METRO 2033 in Review

METRO 2033, released earlier this year, was met with fairly lukewarm reviews and it appeared that for all the world it was another also-ran in a season practically littered with outstanding, high quality video games. A quick glance at Metacritic reveals an aggregate score of 77- not really a bad score and there were a couple of high 80s and 90s in there, but it was low enough that many gamers assume that something must be wrong with it since it didn’t get nines and tens across the board. Reading through some of the reviews, and in particular the lower ones, it becomes apparent that the only problem with the game is that some people just simply didn’t get it.

I passed on the game at release because I was wary myself of some of the issues critics raised, but none other than Gameshark editor Bill Abner himself (who gave the game a B+) recommended that I check it out. And I’m glad I did, because I would almost go so far as to call METRO 2033 the best game of 2010, even in the face of stiff competition from games like MASS EFFECT 2, BAYONETTA, and ALAN WAKE. Where others have seen glitches and problematic gameplay, I’ve seen intentional design choices and unique narrative elements. Where others have seen a lack of polish, I’ve seen a real sense of character and heart that is all too lacking from many big-budget productions. In the pantheon of great first-person shooters, I would absolutely rank it among the best I have ever played- and its story, characters, tone, and pacing all blow the hugely overrated HALF-LIFE 2 out of the water.

METRO 2033 is based on a popular Russian science fiction novel that details the post-apocalyptic world of subway tunnels and subterranean passages beneath Moscow following a global nuclear war. The player steps into the shoes of Artyom, a young writer tasked with seeking help against a rising threat to his “village” by trekking to one of the larger outposts in this subterranean nation of survivors. He’s not an ultra-commando, he’s not an unstoppable killing machine with an endless supply of bullets and toting six different mega-weapons. Instead, he’s a thoughtful, introspective type with fears and doubts about his mission and the turns it takes over the course of the game. We know this because the game is told from his perspective in a number of very intriguing and possibly innovative ways. Interstitial segments are narrated with a voice-over from an older Artyom, who has apparently written the narrative of his journey as a memoir. The start screen is his desk, complete with a typewriter. But he never says a single word during the events of the game- it’s an interesting contradiction, but it totally works, and some of what he says and comments on adds a sense of melancholic remembrance to what occurs in the game.

And that’s very, very Russian- it really impressed me how the game was so very commited to a sense of Russian personality, social concerns, and attitudes. There are direct references to the rise of fringe fascist groups in the former Soviet Union and there is also a particularly interesting moment where a leader-figure among the survivors comments on a display of old Soviet military power that one day they will reclaim the surface with all of the weapons. You can even listen to all the dialogue in the game in Russian, which I would recommend but unfortunately not all of the incidental, overheard dialogue is translated- and most of the game’s back story and world-building occurs there in casual conversations you hear walking by. You really don’t want to miss the two soldiers talking about the fate of Russia’s nuclear submarine crews after the war or an exchange in the Moscow state library where a ranger references the Strugatzy brothers’ Russian science fiction classic Roadside Picnic, the inspiration for Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER- a film that the game also owes a tremendous conceptual debt of gratitiude.

The story takes Artyom to several compelling locations and stations where survivors have set up a kind of makeshift civilization. My hands-down favorite destination htough has to be the Ranger outpost on the surface in a converted Orthodox church. There is a real sense of world-building and a close attention to the culture of the METRO 2033 world- how people live, what they eat, what they do, and how they simply get by. Witnessing a crowd of people standing around listening to a guy playing an acoustic guitar by firelight is strangely comforting after running through sewer tunnels to get away from mutant rats or worse. In each town there is usually an arms dealer that will sell you upgraded weapons in exchange for extremely rare military-grade ammunition, which is the game’s currency.

Which brings this review to one of the major “flaws” that several reviewers have pointed out. I’ve seen several complaints that the game was somehow “broken” . The guns all uniformly suck, because they’re all really old, broken down, or basically garaged-out hack jobs like a pneumatic sniper rifle that fires ball bearings. They’re inaccurate, stopping power is inconsistent, and there’s no guarantee that five shells to the body are going to take down an enemy. What’s worse, is that most of the time those valuable military-grade bullets that do more damage are simply worth too much in trade to squander on a Neo-Nazi that’s giving you grief. So you’ve got to make due with “dirty” bullets, basically homemade reloads.

