Just like many other games set in the Soviet Union, you start in a small apartment located in a recognizable, classic apartment block district. There isn’t much to do inside the apartment besides changing your outfit and looking for items that add to your research bar. Outside, there’s even less to see, despite the presence of people walking around.
Research points are added by examining objects in the world, which can be pretty much anything, such as a cow, a car, a poster, or something else entirely. There’s nothing indicating which objects can be examined, so they are easily missed. This becomes a problem because once you finish a mission, you can no longer return to look for anything you missed. The only exception is your home apartment district, which you return to after every mission and where you can search for items at any time.
From the main district, you head out on missions by taking a bus. Before that, you’ll probably have to find a few people scattered around the district. They have arrows above their heads, but there’s no map to help you locate them quickly. Once you’ve spoken to everyone you need to, an arrow will appear next to a bus at the bus station, allowing you to start the mission.
The missions themselves are straightforward. Your objective is usually to keep moving forward until you reach the end while killing every enemy along the way. Weapons are provided near the beginning of each mission, but ammunition needs to be managed carefully. Although there is generally more than enough ammo, especially since enemies drop it, the reloading system is frustrating. Reloading always replaces the entire magazine, meaning any bullets remaining in the old magazine are lost. You can also carry only a limited amount of ammunition.
The enemies are fairly easy to deal with as long as you keep your distance. They usually move toward you in a straight line and only start firing once they get close enough, allowing you to slowly walk backward while aiming for their heads. Unfortunately, range, accuracy, and damage are extremely inconsistent.
Sometimes you can kill an enemy with a single body shot from across the street, while other times it takes several bullets to bring them down. There are even situations where a rocket launcher fired directly next to an enemy seems to do little or no damage. Headshots are essentially the only reliable way to kill enemies. Shooting them in the body often appears to do nothing, with enemies continuing to run toward you as if they weren’t hit.
Getting caught in a shootout is another story, as enemies are incapable of missing. This becomes especially frustrating during the boss fights at the end of each stage, which are extremely cheap and poorly balanced. Bosses are massive bullet sponges, forcing you to leave cover and take unnecessary damage while searching for ammunition and the occasional health pickup. Even worse, they can sometimes hit you while you’re clearly hiding behind cover.
Unless you happen to get a checkpoint, dying means restarting the entire stage from the beginning, which makes these encounters even more frustrating. Overall, the shooting mechanics and enemy design are unnecessarily punishing, with inconsistent damage and accuracy turning what should be straightforward encounters into frustrating ones.
