The James Logan Courier

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Give 10 nitpickers 10 hours each to run through "Metro 2033," and each probably would emerge with a unique laundry list of missteps. There's no multiplayer. The gunplay is just a touch off. Checkpoints occasionally appear before unskippable (and, upon failure to reach the next checkpoint, repeating) cutscenes. The running animation looks hilariously wrong. The voice acting cuts out when it shouldn't. Human enemies have weird, sometimes amusing A.I. patterns, and they occasionally can withstand a perfect headshot and continue functioning like it's a bee sting.

But a staunch dedication to atmosphere — and a willingness to do anything, even to the player's occasional temporary detriment, to creatively make that ambience sing — is perhaps the one thing that makes grievances easiest to forgive. Despite dealing with themes (Nazis, Soviets, mutants, post-apocalyptic wastelands and subterranean warfare) other games have wrung dry, it's this attention to mood that makes "2033" not only forgivable, but an arguable must-play.

From wikipedia:
Ivan Dixon (April 6, 1931 – March 16, 2008) was an American actor, director, and producer best known for his series role in the 1960s sitcom Hogan's Heroes, for his role in the 1967 telefilm The Final War of Olly Winter, and for directing hundreds of episodes of television series. Active in the Civil Rights Movement, he served as a president of Negro Actors for Action.

Watch an interview with Ivan Dixon, free from ReelBlack and YouTube.