In 2002, a Russian author by the name of Dmitry Glukhovsky wrote and published a free novel online for the whole world to read. Basing it off of the country he lived in, Glukhovsky wrote about an apocalyptic world ruined by nuclear warfare. A world that was attempting to rebuild underground, but grew corrupt due to the political ideologies from the world before. A world that showed what people would do to survive a dire situation. Metro 2033, and it wasn’t until 2005 that his original story would get a physical print that could be sold. Metro 2033 is not the first post apocalyptic story to represent human needs and desires. There have been plenty of stories like it before, and saying it did something new and extraordinary was just banal. As time went on Metro 2033 became more popular with two million people having read the free online version before the physical copy came out, and 500,000 copies being sold when the print version came out. Glukhovsky later won an award for Metro 2033 and was eventually approached by a game studio named 4A Games. A group of developers who wanted to partner up with Glukhovsky and adapt his novel into an intractable video game. Weird that they didn’t decide to make a film first, but Glukhovsky agreed and gave 4A Games the rights to work with Metro 2033.
Development for the video game adaptation of Metro 2033 dates all the way back to when they announced the project in 2005, which was the exact same year the print version of the book was released. They wanted the game to be as good as it could be and they took inspiration from other acclaimed games at the time. They were aiming for a survival focused first person shooter, and their two inspirations were Half-Life 2 and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. As a matter of fact, a few individuals who used to work on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series actually came to help with Metro 2033 as well as the author who helped write the story and dialogue for the game. Gotta do so or else the devs are going to take your characters and write them in such a way where they don’t fit the tone of your own book. Anyways, Metro 2033 spent five years in the works and it wasn’t 2010 that they reached a finished product and published it on all current consoles. Metro 2033 was a good game that came out at the wrong time. 2010 was a bustling year for video games as some of the greatest games of all time came out during that period. Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Red Dead Redemption, and plenty of others were carrying the public’s attention. Metro 2033 rolled around and it got acceptable reception and didn’t sell too well. Part of the reason the game probably didn’t do so well was because it was going against most trends at the time. Look at it: a depressing atmosphere, non-cinematic storytelling, and non-action packed shooting.
Metro 2033 didn’t do so well, but it grew to become a cult classic and a group of people came to love it for what it was. That’s the thing with niche games! They may not sell well, but there’s always a niche audience willing to back it up and give it enough support so the developers make a sequel some time down the line. Look what happened to Psychonauts, Octopath Traveler, and of course Dark Souls. Metro 2033, the game that is if you’ve been paying attention so far, is 13 years old now and has spawned two pretty well beloved sequels that improved upon such humble beginnings. More than a decade later, does Metro 2033 hold up or has aged well as a video game. The answer is “yes,” mostly. Metro 2033 has been sitting on my backlog for a really long time. I’ve been meaning to play the older Metro games ever since I played and reviewed Metro Exodus back in 2019, and I remember that game being amazing. A culmination of what 4A Games has learned as they took it to a bunch of small openish sandboxes. True survival as you scavenge for supplies and try to survive the harsh climates you were placed in. It wasn’t a perfect game as the moral choice system didn’t balance into the gameplay well and the story was forgettable as I fail to recall any key moments, but it was a great game and one the better first person shooters to come out in recent memory. I bought the Redux versions of Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light in 2021 and haven’t touched them since then as I found other games I wanted to review at the time. I’ve been going through my backlog as of lately and have been touching upon the games that have been sitting there for way too long. Metro 2033 is a rough game and in many areas it has shown its age as an early 2010s shooter, but it’s still a worthwhile game playing as you get to see where 4A Games started and would eventually evolve this series into the brilliant Metro Exodus. Today we’ll be talking about why I liked Metro 2033 and why it deserves your attention.
