Metro 2033

 

Metro 2033 is a strange beast for a game released in 2010. At its core it's a survival horror game that doesn't seem so at first glance, but the realization creeps in eventually. 

 

At the onset you're some Russian kid named Artyom living out your days in the Moscow metro, dreaming of one day seeing the surface like any good kid stuck underground in a post apocalyptic future. Of course this wish is granted when some dude called a Ranger shows up and gives you a mission to warn the main city in the metro of... well, something bad that's coming. After he doesn't return from an investigation into the aforementioned bad thing, your journey begins. 

 

If it feels like I'm not detailing the story and set up much, basically it's because the developers themselves don't seem to do that either. One of the few gripes I have with the game is that there seems to be a rich world full of crazy stuff like Russians who take up the banners of Soviets and Nazis through misguided attempts at trying to form some kind of centralized government using old world texts they've discovered, but it doesn't get explored on that much. The whole "silent protagonist" role doesn't help the situation. Luckily some things are explained through loading screens by Artyom, but not enough that you fully grasp what's happening at times. Not detailing the world a bit more feels like wasted potential.

 

For the first hour or two the game seems like your standard first person fare. Walk into a room full of mutants, shoot, continue etc. But then the game takes a new form once you start fighting human bandits, far tougher mutants, and the warring Soviets and Nazis. You're constantly running out of ammo and scavenging bodies for even a few extra bullets to fight off the next horde of mutants that you may come across, and often the best choice is to simply avoid the fight and make a run for it. When facing humans, stealth is always your best choice since only a bullet or two will kill Artyom, the enemies always have an extremely large number advantage, and using your precious ammo on them instead of the mutants seems like a waste. 

 

The games standout point though, and the most enjoyable part of the game for me personally was the amazing atmosphere. You enter various underground metro "cities", abandoned parts of the metro, the frozen hellish streets of Moscow, and an old Soviet missile facility which one character appropriately remarks "has that classic Soviet feel". You'll visit abandoned tunnels inhabited by ghosts of fallen soldiers that are represented as shadows that will try to kill you if you don't tread carefully, and anomalies roving the deep underground that will inadvertently kill anything they come in contact with. The glee I got from these sections that involved no combat whatsoever was indicative of the games powerful use of atmosphere and the interaction with it. By far the most outstanding location is the surface world. It is completely frozen over, filled with the most terrifying of the mutants, and so inhospitable that it requires a gasmask to traverse it.  

         

Something about scavenging bodies and caches for the filters needed for my gas mask while trying to hide from the flying "demon" mutants just felt really cool. I seriously felt remorse when I had to scavenge a dead buddies body right after he died for supplies. I felt a tinge of regret, but knew I needed it more than he did now. Your gas mask is constantly on the verge of breaking, so finding a new one and some filters is always necessary. Whenever I was on the surface it was a constant feeling of just wanting to get the hell out of the place as my gas mask would continually frost up over time to the point where I could just barely see, coupled with Artyoms constant and increased heavy breathing to the point where it became uncomfortable to hear, similar to wearing one for an extended period in actuality. 

Around this time I realized I was playing a modern version of some kind of survivor horror game of old. That thought finalized when at one point I entered an old state library to retrieve some documents and I encountered the terrifying "librarian" mutants. These big guys can take insane amounts of punishment and only attack you if your back is turned or you engage them in combat, yet they continuously follow you and stand eye for eye directly in front of you the entire time. These dudes look like some kind of awful lizard faced mole man who wants nothing more than to rip your limbs off and beat you to death with them, probably because you don't have an awful mole man lizard face. It scared the crap out of me when they would be in my face, snarling, while I'm walking backwards hoping I end up backing through the correct door. First person cutscenes, specifically the ones involving these guys add to the tension, and I felt that section solidified exactly what I thought was great about this game. 

 

One of the touted mechanics of the game is the fact that there are "dirty" and "pristine" bullets. The nice pretty military bullets can be loaded into your gun to do more damage, but at the expense of them being used as a currency in the metro, meaning you're essentially shooting your money if you choose to do that. Since I scavenged whatever ammo I ever needed and there aren't many guns in the game there was never much of a reason to spend them on anything but more cruddy bullets since I never noticed enough of a damage difference to care. There's also a pretty shallow moral choice part to the game where a couple decisions are made, like paying a child a bullet for helping you. The decisions determine which ending you get, though neither is really a "good" or "bad" ending per se.

 

There were some pretty roughly placed checkpoints in the game, and sometimes I died from something that was completely unexplained and unexpected in a "haha got you, now you know how to do it right!" kind of way. There are also some game mechanics that aren't pointed out very well, like the fact that I never knew I could charge up my flashlight to see far better with it till about 3/4ths through the game. A few sections of the game are kinda messed up and do you pretty rotten too, which combined with the checkpoints Isn't the most fun thing in the world. 

 

Metro 2033 Isn't a game for everyone and at times can be frustrating to get through, but it's nice to see a game that takes the good parts of the broken and frustrating games of the genre from the past and merges them with a modern day formula and wicked atmosphere to create something refreshing.