How it escaped paid video game writers that all of this WAS ON PURPOSE and represents a brilliant design decision is beyond me. The game simply doesn’t want you to blast through the game with blinged-out MODERN WARFARE high-tech rifles. It wants you to be careful with each and every shot, and to look for alternatives to gun battles. You can be killed with one shot, and sometimes you can kill somebody with one shot. But don’t count on it, it’s much more effective to stick to the shadows and knife a guy in the back or simply run away from a horde of mutants. I absolutely loved that the gameplay actively encourages alternatives to big gundowns, but if you really want to go that route it’s still entirely possible- and sometimes necessary. But like classic games such as THIEF, your’re much more dangerous unseen and observing than you are directly attacking the opposition.

So it is definitely not a stock-in-trade FPS at all, between the active de-emphasis of gunplay and the stronger than usual narrative and thematic material. There are also other touches uncommon to the genre, such as having to monitor how long your gas mask’s air filters are going to last when you’re on the surface- Artyom’s rasping, labored breath in the middle of a firefight or when fleeing from a difficult situation increase stress levels through the roof. There’s also nice details like having to pump a manual battery charger to keep your flashlight lit, and the in-game objective display, which is on a clipboard the character carries and has to look at a lot of times by the flame of a lighter.

The atmosphere of the game is mostly dark, as you’d expect, but there are times when it feels just completely crushing. The surface offers no relief between the toxic atmosphere and hordes of mutants and Neo-Nazi rangers. It’s at times a very, very scary game too- the sequence in the national library produced at least three “dog through the window” moments and a couple of harrowing confrontations with virtually un-killable foes (the “Librarians”), and aside from the shock-horror notes there is also a supernatural element that I won’t give away that is utterly creepy and unsettling. It’s almost like something out of a Russian folktale.

METRO 2033 is also a very, very difficult game. I played through it on “Hardcore” and was pleasantly surprised at how challenging it was- at times, it was downright punitive. But the game teaches you what works and what doesn’t, it educates you on how to look for traps so that you don’t wind up with a log spiked with sharpened rebar in your face or how to use alarm bells to distract guards. If you just can’t get through an area after ten or fifteen deaths- it may be that the game is trying to get you to do something else. Again, some folks didn’t seem to like the challenge, but I thought it was refreshing to play a good, old-fashioned controller-breaker that isn’t shy about killing you. I actually found it difficult to play the game for more than about an hour at a time- it was just so stressful and taxing, each session left me exhausted and exhilarated.

There’s a real feeling of risk and danger in the game enhanced by the scarcity of resources and the occasional one-hit kills. And there will inevitably be points during the game where you find yourself out of ammo and facing heavy opposition. Some may find it frustrating, but I absolutely loved trying to sort out how to put down a team of eight enemy rangers with fifteen bullets and a knife. This is a bona fide survival horror game, closer to the original concept of that term than the last several self-professed games to accede to that genre claim.

The game engine is a little Spartan but effective for a horror/sci-fi themed FPS, and there are some really well-done atmospheric effects along with some things that don’t quite work right. It’s too pat to go through the game and call it to the curb for some of the quirks of its engine, which is a little on the clunky side, or its sort of goofy creature design aesthetics. And yes, there are some physics issues and oddball goofs like how you can sometimes wind up climbing over a piece of cover and getting shot if there’s a slanted element on it. But I found the “issues” that I had with the game were so minor because I was completely immersed in the world and the story that the game was telling me that I just didn’t care about technical peccadilloes, and I came to realize that any suggestion that the game’s supposed demerits were the result of bad programming or poor design on 4A’s part were just foolish.

I think METRO 2033 is a brilliant, brilliant game that anyone who believes that all modern FPS games are just 10^th generation DOOM clones should play. It’s completely unique in its approach, oddly old-school but innovative at the same time. It’s distinctly Russian in character, which gives it a unique flavor that fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games will likely appreciate and anyone looking for a smart, atmospheric shooter with pronounced survival horror elements is, I think, going to love this game. Just give it a chance, it deserves it. Be but warned- in post-apocalyptic Russia, game beats YOU.