It’s the end of the world as we know it. Most of humanity has been wiped out in a nuclear war, and only a few survivors are scattered around the world. You are one of these survivors, living deep underground in the Moscow Metro system. In the tunnels around you live mutants ravaged by radiation and above ground, in the wastelands, live creatures that are even worse than that… This is the premise for Metro 2033, a post-apocalyptic video game that is based upon the book of the same name. It is a bleak, depressing game to play, graphically dark and forbidding. If you are looking for a gaming experience to lift your spirits, this certainly isn’t the one for you. However, if it is a gritty, Fallout 3-esque shooter that you are after, then you will find more than enough here to satisfy your dark cravings.
The underground stations of the Moscow Metro are densely packed with humanities survivors, the last remnants of civilisation huddled together. Taking a first person perspective, as you make your way out of the station and set off on your adventure, you enter tunnels where danger lurks around every bend and radioactive beasts wait in hiding to attack you. Half the time you don’t see them until it is too late – having only a torch to see with – and then when you do come face to face with the murderous creatures, they attack with such a frenzy that you are spraying bullets left, right and centre in the vain hope of hitting them and escaping with your life. If you have every played a survival horror game you will be familiar with this feeling, and the sense of dread that you feel whilst walking along the tunnels is really quite unnerving at times.
Mutants and radioactive beats are not the only foe you will encounter, as you will also find yourself dealing with other, rival colonies intent on surviving the holocaust by any means necessary. These typically take the form of Nazis (no, I’m not kidding!) and in these parts of the game it is more akin to a standard first person shooter than a survival horror game.
Of course, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and whilst you can opt for the gung ho approach (i.e. running around wildly and shooting at anything you see), you will also be able to make use of their darkness around you as cover and sneak about in the shadows armed with a pair of night vision goggles and a hunting knife. Enemy soldiers won’t know you are coming until the last second, and you can quickly dispatch them with a well placed knife to the throat.
The game is not just based within the murky tunnels of the Moscow Metro – at points you will be able slip on your gas mask and venture over ground to explore the desolate city. The gas mask unfortunately is one of the more annoying aspects of the game, as being a first person shooter, you see the game world through the eyes of your character. This includes the cracks that appear in your gas mask as it gets damaged during combat. Annoying at first, this quickly becomes frustrating as you struggle to see what is ten feet in front of you as more and more damage is taken, obscuring your vision.
Graphically, this is hardly the prettiest game in the world, and there are plenty of ugly flaws in both the environments and character models. Some of the textures are appallingly bad, and they’d look out of place in a game from 2005, let alone 2010. And let’s not even mention the terrible twitching body animations as you scavenge items from a dead soldier or creature. They look like they are having mild epileptic fits as you move amongst them, picking up items.
The music is, yep you guessed it, dark and forbidding. There is a thing about guitars in this game – they seem to be everywhere. Whenever you are near a human colony, you can be sure to find some wannabe rock star strumming along around a camp fire. Curiously enough, they all play the same bloody three cords again and again and again. There is no escape from the dreaded guitar even when you move away into the relative quiet of the tunnels, as the same three cords make another appearance again in the background music. Noooo!!
As I mentioned earlier, this game is grim. It’s actually quite depressing in parts, to be honest with you. Then again, we are talking about a post holocaust world savaged by radiation, where humanity struggles for survival against an endless horde of mutants and bloodthirsty demons. Hardly the stuff of fairy tales. This is a decent enough shooter, but there are too many elements of the game that just don’t work. It feels dated in many parts and its dark atmosphere lets it down… It’s honesty too much at times.
