The future is a scary place. Normally you can expect the future to be one of two places. Either you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic world where everything is destroyed, people have mutated into all sort of monsters from the nuclear fallout, and weapons are the only currency worth collecting. Alternatively the future is a utopian paradise, everyone loves peace and each other, and we will all wear the same baby-suit outfit with silver boots. Until we realize that we are all under some mind control device and never really had a say about the boots to begin with.

Metro 2033 falls squarely into the post-apocalyptic future category. It’s a grim world out there, so like everyone else with a sense of survival most survivors flocked underground. There are no big vaults to protect you from the harsh conditions, but the big subway stations in Moscow were easily transformed into little pockets of life. Weapons are scarce and people are dirty. And there are mutated monsters (they are always scarier than unmutated monsters) that will give you nightmares. It all may sound a little bit familiar, and it should. Every second game has a similar setting these days. Does Metro 2033 do anything to set it apart from the crowd? Put on your headlights, we are going underground in the Motherland!

STALKER!

4A Games was founded by a large portion of the team over at GSC Game World. These guys were responsible for STALKER. When the first few images and details emerged I was convinced that Metro 2033 would be a STALKER set in tunnels. Turns out, I was not far off in my summary, but in realization, these two games complement each other a lot more than compete against each other.

You play Artyom, a young man who was born in one of the Metro station cities. The game starts with you being overrun with monsters and then playing the game in flashbacks (which also seems to be a trend these days). You have never ventured out beyond this little corner of hope on the outskirts of Moscow, and for good reason: the subway system is infested with all sorts of evil creatures. When your uncle arrives from another station city, and subsequently goes missing, it’s up to you to complete his mission and ultimately save mankind. See, no cliché here.

Metro 2033 is a survival shooter. The art of survival lies in how accurately and sparingly you can use your weapons, and how well you can scavenge. The world trades in pre-war bullets. These bullets are the best kind. They have more stopping powers, and are really rare. They are also worth 10 post-war bullets. Post-war ammunition has less stopping power and is not really all that good for killing things. This leads to the scavenging part where it pays off to search every dead body, every nook and every cranny for pre-war ammunition that you can lay your grubby paws on. If this stuff is so valuable, it amazes me how people can just leave it lying around.

A question of life and death

Stations are the hubs of the Moscow night-life. People clumped together are selling anything you can imagine, and in a world like this you mainly imagine food and guns. Trading your pre-war bullets for better weapons, more ammunition and maybe a few health packs are the only real thing to do in these stations, so it says a lot about the developers dedication and their attention to detail. They could easily have made the stations static trading screens where you can pick up supplies and missions. However, every station feels alive. Kids run around and draw with chalk on the ground. Traders try to sell their goods and pubs have all the wrong kinds of people hanging around. It really feels alive.

The tracks between the stations are the hubs of the Moscow night-death. People die out there. Luckily it is over quickly and mostly painless. Monsters will kill you with a few jabs of their claws. If they don’t, the gangsters will shoot you in the back. Staying alive is really hard to do. You will often run out of bullets, and as macho as it might feel to stab a monster in the face with a pocket knife, it just won’t cut it (pun intended). Then, as a last resort, you will switch to your pre-war ammo. If I just squeeze off a few rounds this monster will be dead and I can find a safe haven. But there is never just one monster. Soon you will not only be dead, but broke too.

Missions are picked up in the stations, and normally performed between cities on the tracks, tunnels and terraces of the underground world. Often you will need to emerge onto the surface to reach a different train line or pass by a collapsed tunnel. The air up there is bad for your health, so you need a mask. These masks do not last long and soon a new filter is needed. If you don’t carry one you’ll die. When monsters attack you can tell how close to dying you are by the cracks on your mask. Once they break your mask, you die. Your vision is also very limited, and often the only light is from your headlight. Being the bad type of future, batteries are nonexistent. To charge your torch you have to manually charge it with a hand pump, kind of like those radios you find in the middle of Africa. But the darn thing runs out of battery at the most inopportune times, normally right as a big monster attacks.

Real Deal

4A Games has done a great job in setting Metro 2033 in a world that feels totally believable. The atmosphere is tense, people look and feel hopeless, and the monsters are scary and ugly. However, both the human and monster opponents are not very smart. I guess it’s believable that monsters are generally stupid, and that humans who do not join the bigger group for the sake of survival cannot be very smart either. A lot of feedback to the player happens outside of the HUD. Your will notice your flashlight is running low as the light gets pretty dim and cannot light up into the distance. You will notice the time left on your mask’s filter by glancing at the players watch. The strength of your mask is real cracks in the glass. This immerses the player even more into a world that could be real. It’s also pretty real that survival in this world must be really hard. This is portrayed in the game with great aplomb, and you will die often. It is a very hard game, not for the faint hearted.

You will at some point ask yourself if you have been to this station before. You will wonder how many more monsters you have to kill. You will notice how your teammates on some missions never run out of bullets, yet they won’t share with you. You will reload your game for the twentieth time and wonder if it gets any better. You will reach a set-piece in the game and wonder why there are not more of those, they are so brilliant.

One tough cookie

As great as this game was for me in the beginning, it lost its appeal for me. The controls are not as smooth as they could have been and the stings are just too familiar at times. I also felt disconnected from the plot-line. I did not complete missions to see where the story would take me, but rather just because I was playing the game and enjoying most of it. It also gets so tough at points that it actually ruins the game. There are times when a tough game turns sour and it is just not fun anymore.

Metro 2033 is a tough scary game that will feel a little familiar at times and be a breath of fresh air at the same time. It’s a rollercoaster ride on rails, quite literally at times. Its pretty, plays well and looks very good. But it is as hard as nails and certainly not for the faint hearted. If you consider yourself hard and rough, then you will not be returning this game anytime soon. For the weaker ones of us too who still sleep with a nightlight, don’t bother.

The good: Totally believable setting; great atmosphere.
The bad: Bad AI, as tough as nails!
The ugly: Monsters this ugly will make you lose sleep…unless you like this sort of thing.

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