The Stalin Subway: Red Veil Review Summary

Fun old-school shooting and affordable price are undermined by worse gameplay than its predecessor, awful voice acting, and frequent crashes.

Satisfying shooting mechanics: Shooting mechanics are dynamic with realistic recoil, satisfying gunplay, good weapon sounds, and interesting bullet physics including ricochet.

Low price point: The game is cheap and worth buying at a discount, with a low price of around two dollars.

Acceptable old-school graphics: Graphics are described as acceptable for an old-school game, getting the job done, and good for 2006.

Added animals and weapons: Animals are added to the game, including pigeons, rats, cats that explode when shot, and new weapons like flamethrower and molotov.

Short game length: Multiple reviewers note the game is short, with some seeing it as a positive. The shorter length is compared to the first game.

Worse than first game: Reviewers state the game is worse than the first part, with significantly lower volume, quality, and only about a quarter of the length of the original game.

Voice acting is terrible: The voice acting is consistently criticized as atrocious, absurdly bad, and even hilariously awful, contributing to a poor overall presentation.

Gameplay is too short: The game is very short, often under an hour, and much shorter than the first game, leaving players disappointed.

Enemies spawn behind player: Enemies repeatedly spawn directly behind the player, creating constant unfair situations that frustrate gameplay.

Game is too hard: The game is almost unbeatable on hard difficulty and very hard even on easy, requiring patches to be playable.

High difficulty and punishment: The game is very difficult, comparable to Souls games, with players dying in a few hits and no health regeneration. Trial and error gameplay with quick save/load abuse is expected.

First-person shooter gameplay: The game is an old-school first-person shooter that requires precise aim and features realistic difficulty. It uses cover-based mechanics with low time-to-kill.

Linear level structure: Levels are linear corridors with scripted events, similar to early Call of Duty or Metro. The campaign is short and features vehicle chase sequences and escort missions.

Soviet-era weaponry: The game features Soviet-era weapons such as the PPSH, AK-47, Dragunov, and Makarov. The setting involves Russian environments and Stalinist enemies.

Manual saving system: The game uses manual saving, requiring players to save frequently and memorize enemy placements. Quick retry and quick save/load are essential due to the difficulty.

Frequent crashes and freezes: The game frequently crashes, freezes, or causes system shutdowns, especially when certain settings like background music are enabled. These crashes occur during startup, gameplay, or menu navigation.

Compatibility issues with old systems: The game only seems to run on very old systems or Windows XP drivers, and fails to launch on Windows 7 even with compatibility mode. This suggests it is not properly updated for modern operating systems.

Poor performance and optimization: Players experience frame drops, lags, and poor overall performance even on high-end hardware like an RTX 4080. The game seems poorly optimized for modern systems.

Graphics and visual glitches: Users report graphical issues such as shader/texture flickering, blurry graphics, and resolution changes on launch. These visual problems detract from the experience.

Music bug causes problems: Enabling background music causes crashes, freezes, or slow loading times. Some players must disable the music entirely to make the game run properly.

Overwhelmingly not recommended: Many reviewers strongly advise against purchasing the game at all, calling it unplayable or not worth any price.

Buy only on deep sale: Several reviewers suggest the game is only worth buying at a heavy discount, such as 1-2 dollars or less.

Play first part instead: Multiple reviewers state that the first game is superior and recommend playing it rather than this sequel.

Needs mods or cheats: Some players recommend using cheat codes or improvement mods to make the game playable, such as noclip or god mode.

Too difficult and buggy: Several reviews highlight high difficulty and bugs as reasons not to recommend the game, especially on hard mode.

Community fair range: $1.99 - $2.99.

Game completion: 2.0h.

Story completion: 1.8h.

Reviews are split: some find the multiplayer fun while others criticize the game as unbalanced, repetitive, and with obsolete features, preventing a clear time-to-fun pattern.

Friction: repetitive enemy encounters; long corridors; unbalanced gameplay; repetitive maps; obsolete multiplayer armor indicator.

Ironical Enjoyer: Willing to play despite flaws, often on easy or normal; tolerates jankiness. Motivation: Ironic enjoyment and curiosity about low-quality or bizarre game experiences. Stance: sale.

Positive Recommender: Prefers easy mode due to difficulty, enjoys multiplayer, and appreciates inventive combat areas and weapon mechanics. Motivation: Genuine enjoyment of specific gameplay features (weapon mechanics, multiplayer, level design, character choice) and connection to the series. Stance: buy.

Critical Detractor: Not applicable - they do not find the game enjoyable; likely tried it but found it unplayable. Motivation: Frustration with technical issues, poor design, and lack of content. Stance: no buy.