Metro 2033 (PC Review)

The underground metro station is the last place where the human race remains. Looking around you will see posters of beautiful landscapes of the world you once knew. Now life beyond the metro is a post apocalyptic world, smeared in blood of innocent life’s and infested with mutated creatures.

Metro 2033 is based on a novel by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky and does well to interpret the narrative. The loading screen between sequences has the protagonist unfold the story as you progress. If you listen to the conversations that NPC (Non Playable Characters) make you’ll get a better understanding of life in the metro. 

Don’t be mistaking this for a Fallout clone as the games main focus is life in an underground metro station. Excellent level design makes environments feel fresh and varied. You won’t come across one environment that has been seen before.

The metro stations are bleak and dark, sometimes too much for your liking. While you have a flash light and lighter at your disposal, the overwhelming darkness can be very frustrating.

When you walk through the games environment you will come across mourning parents and hear people reminiscing on their lives. 4A Games have definitely achieved their goal, in terms of immersing players in the games environment. It’s a vibrant world that you feel the need to save and care about.

Unfortunately the great story is a let down by the games shooting mechanics. In the game military grade bullets is the currency used to buy weapons. As this game is set in a post apocalyptic future, there aren’t many military bullets so homebrew bullets are what suffice. As you can imagine they are not as effect as the real bullets.

Even though, they still penetrate flesh and kill enemies eventually. The problem is enemies are bullet sponges and your bullets seem to have no effect. It’s only after you empty a clip that they actually die or stop looking around corners in cover.

This leads me on to the next problem, the usual pattern for the enemies AI is to run behind cover and peep around. They always seem hesitant to shoot you peeping round corners and never shooting, making shootouts very predictable.

A very unforgiving feature of the game at times is the shortage of bullets. Dead bodies are ever present in the game and most of the time have a handful of bullets. If you ever run low on ammo in a shootout then god help you. To avoid this from happening it pays to scavenge around from time to time.

The visual effects in the game are impressive and the presentation as a whole is beautiful on the PC. Compared to other games in the genre Metro 2033 doesn’t really stand out.

It does try to be different with inclusion of a compass that works in real time. The protagonist wears a watch which can be utilized to show your visibility. These are great design decisions to avoid using any HUD’s but not enough to stand out from the crowd. Hopefully 4A Games improves on these setbacks in Metro 2034 and works on schedule to give players a better experience. 

7/10