Metro 2033

Stranger Moscow

Anyone looking for proof that Metro 2033 isn't going to be one of those FPS titles where you wander the levels armed with over powered weapons, enemies falling in waves before your relentless one man purge need look no further than the opening minutes. Stuck in a small room preparing for imminent attack by the mutant hordes your father, having first armed himself with what looks distinctly like a nifty high powered shotgun, offers you your first weapon with which to battle the onrushing evil. Gratitude quickly gives way to serious doubts about the depth of Daddy's love when you realise you've been handed Metro 2033's equivalent of a pea shooter. This is a game where success is measured by survival rather than body count and simply having a gun, any gun, with ammo in is a sign the game is smiling kindly at you.

Based on the book of the same name by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, the game is set, as the name would suggest, in the year 2033. Between now and then it appears mankind finally manages to bomb itself into near extinction and with the Earth's surface now little more than a radiation riddled wasteland the few survivors have been forced underground. Playing the role of Artyom, a man born just before the bombs started falling, youve been brought up in one of the makeshift communities dwelling in Moscow's Metro system. As the game kicks off you meet a friend of your father who tasks you with delivering a vitally important message for him. It's not the most epic sounding of quests for sure but it makes a nice change from being yet another orphan with a destiny and its possibly mundane nature is swiftly elevated by the many dangers you face on your journey.

It'd be easy at first glance to see Metro 2033 as little more than another post apocalyptic FPS, however expect, or indeed play it like that, and you'll soon be left cursing the lack of ammunition and the, at times, wonky gunplay. Really its more akin to survival horror, think Dead Space in Russian tunnels, that puts it's oppressive and sinister atmosphere right at the heart of the experience. To namedrop another classic single player only FPS of recent years, there's a more than subtle debt owed to BioShock in the way Metro 2033 crafts a world chock full of detail then lets the player pick and choose how deep they dig into it. For example it's more than possible to rush around paying little to no attention to the world around you and finish the game knowing barely more about the places you've travelled through than when you started. Slow down however and take the time to listen to the conversations of people you pass and explore every nook and cranny of the environment and you'll find a game world full of incidental detail. It never claims to present the kind of theological musings found in the underwater city of Rapture but it does offer a world with more depth than you'd normally expect from what is essentially a corridors shooter.

One of the best decisions made by 4A Games during development was when they happened upon the idea to use ammo as the in game currency. Ammunition is divided up into pre and post bomb varieties with the military grade, pre bomb, stuff of vastly superior quality to the cobbled together homemade bullets manufactured by survivors. The better the ammo the more its worth in the game's economy and the military grade ammunition can be used to purchase equipment and supplies from traders. However its also worth weighing up how much of the good stuff you may want to keep for yourself in case you get stuck in a fight where you need its improved damage. The fact that everything in game is paid for in bullets, combined with the scarcity of ammunition pickups, gives every trigger pull real meaning. This isn't a game where you'll ever want to unload a clip into the darkness unless you're pretty sure of hitting something.

The fact that you really can't go around all guns blazing gives all encounters (not to mention all the time wandering around worrying about whats to come) a real sense of drama, noises coming from the dark depths of the tunnels are all more worrying when you know you're going to have to wait till whatever's making them is close enough to see before even trying to kill it. And kill things you will have to because Metro takes a sadistic delight in pitting the odds firmly against you for most of the game. Enemies vary from renegade humans to the far scarier radiation mutated life forms that inhabit the tunnel systems you travel through. There's not a huge amount of clever AI on show here with most enemies using the wild onrush strategy, however, interestingly there's a lot to be said for trying your hand at stealth and seeing if you can sneak past certain sets of bad guys.

While we're often conditioned into thinking linearity is a bad thing, Metro 2033 strikes a blow for games that use the rigidity of a linear structure to provide a far more nuanced gameplay experience. What you may lose in freedom and decision making is more than made up for by the pleasure of putting yourself firmly in the hands of developers who know exactly how to push your gaming buttons in such a way that you're never anything less than gripped. The nature of the plot ensures you do spend a lot of your time in tunnels or cramped settlements which tends to highlight the already obvious linearity but even within these confines 4A Games do a good job of breaking things up and stopping it becoming repetitive. Key to this are the times you're able to escape the confines of the underground system and venture up to the surface of Moscow itself.

When this happens you'll need to wear a gas mask to keep yourself alive and the in game realisation of this claustrophobic piece of equipment proves to be one of the many highlights. With the mask on all sound becomes muffled, your breathing more pronounced and your view realistically restricted by the face hugging plastic mask. The gas mask isn't a free pass to explore outside though; it needs air filters to operate which means you'll need to keep a ready supply of these in your backpack for such an occasion. With no on screen indicator to show how much longer your current filter will be usable the timer on your wristwatch and your increasingly laboured breathing are your only reminders that a new filter is needed. The mask itself takes damage too with visible cracks interfering with your sight as it becomes more and more battle scarred till there's no choice left but to replace it.

With such a focus on atmosphere it helps that the whole thing is running on an engine more than capable of showing off. It may spend a lot of the time rendering corridors and tunnels but these are some of the best looking corridors and tunnels you'll have ever seen with an admirable lack of repetition despite the nature of the environment. When the game gets the chance to open out a bit, in settlements or during the visits to the surface there are moments of real beauty (in a post apocalyptic way of course) making this one of the better looking games around at the moment. Audio is equally impressive, the sound design ratcheting up the tension wonderfully and plenty of incidental dialogue filling out Metro's world naturally.

Were it a more traditional FPS there'd be justifiable grumblings about the slight questionability of the core shooter mechanics, hit detection sometimes feels a little off (something not helped by the fairly poor 'reaction' animations when your bullets do hit home) and aiming can feel a tad sluggish at times. However, in a perverse way these niggles actually go some way to increasing the already nail biting tension. While there are still moments of frustration when you feel you've suffered because the game didn't respond to your actions fast enough, for the most part it all just adds to the experience.

While the influence of games like BioShock and Dead Space appear easy to spot Metro 2033 is very much its own game. On a very basic level it's little more than a conventional corridor shooter, however, it's draped in such atmospheric finery you'll hardly notice. It doesn't quite have the flawless combat found in other games but it still provides moments of knuckle whitening, terror inducing brilliance and the unique ammo equals money idea is design genius. Linear in the very best sense of the word this is single player gaming close to its best and one you'd be daft to miss.

88%

By Paul Newcombe