Metro 2033 | a Review
originally published on 20/08/2020;
Hello everyone, I am the mole-like G.E.M.Simov, a slavic mongrel that lives in a dark, dank tunnel under the ground, and today I’ll tell you about the subway. Wait, no, the metro. The game, Metro 2033.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
Metro 2033 is a First Person Shooter with survival elements and also stealth elements. The game plays much like any standard FPS out there, although there are some differences to how the player approaches things. As an example, when getting into a situation that would require the use of force, ala gunfights, the player needs to make the decision of whether or not they use their ammo or their currency, as the currency is actually military grade ammo.
Using currency as ammo, the player deals a lot more damage, but loses money. Having the currency in Metro 2033 is sometimes better than not having it, as, even though the player cannot buy that many things, most of what is available is quite useful - be it grenades, throwing knives, ammo (currency converts into a larger number of normal ammo), weapons, weapon upgrades or even filters for gas masks.
Ammo, as well as some consumables and normal ammo, can be found when roaming about the world of the game, but sometimes the player needs to look for them. The need to make these decisions, the need to conserve ammo and the need to scavenge for more combine into the survival elements of Metro 2033, and those were well implemented.
I mentioned gas masks - yes, indeed. Metro 2033 has a mechanic, where, whenever the player enters specific areas, they need to have a mask equipped and a filter to put into the mask. Otherwise they die. Having many filters allows for a prolonged stay in those areas and for the opportunity to scavenge for longer periods of time. This is also added as a survival element, and it is well implemented, although I never could understand what the mask was supposed to be protecting the player from. Radiation? How does a mask protect one from radiation? Toxic fumes? How come every zone has that? And the player can survive for a certain amount of time without a mask, so it is not that sensible.
The movement in Metro 2033 is not as stellar as I would have hoped it would be. It was passable, do not misinterpret my words, but it could have been smoother, more fluent. I found myself feeling as if the game was not keeping up with me, not at the pace that I wanted, at least, and I was troubled by it. It was not input lag, it was not stuttering, it was a feeling of slowness, as if the game was just half a second slower than what I would have wanted it to be, and that made the experience weird.
The gunplay both benefits and suffers from the movement. Due to the fact that things are somewhat slow, in this weird manner, everything else is also somewhat slow, and so there isn’t that great an issue. However, when shooting, it just feels sluggish and lacks the smoothness of other games in the genre.
I know that it could be speculated that it is owed up to the performance of my hardware, but I’ve ran games far more recent than Metro 2033 on my machine, and they were slapping a crisp 60 FramesPerSecond, as was Metro 2033, and there was quite the vast difference.
The stealth mechanics of Metro 2033 are very weird and, in all honesty, not well implemented. The player has a watch on the left arm of the character, and said watch has a gauge that indicates whether or not the player is in the light? Seen? Uncovered or covered? It never became too clear to me, and it was never truly useful. For a while I figured it was something similar to the eye reticle in Skyrim (which opens wider the more aware enemies are of the player), but in the end it was not so. On top of that, enemies simply detected me while I was sneaking and certain that they did not know I was there.
The game also has different difficulty modes, some of which remove the UI on top of making the enemies more sponge-y, requiring more bullets to kill, and making said enemies more accurate and deadlier. It’s not a good difficulty scale, so I would recommend playing it on the normal difficulty setting, as it was, most likely, the intended one.
All in all, the gameplay in Metro 2033 is not fun. I have fond memories of the game, but I guess they are not owed up to the sheer process of playing it. 1/3
Presentation
I have always found myself fascinated by the prospect of witnessing the vast city streets, always populated by pedestrians and motor vehicles, empty and dead. The setting of the post apocalypse is the only way, so far, that has been able to show me these sights. Metro 2033 is set in a post-apocalyptic world, destroyed by atomic warfare, and the dead world that the player explores is quite something.
Even if the sections where the player wanders out into the dead cities are few, they are the most pleasant to behold. The buildings, jagged and crumbling, everything either brought to dust or made to resemble nothing more than a shadow of its former self, the utter state of disrepair, the vegetation slowly trying to weasel its way into the cracks in the concrete - this is a beautiful sight.
And the team working on modeling these things, the team working on creating shaders and implementing, building the levels - these people have done a fantastic job. Metro 2033 has sections that look incredible, that made me want to stay even if it would mean running out of filters, that made me want to wander about and explore. The world on the surface is truly spectacular.
