4a Games offers its foray into the survival/first-person-shooter genre with Metro 2033. Taking place in Moscow decades after a nuclear holocaust which forced the survivors into the metro system (which is actually fallout protected, for reals. Thank you cold war!) the game leads you on a journey through monsters, military, and the unknown. How did this reviewer fare in this environment? Read on, after the jump!
It turns out that when half of the GSC Gameworld crew split from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise to form 4A Games, they decided to cling not only to the previous title's Slavic setting, but also its infuriating level of difficulty. I will say that this game is probably a very accurate litmus test of how I would perform in a monster-spawning post-apocalyptic nightmare world. More precisely, this test reveals that I would last approximately 20 minutes in to my journey before humanity was wiped from the map.
Yeah, I would probably be that guy on the bottom if this happened in real life.
Before I review this game as a game, I have one BRIEF disclaimer: If, like me, you are playing this on PC, prepare to be humbled by how hot this game makes your video card run with Direct X 9, let alone the DX 11 engine it was designed for. It is a game that will make your machine work, so don't be afraid to lower the settings. They actually still look pretty awesome on "normal". Now, onward, ever onward!
Metro 2033 (based off of the book series by Dmitry Glukhovsky) puts the player in the shoes of a stoic (silent), Gordon Freeman-esque Russian named Artyom. Some weak characterization is introduced via some first person "cut scenes" (the game almost never leaves the perspective of Artyom) of his longing for the world as it was before by indicating that he has a board of post cards showing the world as it was. This is never mentioned again and Artyom becomes a gun-wielding, monster-murdering mute within an hour tops. The overarching mission: make it to a distant station through an obstacle laden path to try to find help from another station about the constant monster attacks. I wasn't actually going in to the game for the character's story, though. My fascination lay more with the overall conceit of the game, so I'm willing to forgive it, but I feel that it is worth noting. If you are looking for a narrative with character depth or growth, you will not find it here. Hell, if you are looking for a narrative with characters that have more than about 3 offensively-accented Russian voices, then you will be disappointed, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.
Hell, everyone just looks like THIS for half the game anyway, so trying to
keep tabs on who is who is a futile endeavor anyway.
Fortunately, all I was looking for was a good, immersive shooter in an interesting setting, so how then, did it deliver in that regard?
Well, as I said, I was looking for an immersive experience, and this was perhaps a bit too much the case in the sense that when I wasn't forced to watch from the perspective of Artyom as he fainted (which he does more than a southern belle on a hot Savannah day) I was forced to watch from the perspective of him choking out his last gasps as he dies. This game's world is an unforgiving place, and by god it wants you to know it. Ammunition is literally currency (well, not all of it, but you can find military grade rounds which can either be spent at stores or fired from your automatic-weapon for significantly more damage than normal rounds) and scrounging is the name of the game. The corpses littering the tunnels and surface world might as well be treasure chests for the extra 5 rounds of AK ammo they will net you. Keep this in mind with the fact that certain areas (and any time you head above ground) have toxic air that require you to manually equip a gas mask, which you must make sure does not get cracked when you are attacked, lest a hole get blasted through, causing you to suffocate no matter how many spare air filters you have. You can monitor how long these filters will last by checking your watch's alarm. Even checking your mission objectives is a mapped key that brings up a clipboard with a compass. If it is dark, you can use a left click to flick on your lighter and read the objectives and check your bearings. So in terms of immersion, this game certainly gets it. Rather than putting you in a Fallout 3 - esque world where it is only a matter of time until you are an unstoppable behemoth, you are almost never equipped to handle every situation the game throws at you and you must improvise.
Failure to adapt will result in this being the
last thing you see with alarming frequency
Say you wasted the ammo for all of your useful weapons wiping out the Nazi patrol (not kidding here, this is something you do), but now have three mutants creeping around a room, one of whom you wouldn't be able to dream of taking down with your remaining two revolver rounds (every mutant requires approximately a million of those to even break pace). It's time to try to find alternate routes, stick to the shadows, perhaps throw a stick of dynamite or two to cause a cave-in and block the monsters route to your tasty Russian flesh. This level of unpredictability is a really awesome experience, forcing you to adapt to the environment, rather than the game catering to your whims. This, however, does not always work out to your benefit.
This game has no quick save system, relying on only what can be described as the most random smattering of checkpoints I have ever encountered. At least in games like Mass Effect, or even Gears of War, you could pretty easily tell that a checkpoint would happen after each clearly delineated firefight. This game keeps you off guard, sometimes checkpoint-saving every 5 minutes even though you have done nothing but navigate your character through empty hallways, but holding off for the half-hour long sequences where you must meticulously take out 10 guys with nothing but 2 throwing knives and 5 dollars/rounds. I realize that quick saving could kill the whole immersion aspect, but it is inexcusable that I can prove time and time again that I can clear 90% of a room in about 20 minutes, only to be gunned down by one guy I didn't see around the corner and then have to replay the 20 minutes I clearly proved I was already damn well capable of. This was actually so frustrating at one point (though only at one specific point) that I considered just not finishing the game. I managed to get through and back on track, but it is inexcusable that easily 30% of my playtime can be attributed to dying an unprecedented number of times on one portion where I had to push through a warring section of Nazis and Communists and could not get a checkpoint beyond the beginning of the sequence no matter how many of the seemingly endless crowd of enemies I dropped from the shadows.
You probably noticed the Nazi/Communist thing up there and thought: "what the hell? what does that have to do with anything?" Well, that's pretty much what I thought, too. They introduce a plot-line about Fascists fighting Communists over... something? Control of the metro, I guess? They comprise some enemy sets in the middle of the game, and the issue is never actually addressed. This can be said for almost every single plot element. I beat this game mere days ago, and I'm still having a hard time piecing together what it was about. At times there were ghosts (detectable only when your flashlight was on) in one of the tunnels, but why was never explained and it never came up again. You encounter electrical things called anomalies which kill everything around apparently except for Artyom and the people he's with, but they stop appearing after chapter 3 (of 7). There's some mention of things called "The Dark Ones" that might be some new breed of human, but that is never really explained except for weird hallucinatory sequences where some voice whispers vagaries about you being out to kill them or... something... look, what I'm driving at is that the plot is nonsense. Pure and utter nonsense that is clearly a grab-bag of elements from the book series thrown together in an attempt to add some kind of grim, existentialist undertone to the confusing and banal narrative.
Pictured: the aforementioned anomaly
Not offered: Any explanation as to what the hell it has to do with anything.
The aforementioned atmosphere, however, actually succeeds over the unadulterated tripe that is the plot. Manually pumping the charger that powers your flashlight, donning and maintaining your gas mask, and trying to navigate a burnt out building while evading monsters and frantically checking your watch to see how much longer you have the right to BREATHE is a really exhilarating experience, in spite of the frustration of having to repeat certain areas until your eyes bleed. If you are a patient gamer looking for a shooter that makes you really feel like you are in the world set before you, then I can highly recommend adding Metro 2033 to your collection. Just make sure to buy about 50 fans as well, to prevent it from making your machine explode.
"Oh, god, the hard drive caught fire! I can probably pull this off for... 5 more
minutes. Gotta hit that checkpoint!"
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