Metro 2033 Review

March 29, 2010

Intense post-apocalyptic first-person shooter set in future Moscow.

Story

Moscow has been in ruins for many years and its surviving people have been forced to retreat into the underground metro system. Living in the metro stations is a constant battle for survival and with the increase in mutant attacks the stations are beginning to fall apart. One day an old acquaintance returns to your home station, bringing news that will forever change your life and the future of others…

Introduction

Community living underground in the Metro

Metro 2033 is based on the novel with the same name written by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The game succeeds in telling the story and provides a great way of experiencing the world as it was written. You play as Artyom, one of the last people who were born before the war that destroyed Moscow. Hunter, who is your old acquaintance tells you that they need to reunite the stations if they are to survive. Many stations report sightings of Dark Ones, and if the mutants aren’t stopped the people of Moscow will die. He then gives you the responsibility to resume his work if he doesn’t succeed, and sure enough there is no signs of him returning after he leaves the station. Not knowing what happened to Hunter you decide to fulfill his request. As you leave your home station for the first time in your life you have no idea what the outside world holds for you.

The Game

Metro 2033 is a mixture of a first-person shooter and a survival horror game set in a post-apocalyptic version of Moscow. As such the game emphasizes on survival and evasion rather than killing everything you come across. This game is strictly a single-player game and it has quite an elaborate story to tell. It can be played on various difficulty levels such as Easy, Normal and Hard so it can be scaled down or up to better suit your preferences. The different difficulty levels drastically change how hard it will be to survive the violent encounters in the underground tunnels. Enemies will be easier to kill and you won’t need to use stealth as much on the lower difficulty levels while it becomes a much more necessary tool on the higher difficulty levels. The enemies will also become something you avoid rather than approach head on.

Controls

The controls are of the standard FPS style. W, A, S and D on the keyboard moves your character while you’re looking around using the mouse. The way your equipment works is quite unique however as items have different functions depending on whether you push or hold the use button. For instance if you push the button for the headlight you turn your headlight on, but if you instead hold the button down you take out the “charger” which allows you to increase the strength of the headlight. One of the most necessary items is the gas mask, and it is used when an area is contaminated like the surface or various places underground. When you are wearing the mask you can either change the filter or take the mask off, and this is all dependent on whether you push or hold down the button. This dual functionality is used to a great extent in this game as you collect more and more equipment.

When you get hurt in Metro 2033 the damage is temporary and if you stay away from harms way you will recover your health automatically over time. But this automatic regeneration happens rather slowly so you can use medical kits to instantly gain a huge boost in health. It’s worth noting that there are no indications on your current health other than visual and auditory effects – you are never given any exact numbers.

Content

To increase your chances of survival you can find multiple weapons and equipment to play around with, but you’ll also be relying on stealth to get the upper hand or, simply sneaking past enemies entirely.

The standard equipment that you will be using throughout the game are as follows:

Headlight – works as your basic flashlight but can be charged.
Gas mask – needed to survive on the surface as well as certain locations underground. The filters are only usable for a short while so you constantly need to have spare filters. Also taking damage can cause the gas mask to crack and become useless.
Lighter and objective list – only used to show your currently objective.

With that said, the gas mask and its filters are a constant stress factor in the game, because without it you must either buy a new one, backtrack and search for secret areas and stashes, or worse: load a previously saved game.

Other items you can buy include stuff such as medical kits and stealth suits that come equipped with night vision goggles. Mostly what will keep you alive are the weapons though, and you can carry a rather large quantity of weapons with you at one time. Often you will be carrying a handgun, a shotgun, a rifle, a knife and grenades, but what good does a weapon do if you have no ammunition? Conserving ammo is a rather important aspect of the game, but you can almost always pick up ammunition from defeated human enemies and you can also change weapons whenever you find a new one.

Another way to get your hands on some bullets is to trade with the traders found in various stations, but the currency that this game uses is rather rare and has another purpose other than just being currency. The currency is Military grade bullets or “Shiny rounds” as they are called. This is ammunition created before the war and they are rare to come across in larger quantities. These bullets are superior and cause a lot more damage than the regular “Dirty rounds”, and are thus quite valuable. “Shiny rounds” are also used to buy new weapons.

Trading weapons will always trade in your current weapon with the one you want to buy shaving off some of the price. Weapons come in various shapes and forms such as revolvers with rifle stocks, rifles with silencers or even revolvers with scopes, and as such they have different abilities and behave differently.

The enemies that you encounter vary quite a lot. The bandits that occupy certain areas of the tunnels are weak but they are more prone to use tactics while the mutants will just charge at you until either you or it dies. There are different mutants such as flying gargoyle-like creatures and huge rat-like monsters, while human enemies use different weapons. The enemy AI is not something that will constantly surprise you with new tactics as it is fairly simple. Finding cover and attacking is about all it can handle, and sometimes it does have difficulties of doing just that.

Except fighting hideous mutants and violent bandits, you will need to avoid a lot of different obstacles and traps when traversing the tunnels. The bandits will leave broken glass on the floor as well as cans on strings to catch anyone passing by their territory. There are far deadlier traps as well like spiked battering rams swung into your face. There are also moments where you are prompted to quickly tap the use button to execute a maneuver such as killing a mutant that has gotten a hold of you.

The game lasts for about 10 hours on the first play-through, and it has loads of intense moments and twists in the story making it a lengthy and intriguing game.

The weakest part of the game is that it tends to follow set patterns at times and as such it loses some of the flow that it successfully builds up from the start. Basically, it can become a little predictable at times which creates a generic experience – as if you’ve been there and done that before already.

The game seems a little unstable for some computers, as it does crash now and then but no other major bugs are notable. Even though the game feels a bit generic and unoriginal at times, it does have enough unique spice to hold it above water.

Graphics

Graphically Metro 2033 is absolutely perfect. There is no way around that. The effects are extremely well done such as the smoke still lingering in the air around campfires and so forth. The shadow effects make the game look even better, not to mention what they do for the atmosphere. The atmosphere is by far one of the best things about the entire game – the way the metro stations are designed as well as how the surface looks. The surface portrays Moscow in ruins, and the entire city is covered in snow and rubble from collapsed buildings. It certainly captures the mood of despair and horror.

The game is extremely dark as expected in a post-apocalyptic game, and at certain parts you hesitate to move forward because the darkness is so dense. The characters are also highly detailed to further add to the realistic look of the game. Some rough spots such as certain animations and some of the enemy design are present but they are easily forgotten when the rest of the game looks so fantastic.

Sound

Audio work is also one of the best parts of the game; mutants growling, people talking, singing and so forth. It’s quite remarkable and it does suck you right into the game world and its dark atmosphere, and this makes the game feel very much alive. The voice acting would have been better if it was in Russian instead of English with fake Russian accents, simply because the setting kind of requires it. Thankfully you can select the Russian voices from the options, if you want. The voice acting isn’t bad though, it’s just not as good as the rest of the game, which is a shame.

Summary

Metro 2033 has a lot of strong moments such as a great and interesting story, fantastic graphics and sound as well as challenging gameplay in various ways. While the gameplay isn’t the best in its genre it is still very much enjoyable and hard to put down. What works against the game is the sub-par voice acting as well as the fact that it has some dull moments which feel rushed.

The game is absolutely a good choice for any fan of FPS games as well as survival horror games. It’s not really a perfect match for either genre but it does present an appealing and memorable game experience overall. It’s also a lengthy one – but don’t go expecting to find a lot of replay value in it.