This is the perfect example of what happens when you sacrifice gameplay for a good storyline and decent graphics..
I say this because, firstly, it's as if the game cannot make up it's mind about hit damage and accuracy with each enemy you face.
For example, without ruining too much of the story, I had to fight a group of Neo-Nazis and was using a shotgun (I decided to take on the "run and gun" style of play because it's just so dire and buggy that hiding behind object/being stealthy just will not work at all). The first enemy I came to took two shots and was down.. The enemy not far from him took 8 shots and killed me. It actually looked as if my bullets were going straight through him.
This wouldn't be bad if it was a one-off, but you come across stupid stuff like this with every single battle.
Secondly, asides from the above, the gunplay is also basic (no melee, only a knife which takes about 20 stabs to kill some enemies - no lie), very unsatisfying and as if it was just tacked on to move the story along.
Really. I don't know whether it comes down to bad programming but it's truely awful. The amount of times I have switched my Xbox off in pure frustration has to be well into double figures and I'm so annoyed with how bad it actually is I don't think I'll even be going back to finish the story, which is actually very good for what I've seen so far.
The story is good though. The atmosphere is excellent and extremely immersive.. even down to the ambient sound effects of some areas. I really would've liked to have seen what happened with the rest of Artyom's story but I honestly cannot play this, the gunplay is a complete mess.
Don't believe the hype. Any reviewer out there giving this a 9 or above must only be in it to look at the pretty graphics. As someone that's been gaming for near on 20 years..I would avoid like the plague and just read the book, until they release a patch anyway.