I don't think anyone had high expectations for this, and its certainly getting mixed reviews in the press - but despite repetition in the combat and hugely linear levels, its a great deal of fun to play. Make the effort to get past the first couple of levels which don't really allow you free rein to play as you would like and thing start to improve. Gun play is adequate throughout, but the real star is the glaive (frisbee with knives innit....) which once fully powered allows more freedom to kill identikit goons in different ways. Once you've aquired the last powerup for 'aftertouch' it really comes alive allowing you to swing the glaive around corners and over walls in nice slow mo - hugely satisfying to guide your glaive into a particularly recalcitrant enemy tucked behind a pillar and slice the top of his head off. Suitably gory too, although perhaps not overtly so - dismemberments work well and using the fully powered glaive shot allows you to slice enemies neatly in half with one shot.
Bear in mind, headshots are the order of the day if possible - early levels with the unpowered glaive prove frustrating as you can't fell them with once shot, but once you gain the ability to guide the glaive its one hit one kill territory, leading to some particularly 'badass' feeling fights as you swiftly and gorily despatch wave after wave of foes.
Problems - well, theres some odd design decisions which mar the experience. Generally the levels are utterly linear - go in one end and kill the waves of enemies go out the other end. Repeat for the entire game. Its repetitious yes, but manages to stay just the right side of 'fun' rather than 'chore'.
more of a chore however is the level design on occasion - make no mistake this is not particularly clever level design - often you'll find yourself overanalysing the problem, when really all thats required is some timed running around a problem. For example a section in the graveyard requires you to light sequential fires along the level to imbue your glaive with fire, allowing you to finally set fire to the black foliage blocking your path. So far so linear, but you'll hit the point where you've lit every single fire and you still can't make it to the burnable stuff before you glaive goes out. So you hunt for a solution, there must be another fire to light somewhere? but the isn't, its simply an incredibly tight bit of glaive use and running required - you have to stand in exactly the right spot, fling the glaive into the fire from the correct distance away which will light it, yet still give you time to run round with the glaive to the burnable foliage and fling the burning glaive before it goes out. Its incredibly trial and error at times, which leads to frustration. Theres a number of these sections which require no brains, just constant preseverance to find the right place to stand.
Strange design decisions like not allowing you to pick up enemies guns for more than a few seconds frustrate further, and the story is a horrendous, random mish mash of zombies, robots, russians and diseases. Plus the main character is visually bizarre, suashed head, floppy hair, deeply deeply unlikable.
Fun, and visually lovely though, somehow managing to overcome the obvious flaws and be a fun romp thats well worth playing.