Metro 2033 is a first-person survival horror-shooter based on the 2005 novel by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Although set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Moscow, it is less a story of that apocalypse taking place and more a story of survival in the world that it's created.
Metro 2033 Review : from a famousblueraincoat
Played 20+ hours on XBox360
Available for PC & XBox360 - ESRB: M
"High on Concept"
Due to the fallout, the surviving civilians have been pushed in to Moscow's subway network where they create cities and functional societies. You play as Artyom who has discovered his home station of Exhibition is slowly being overrun by mutants. The attacks are becoming more and more frequent in addition to taking on a psychologically damaging effect.
The elders of Exhibition station send Artyom out to investigate the cause and appeal to the largest Metro city of Polis for support. Along the way you encounter numerous enemies and allies as well as uncovering more and more of this desolated but rich and interesting culture that has been created.
Not that it's supposed to be culturally interesting, but I was really taken with world of Metro 2033. Not because it's a good game per se, but because of what it does in terms of marrying a solid fictional world with an immersive experience. Metro 2033 is high in concept and everything in this game, aside from ammo count, is experienced without digital overlay.
By that I mean that your character and your first-person view is shifted as you check your notebook for your current objectives or compass, or when you charge your flashlight/night-vision you physically put away your weapon, or when venturing above ground your gas-mask (cracked from even slight melee damage) severely impedes your field of vision. All of these small aspects add to the overall experience of feeling as if every activity is an immense chore, contrasted with feelings of small accomplishment every time you find another oxygen canister, or more ammunition.
Much of what is interesting about this game are the situations that you encounter with no real foreseeable solution. Odds seem immensely stacked against you, and it walks a very fine line between being extraordinarily intense and feeling legitimately broken.
Although stumbling across a war between Neo-Nazis and Neo-Communists and fighting your way from one side of the front-line to the other sounds intense and interesting, unfortunately the result is that you play from quick-save to quick-save loading and dying and loading and dying your entire way through.
By now, you would think that there was a decent solution to this problem. I'm not requesting the abolition of the quick-save, but only suggesting that when a designer merely fills an impossible to navigate room with enemies with impossibly unpredictable actions there will be moments in that game where I will turn off my Xbox and never return to that god forsaken game again.
This, however, proves that European game makers are better than their North American counterparts. Even games that are on the lower end of the 'technical' spectrum result in an overall better experience. I would much rather play something that I was entirely immersed in than something that was far too polished for me to invest any intellectual energy in. I can only hope that there are more games like this or STALKER that will push this experience over technicality line further.
I want to love this game, but the main criticism here is that Metro doesn't quite know what it is. Is it spooky? For sure. Is it an interesting deployment of a grand fictive Apocalypse scenario? Absolutely. Is it a shooter? Not really. Is it survival horror? Sort of. Surprisingly, although there are parts of this game that just do not work as a functional shooter (even though this is your main mode of interaction with the world), what was interesting about it was the fictive universe that draws you in.
