I know this is quite late, but if you didn't find any opportunities for stealth rather than combat, I'm wondering whether you played the game right. Also, the easy difficulty which I assume you were playing on gives the enemies more health as well as you, whereas the harder difficulties give both the player and the enemies less health. I know the storyline wasn't great but if you've ever played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. then Metro 2033 feels extremely familiar in setting and gameplay, although admittedly they had the Bethesda problem of copy pasting voice actors.