace. Action is short-lived, punctuated by forced mundane dialogue scenes.
It's also obvious that they have financial ties to Nvidia as they literally try and cram the new as yet unreleased 400 series GTX cards, at least in spirit if not specifically. Telling you that your graphics aren't up to date when you have the latest even available is just plain lying. It's an obvious ploy to scare people into chucking their pre-2010 graphics cards in favor of ones that haven't even be released yet as of this date (March 17, 2010).
The game developers make the claim that you really should have a 3Ghz processor, a 470/480 GTX Card, a "fast" hard drive (are they really thinking of a Raptor Drive??) or SDD and 8 gigs of memory. Apparently they've never ran their game on Windows 7.
I've got a 2.4 quad processor, an Nvidia Geforce 280 GTX and 8 Gigs of memory and supposedly this game is still supposed to be taxing on my system. Hogwash!
Now getting to the game play:
First off, while it is a bit like Fallout 3 it's certainly not open world-minded. If you're looking for a game with side quests or that lets you make your own decisions this isn't what you are looking for. This game appears to be written by students of some game academy, not Bioware.
The atmosphere is gloomy, of course. Shades of Fear 2, really. That is the point of the game, of course. It's a world that has barely survived nuclear holocaust, after all. There are some really good quality sets and the graphics are pretty solid, though doesn't even come close to all the hype. There is a developing story, however.
Unfortunately, this game forces you to listen to mundane dialogue and watch the other characters do their thing before it lets you do anything. Surprisingly, the scenes between levels can be skipped while the scenes DURING actual gameplay cannot be avoided. And that it what slows this game to a grinding halt on many occasions.
Another thing that gets VERY tiresome is if you die, you have to go through the EXACT same scenario and face the exact same obstacles and enemies in the exact same locations and they do exactly the same thing every time. The background chatter also is repeated by the same character every time you pass them by. Sometimes this even spills over into multiple characters saying the same thing as another character in the same area during the same time period
The weapons are pretty good for what they're supposed to be, but the levels are ridiculously short and are so linear it's mind-numbing so there is way more unnecessary conversation and shopping then action.
Now to be honest I haven't finished the game. I probably never will. But after hours of the mundane I doubt that the game is going to behave any differently further down the line.
Wait for it to be sold on Ebay in a few months, as it is NOT worth $40, let alone the $60 asking price!