Based on Dimitri Glukovzky's best-selling novel, 4A's new Metro 2033 flips FPS convention on its head and brings new challenges and elements to the table. By combining a strong survival horror element, a level of challenge few games provide these days, and a surprisingly consistent world, Metro 2033 succeeds in defying genre tradition and giving gamers something new. It also will frustrate the heck out of you, as you painfully struggle against the all-too-automatic muscle memory you've already developed playing other games. So strap on your gas mask, load up your Bastard Rifle, march through the Dead City, and enter the endless dark and wonderful depth of the Metro.
Gameplay:
You begin Metro as Artyom, a young man who was born before the nuclear wars of 2013, but grew up almost entirely in the underground shelter of Moscow's extensive metro system. The story is too complicated to retell here but rest assured, its good. Each "station" works as an independent city, allowing for trade, travel, and even war to continue after the blast. Artyom's home of Exhibition station is in a bad way and it’s up to him to find a way to save his home. From your first step out of Artyom's room and into Exhibition, you realize that Metro has more to offer than basic gunplay and irradiated baddies.
Exploring stations isn't really time consuming and most are constructed in a linear fashion to prevent you from straying too far but experiencing everything these city stations has to offer means stopping to smell the roses. Do so, and you'll be shown numerous interactive trinkets, a slew of scripted conversations between nearly every NPC in the game, subtle clues furthering the game's story, optional morality choices and even the occasional "bonus bullet" hidden in the scenery. Every station has a believable facsimile of real life in the tunnels. Merchants gather in the market place, prisoners are kept under proper guard, homes are kept separate of industry and towns have reasonable explanations for things like where they get their food, how they tend to their sick and how they raise their young.
As fun as experiencing the different cultures of the stations are, the bulk of gameplay takes place in the travel between stations and here the dangers of the future make themselves known. It’s time to shoot stuff. Shoot first and think later is a common enough practice in modern shooters, but doing so in Metro 2033 will cause you no end of grief. Shots must be placed carefully and fired in short bursts to avoid running out of ammo in the thick of combat. Even players used to tactical shooters may find themselves at a loss, as there is no cover system available in Metro 2033. You can crouch behind pillars, crates and walls scattered amongst the ruins of the Metro, but must do so manually. Shots must be placed accurately, often while on the move or in the open, making the combat frantic and tense at all times. Other situations call not just for accurate reflexes, but for strategic thought as well. Stealth is a viable, if complicated, procedure helped by the ability to douse light sources and stealth kill enemies from behind with your knife. Enemies will make you play smart and few encounters in the game ever feel the same as what came before. Feral mutant enemies often emit calls for help, attracting a seemingly endless horde. Bandits frequently lay devastating traps, shoot through hidden windows and trapdoors and can also warn their friends that you’re coming. Worst of all are the Dark Ones, with whom every encounter is unique, but we’ll leave those to your imagination.
The coolest and most unique element of Metro is its resource management. "Dirty Rounds" produced after the blast are simple bullets, inaccurate and with lousy damage. "Pre-Blast Rounds" on the other hand shoot straight and punch through enemies like a hit knife through butter, while simultaneously acting as the in-game currency. As such, balancing your use of the better bullets against your need to upgrade weapons in the market is a large part of staying alive. The other resources consist of health packs, explosives and of course, equipment used to survive the harmful radiation found in nearly every nook and cranny.
Graphics:
Visually, despite attempting a realistic look, Metro 2033 rarely approaches anything of the kind. Smart design choices however, help bolster its graphics. The game’s HUD is almost always invisible allowing you become more immersed in Metro 2033’s awesome world. The home made weapon models have a unique charm, although they aren’t quite as spectacular as those found in Bioshock. Finally, character and monster design are remarkably good. Given that most characters you encounter are either bit players in the story or completely optional to interact with, their designs are always solid. It says something that nearly every character you encounter is wearing Russian military armour and sometimes even a ski mask, yet I never fail to distinguish between individual guards or merchants. The monsters are the weakest designs, lacking any diversity within species, but they never fail to horrify and may even get an earnest scream out of the more timid players out there. Plus, there are a lot of the buggers.
The 4A Engine isn’t the most powerful we’ve seen, but it is consistent and rarely produced frame rate issues or bugs. At worst, enemies occasionally flicker, but never does the game fail to register it when you land a vital blow.
Sound:
Sound design might be the best asset Metro has to draw you to its cause. Outside of triple-A RPGs, you’ve never heard such quality voice work from NPCs. True, the script tends to let the actors down and the main characters rarely steal the show, but the game finds other places to squeeze in excellent dialogue. Every hall of every station is filled with scripted NPC dialogue; especially Exhibition station in the game’s opening sequence. If you want to understand just how much work went into those recordings, just set the language the Russian in the game options. Not only is the game far more immersive in its native tongue (with English subtitles to help keep you in on the story) but it exemplifies just how much of the dialogue recorded is less about informing the player about the story, and more about solidifying the world beneath destroyed Moscow.
When it comes to sound effects the game also delivers. Gunfire is fairly generic and the taunts of your enemies are nothing special, but the heavy breathing of Artyom’s burning lungs is a far more immersive way of telling the player that its time to change the filter of his gas mask than a simple meter. The terrifying cries of the feral beasts, especially the rallying calls of those on the surface, definitely deserve a round of applause. Finally, the howling, screeching and altogether unsettling effects present during the Dark Ones’ segments do a great job of disorienting the player.
Longevity:
Given that Metro 2033 lacks multiplayer, it cannot compare to most shooters in terms of longevity. When compared to most survival horror games, which Metro has far more in common with anyway, its 12 hours becomes more respectable. When you factor in an alternative ending that is surprisingly tricky to achieve (unless you look up how), Metro 2033 is easy to justify, even at full price.
Overall:
Metro 2033, for all its excellence, is not for everyone. In fact, shooter fans will probably find it too difficult and be insulted by the lack of multiplayer, while survival horror fans will resent the lack of true form puzzles and its frantic pace. The ideal Metro 2033 player is someone looking for something new, something immersive and something really, really hard. If you fit that description, we cannot recommend Metro 2033 highly enough. 4A and THQ have taken the kind of world-building detail usually reserved for BioWare or Bethesda titles, and subtly inserted it into a linear, bullet-riddled frenzy. Its not perfect, and the way is confounds genre convention is definitely going to lead to some purchasers being disappointed that the game is not what they thought it would be. Give it a chance and work to immerse yourself in its world though, and it will reward you.
| Review By: Blake Treleaven - Overall Rating (out of 10) |
| Gameplay: |
9.5 |
|
|
| Graphics: |
8 |
|
|
| Sound: |
10 |
|
|
| Longevity: |
7.5 |
|
|
| Overall: |
9.5 |
|
|
|
|