Story
We follow Artyom, one of the many survivors living beneath the ruined city of Moscow as he and many others suffer the effects of nuclear warfare. In 2013, the world went to war and many nuclear armaments were sent into orbit. Russia got hit the most and before the nukes hit the earth below, citizens evacuated to the underground tunnels of the Metro system. The tunnels were built to resist any explosion and block out any substance including radioactive materials, but they can hold so many people and they deteriorate over time. Within 20 years, the tunnels of the Metro system have become cramped with life. Both human life and mutated monsters from the surface have begun to travel below. Bandits and raiders are constantly lurking about, and two ideologies have sprung up and started to compete over who gets to control what’s left of the world. Those two ideologies being Stalinists and Nazis, two of the worst communist parties you can think of. However, there are some communities who have kept themselves together and tried to create a safe place to live in the now ruined world, and they are protected by a neutral party known simply as the Spartan Order. A trained military who use handcraft guns to fight against threats.
Arytom is one of the many Rangers who work for the Spartan Order. He never got to know his parents as they were killed, but at a young age he was adopted by the commander of Exhibition, one the many stations of the Metro protected by the Spartan Order. He was trained to become a Ranger and ever since then he has done whatever he could to protect his community. Sadly, the station is one day attacked by mutants and these strange beings they nickname the Dark Ones. They aren’t like the mutants and are inside the paranormal beings with peculiar powers. Hunter, one of the few Rangers who works alongside Arytom, ventures outside of Exhibition to learn more about the Dark Ones. He gives Arytom his dog tag and says if he doesn’t return from his adventure then Arytom must seek a man named Miller, one of the top officials of the Order. He must convince Miller that the Dark Ones are a threat and they must form a plan to eradicate them so that they don’t kill what is left of mankind. Arytom stays hopeful that his friend will return, but one month passes and Hunter is presumed to be dead. Arytom, having no choices left, says farewell to his comrades and begins journeying through the Metro. Embarking on what is a one odyssey to save the work. He’ll even learn more about the Dark Ones and what they actually are.
Gameplay
Metro 2033 is your stereotypical linearly designed first person shooter except there are a couple of survival elements to get you to play more decisively. Think of Call of Duty deciding to take influence from Resident Evil, otherwise what would happen in Call of Duty was good. Anyways, you venture through each level fighting off any enemy that stands in your way. You can carry up to three guns and they can be customized to your preferences. Personally I like to carry around a shotgun to take out foes up close or in tight spaces, an assault rifle for larger groups of foes, and a pistol just in case I run out of ammo or need something quick to work with. I even modified it so that it could be a long range sniper rifle capable of shooting human enemies with a good shot to the head. Every gun has a specific ammo type and you have to manage the resources you carry as trying to find resources outside of towns can be quite difficult. Don’t just waste your ammo all willy-nilly, make every shot count. You have regenerating health, but during stressful situations you might want to use the medkits you are carrying around. You also have a gas mask for when you are in toxic environments or on the surface, and you have to manage it too as your air filters last only for a designated amount of time and your gas mask can break if it takes too much damage. Search your surroundings whenever you can, play carefully, and you should survive.
One system I found really cool about Metro 2033 is the economy and how military rounds work. Throughout the game you can loot a special ammo type known as military rounds. They can be swapped out for the standard rounds of an assault rifle and do way more damage than your usual guns. They pierce through foes, have the chance of setting them ablaze, and are good against really powerful foes. However, you can save military rounds up for when you get to a merchant. You can use the military rounds to buy ammo, health kits, gas mask filters, and even swap out the mods on your guns. You can find modified guns in the field and they become more apparent later in the game, but looting a modified gun you actually want can't be rare. If you are low on military rounds then you can even sell the guns you are currently holding. This creates a system of exchanging the items you no longer for something you actually do need. If you need shotgun shells or a scope to create a good sniping rifle like I said earlier then you can sell the stuff that no longer fits your playstyle. It’s an interesting economy, but we'll talk more about why I think it falls apart later in the game. Other aspects I should talk about is how you can use stealth to take out foes. However, stealth is really self explanatory and it also falls apart the further you get into the game. Besides that there really isn’t much else to talk about. Metro 2033 is as simple as you can get with a first person shooter, and that’s by me. Hopefully you can find Miller, expose the Dark Ones, and save the citizens of the Metro.