The world under the ground, however, is not that wondrous. In fact, it has another draw to it. Dark, dank corridors, going on to infinity, spreading their long, dangly fingers through the earth, like a spider’s web, are very impressive to wander through. The claustrophobic feeling, the uncertainty at what might be behind the corner, the life of the people down there, never truly safe, never truly calm - those are also great things.
Alas, the game is dark. When underground, the game is very, very dark. So dark, in fact, I couldn’t really see things clearly. Gunfights in these tunnels are like gambling - the player shoots at something, and it might be an enemy, it might be some kind of object, who knows. Even if the game looks good, I can’t appreciate that if I can’t see the game!
The music of Metro 2033 failed to remain ingrained in my mind for long. That might be because there was almost no music. There are sections in the game which do have some kind of musical score accompanying them, but most of the time what the player hears are ambient sounds - or the deathly silence of the tunnels. The bits of music that are present are nothing extraordinary, and they just fill in the background of the respective scene they are in.
The sound effects I heard are all decently well crafted and implemented. The sound of gunshots is a bit underwhelming, but there is always an accompanying cling of the bullet’s shell flying out of the gun and falling on the ground, which is nice. The ambience is good in most zones, and when there is wind, it makes everything so much better.
The voice acting is weird. Everyone is trying to put on a Russian accent, and some people do it successfully, others fail miserably, third don’t really make the attempt, at all. However, why? Why not just have the people speaking normal english, because, even if they are in Russia, this is just a translated version. They are, technically, speaking Russian, but it’s just translated for the players who are experiencing it in English.
I doubt the characters have an accent when speaking Russian, so then they have an accent when speaking English, as an attempt to duplicate the feeling of being surrounded by weird Russians who all have non-russian accents when speaking Russian. Not a good choice - one could say it was done for the purposes of immersion, but it did not do it for me. On top of that, I don’t think there were many examples of good voice acting. One or two characters were quite well done, but the rest were just passable.
Overall, the presentation of Metro 2033 is good, but it could have been so much more! I was disappointed by it. 2/3
Story
Metro 2033 is inspired by and follows closely the story of the novel Metro 2033, written by Dmitry Glukhovsky. As such, the story is actually hot fire, as that there novel is quite good (I will review it at some point).
The story takes place in the vast subway system of Moscow, in the year 2033, plenty of time after the world has been plunged into nuclear annihilation by war. The people fled down to the metro (that being the subway) and managed to survive there. Now… Well, now there are other threats.
Mutants of all shapes and sizes roam both the streets above and the tunnels below. Humanity is locked in a conflict of interests, as factions have arisen - communists, fascists, oligarchs - and are slowly but surely threatening the stability of the Metro.
Then there’s the main character - Artyom. He’s some fellow living in a far off station that exports tea. One day, a spartan by the name of Hunter shows up (spartans are indirectly part of the oligarch faction) and goes out to deal with something on the surface. He does not come back, so Artyom is tasked with going out and letting the other spartans, in what is essentially the center of the metro, know that Hunter is dead.
The story follows the young man as he explores the metro, going places where few from his station, or any station at all, have been, meeting interesting characters, making small, insignificant decisions, and ending up in the middle of it all.
I enjoyed the story greatly, safe for the end. I had not read the book at the time of playing the game, and due to the fact that there had been instances of the player being able to make a choice between two things, I was left with the impression that the ending, if it was something massive, that might have involved Artyom performing an action, would allow for a choice to be made.
I was dead wrong. The ending is fixed, and it happens no matter what the player does over the course of the game. The ending was very disappointing for me, but it was an intentionally disappointing ending, courtesy of mister Glukhovsky, god bless his creative genius.
Story’s a banger, as people would say. Very good! 3/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time?
The short answer is no, it does not.
The long answer explains why it does not. I simply could not live through the strangeness of the gameplay, its slowness, it’s perceptible inaccuracy, when it came to providing a fluent and smooth experience. That was something which bugged me, but I can ignore that if the story is great.
The story was great, up until the ending. I just could not tell myself that the ending was good. I was very disappointed. And, as such, I cannot give this game the legendary point, even if it is a game I, personally, really enjoy. 0/1
Conclusion
6/10. Metro 2033 is a game that is slightly above average. It is not bad, but it is also not close to being good, due to its strangely choppy gameplay and upsetting ending. I would love to recommend it, but only if the one to whom I am recommending it is a fan of First Person Shooters.
I tuck it under my belt, another achievement that I display. Not with pride, not with sorrow. It is something that I sigh upon the sight of, as it could have been so much more.