Review: Metro 2033

Ukraine likes Fallout it seems. Who could blame them? It is a pretty good game – a hallmark of the PC RPG and a game that is referred to and respected by many developers. There’s just one little problem though with Ukraine’s love: they may be missing the point somewhat. Fallout, for all it’s set in a post nuclear apocalypse, has a tongue in cheek comedy value to it. After all you can play through the entire game by responding only with the phrases “Ug” and “Uurhm?” if you set your intelligence low enough.

So where Fallout is an unlikely scenario of apocalyptic doom, Metro 2033 is starkly more realistic. Humanity has been wiped out, life is hellish and the world on top is a wasteland permanently stuck in a nuclear winter. Whatever is left of humanity in Russia has been confined to the dark tunnels of the vast underground of Moscow. Here people try to create a life as best they can, constantly in fear of the mutants and other demons that the nuclear wasteland has created. You play the role of Artyom in this nightmare world, attempting to make some sort of life for yourself in one of the underground villages that exist, until one day your fathers friend, Hunter, returns and everything goes to hell.

Metro 2033 plunges you into the most claustrophobic and darkest of environments. There are parts of the game where the corridors are narrow hallways, where the underground is so dark your torch barely lights the way for you. You’ll be grateful for every moment you finish in a metro town, unwilling to go back out there into the darkness. The surface meanwhile is a barren white landscape that’s both beautiful and extremely deadly. Here you have to deal with winged demons and wolf like prowlers, the new kings of this land.

The game places heavy emphasis on having almost little to no GUI. Instead everything is checked with environmental props. If you need to find out how much ammo you have, you look at your gun. If you want to check how much oxygen you have left in your gas mask, you use your watch which has a small bar that tells you. Charging up your torch requires using a mini power generator, while checking where you’re to go next and your missions are all done on a small clipboard with a cigarette lighter illuminating it for you. It’s fairly impressive work from 4A Games and perhaps shows a glint of what they wanted to do with STALKER when they were working on it.

Indeed Metro 2033 feels like a more confined STALKER. The game isn’t open world but is far more polished in detail and storyline. You are Artyom but in some cases the game takes over to show in game movie scenes or weird flashbacks. Throughout the game you suffer these flashforwards, flashbacks and general weird dream sequences that create an eeriness to the world. Spirits shimmer in the dark, children laugh in playgrounds long since devoid of life.

The game is a master of horror by using the most simple of techniques – metallic noises, screams, howling. If you’ve played STALKER you will recall the labatories you had to traverse through to gain information. Metro 2033 is exactly like those labatories except the fear is throughout the whole game. The fear though is mixed with a certain sense of dread and despair as you pass by the world. The world above is barren while the world below is dark, and any glimmer of life is confined to the small underground you meet along the way.

Story wise the game is rather interesting but feels rather stuttered. The game is effectively a walk from A to B to eventually land at town C, then on again. The towns create a relax moment, alot like the horror game Dead Space had safe zones before you had to traverse into the next horror area. The problem is it never feels quite glued together correctly.

Another problem is that the game is rather short, and the likelyhood of you wanting to play through it again is rather slim. Metro 2033 is alot like a good book in that you read it, are fulfilled by it and then don’t read it again for a good couple of years. It lays dusty and waiting for you to play through it again, and indeed the only way to keep the horror and suspence of the game going for a second time would be to forget what happened. There is no diversion in Metro 2033, no way of playing it differently. The linearity of it could be best compared to Half Life 2; another game that has a brilliant story but a closed in world.

Whether you enjoy Metro 2033 is also up for debate. I personally found it interesting, but the despair and general darkness of the world I found really uncomfortable. The result is that I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as i’d have liked to. I would however still recommend it. To veterans of STALKER it’s another enjoyable survival experience. To those who have never played STALKER (and why not?!), Metro 2033 is a good reference point. It’s a neat tidy bundle of horror and well worth considering as a purchase.

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