I really can't understand the "story is amazing" guys. Its bog standard FPS fair, admitedly its bog standard sci-fi story as opposed to massively massively more used bog standard war storys(the vast majority being relatively true to history rather than the less common, but still well used, WW2 + aliens, or set in current times war + surviving Nazi's, etc, etc).
Hell its been ages since I played it but, survival of a war/plague/alien invasion, lone guy asked to do something incredibly important, general standard traps and twists throughout, befriend/destroy the aliens, plague, enemy in whatever war it was, pretty bog standard linear story that most games follow.
Atmosphere was good, in parts, gameplay, meh, combat, meh, story, meh, twists.... seriously, graphics... ok.
Never really sure why people don't get this, if you have a narrow "corridoor" based game with little difference and fairly dark and gloomy, you can concentrate your graphical power FAR more than in an open enviroment type of game, thats just how life works. Drawing backgrounds, and 200 trees is a heck of a lot harder than a pitch black tunnel with 3 things lit up well at the end. Neither is better, or worse, Metro 2033 looks "great" mostly as other FPS's like COD's/MOH's are fairly cheap generic FPS's these days, based in COD's case on a millenia old engine. It certainly looks great, I liked it on max settings(bar the utterly ridiculously poor DOF effect, would you all insist on enabling it if it was renamed the "blurs half your screen unrealistically for half your performance setting?", but much like Crysis 1, it was a "graphics" game, rather than substance. Warhead had more substance in gameplay/story than 1, but still not brilliant but it was far better to actually play.
I'll take gameplay over graphics any day, and dark corridoors, aliens jumping out behind you, and painfully unimaginative "in your own mind" level bits are incredibly unoriginal.
Its not a bad game, its not even average, vs other FPS's is was pretty damned good, but its no where near a great game.