Metro 2033 Review

Posted By Austin Yorski about 2 years, 3 months ago

Metro 2033 Review

Gamers are no stranger to the apocalypse. We’ve fought the Locust on the ruins of Sera in Gears of War, we’ve watched the world razed before our eyes in Final Fantasy VI, and we’ve emerged from our vaults into the wasteland in Fallout. Metro 2033 inherits this legacy, as well as the dual burdens of being an adaptation of a novel and being developed by a new company headed by a Ukrainian developer from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. How does it handle these challenges? By taking another brown and grey FPS and injecting it with atmosphere and innovation.

The story starts off in the titular Moscow metro, where the protagonist, Artyom, is brought along on a mission to the surface that serves as the basic tutorial. While you could ignore the prologue as a functional necessity, it’s worth noting that the game immediately establishes its tone and aesthetic with the grimy underground replete with beggars, somber string-driven score, and the frozen wasteland on the surface. With both the controls and the mood established Artyom is ready to head out, but then suddenly your party is ambushed by mutants, including a huge flying one that mauls you until the screen fades to black and Artyom begins narrating the events that led up to then. To say that is effective is like saying the opening of Bioshock is “adequate”.

From there the story follows Artyom as he makes his way across Moscow to warn the largest civilization left about the impending threat of “The Dark Ones.” At first, the story might seem either confusing or superfluous. Who are the Dark Ones? What are the nosalises? Why are there Nazis!? However, if you approach the game like you would a novel, as a complex tapestry of themes, ideologies, and motivations, then the experience begins to make sense. I won’t spoil the answers to all of these questions, but suffice to say that the game raises interesting questions about human nature and leaves the answers up to you.

Make a Yakov Smirnoff joke. I dare you.

That’s not to say there is a lot of freedom in the gameplay. For the most part, the path is linear, although there are a few crucial times you make choices that will affect which ending you earn. For instance, at one point you come across a full-blown skirmish between Nazi and Communist forces and are able to either kill ‘em all or sneak by Sam Fisher style. Due to the checkpoint system you have to play the whole game over again to redo it, which is both frustrating for completionists and rewarding because it gives your choice real weight. Either way, you’re rewarded with an achievement and a strike for or against your ending. Choices like these are infrequent, but they are among the most memorable portions of the game.

Another choice, and the first of several innovations Metro brings to the table, revolves around the ammo system. While the game has the standard FPS load-out of pistol, shotgun, machinegun, etc., (except for the pneumatic weapons, which are new, if not useful) the ammo in the game falls into two categories: pre-war and post-war. The latter is shoddy and weak, while the former is well made and also serves as the games currency. The choice here is obvious: to spend or fire? There’s an achievement for both, so there is incentive to play through the game again and experience the other path, although I found them more useful as ammo when it was all said and done.

Welcome to the moscow metropolitan transit system. enjoy your stay.

Other new twists to the FPS formula include gas masks and rechargeable flashlights. While they might not seem like that big of a deal, it really adds gravitas to outdoor encounters when a creature cracks your gasmask out in the open, as your vision is obscured by the blood and the cracks and Artyom’s breathing starts to become labored. The flashlight is a staple of many horror games, but instead of being automatic Metro requires you to charge it by hand. While this sounded annoying, I found myself many times pumping away in the dark trying to recharge it before something jumped out at me, and the resulting tension was palpable.