Thoughts
As I stated during the intro, Metro 2033 is a rough game and you can clearly see the areas where it has aged poorly. Not rough as in, “The game has weird difficulty spikes or design choices that won’t fit every players’ tastes,” but rough as in, “This could have used more thought put into it.” That isn’t to say Metro 2033 is a terrible video game though. I did have a pretty fun time with it and found it much better than a majority of linearly designed shooters. I normally hate linearly designed FPS titles, but Metro 2033 did enough to separate it from the crowd. The story wasn’t amazing, but I do love the setting and universe of the Metro series. Much like The Last of Us, Fallout, and any other good apocalyptic game Metro shows what mankind will do to survive. The people they’ll kill, the many sins they’ll commit, or having to fall back on corrupt ideologies so that they can get their way. This is not a universe you are supposed to be happy with. It’s dark, bleak, devoid of life, and I think the color patterns of the game help compliment its themes. The surface sections of the game are some of the most beautiful sections you’ll see. It’s bright and well lit compared to what lies beneath, but due to the surface being ravaged by bombs you’ll see nothing but silhouettes of white and gray. What came before being frozen in time. The only cases you’ll encounter human joy and fulfillment are probably in towns, but even those places they’ll be found in small numbers. Children full of innocent youth run around the streets and play games with their parents, only for you to take a sharp turn and see stressed out soldiers talking about the casualties. The lack of food, the amount of sick folks, and how long they have left to live. This is what makes the Metro games what they are and trying to add joy to it would ruin the tone.
On the gameplay side of things everything is alright. I had my fair share of fun and there were times Metro 2033 got me excited, but there are areas where the game needed to improve. You know how I said Metro 2033 is a survival focused shooter where you have to ration your supplies carefully so that during chaotic fights you have what you need to survive. Well I lied, because eventually the game starts dumping ammo on you like crazy. I never felt like I was running low on a certain ammo type and had just about enough to scrape by every encounter. None of the enemies in the game are particularly difficult to deal with, and the AI is wonky as hell. This is 4A Games’ first title and this is when they were still learning how to code their games. I had foes standing next to me when I was crouched behind a wall and it took them longer than it should to spot me out. By that time I yanked out a knife, shoved it through their necks, watched their bodies fall to the ground and see their friends not notice a dead corpse lying on the ground. It’s a shame, because there are a couple things that can make encounters dynamic. Like how enemies will be alerted if you shine your flashlight on them, creating too much noise, coughing because you forgot to change your gas mask filter, and so much. The game is somehow smart and dumb at the game time. Metro 2033 doesn’t point out the objective like a lot of other shooters at the time. It usually tells the player what they should do and lets them work from there. It respects their intelligence just enough, but there are times when I wish they would give me a better idea of what to do. What object I have to interact with as a button prompt won’t always pop-up next to what you expect you need to interact with, or what place to go to as hallways start to look the same after a bit. Nothing too bad, but there were times I got confused.
The story was decent enough, but I can tell this is one of those games that was made to play in Russians. The English is not terrible, but it’s not very good either. It sounded really odd at times and there were moments when dialogue started to overlap each other. Facial animations aren’t the best, but that’s expected from an earlier 2010 shooter. Another thing you should expect is a premade animated cutscene at the end of the game that doesn’t use in-game graphics, sorta like the intro cutscene to Fallout: New Vegas. The economy gets screwed up later on as you either carry too many military rounds or have all the ammo you need. Stealth isn’t good as not many areas are designed around stealth, you always get spotted either way, and the AI is dumb like I just mentioned. I could just drone on and on about what’s wrong with Metro 2033, but we have to remember this is 4A Games’ first video game. This is when their team were inexperienced and trying the best they could to adapt a novel into a video game. Films and shows are hard enough, but going off just text can be trickier. They would learn with future games and Metro Exodus is proof that they eventually evolved into a trustworthy game studio. Metro 2033 is a good starting point for the franchise and I do recommend it despite all of its flaws. Some people may not like it because it is more of what they expect from modern FPS titles, but trust me when I say give this one a try. In the end I am going to give Metro 2033 an 8/10 for being pretty good.
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