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Understand going in that I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories. I just love dark, dreary glimpses into the terrible ways we imagine we're going to wipe ourselves out. The more conspiracy and plot twists, the better.
However, in the world of games, post-apocalyptic tales have become so prolific that it's really hard to say which ones are going to be good and which ones will rank among the common ash-covered clay which coats the game industry landscape.
In this review, I take a look at the latest contender for a noteworthy spot among the hordes of post-nuclear lookalikes, Metro 2033, from 4A and THQ.
However, in the world of games, post-apocalyptic tales have become so prolific that it's really hard to say which ones are going to be good and which ones will rank among the common ash-covered clay which coats the game industry landscape.
In this review, I take a look at the latest contender for a noteworthy spot among the hordes of post-nuclear lookalikes, Metro 2033, from 4A and THQ.
A tiny bit of back story: Metro 2033 started off in 2002 as a book written by Dmitry A. Glukhovsky, a Russian writer and journalist. The book apparently won all kinds of awards, has a sequel, is published on the web (in Russian), and is supposedly amazing. I'd never heard of it until this game came out, and after playing through Metro 2033 I'm not sure I ever will. I'd be surprised if this game didn't end up doing to the book what Sylvester Stallone did to the Judge Dredd comic series.
So let's move to the present. A group of developers who formerly worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which was a first-person shooter set in a Russian nuclear wasteland, got together and decided they wanted to make a new game. In the most amazing display of creativity and originality since the Microsoft Zune, they decided that the best way to further their careers was to create another first-person shooter set in a Russian nuclear wasteland. That said, I never had the opportunity to invest much time into S.T.A.L.K.E.R., so I have no intention to compare it to Metro 2033. We'll look at this new game strictly on it's own merit.
Overall, I thought the game was superficially interesting. It was kind of like getting a date with that cute chick across the bar who you've heard all these great things about. However, when you get her alone you find out that she's got Tourette's Syndrome, a chronic 5-pack-a-day smoking habit, and is all but cadaverous in the bedroom.
Story:
You are Artyom, a 20-something-year-old guy who lives in the subway system beneath the ruins of Moscow. You were a child when your homeland was nuked and have spent your entire life underground in a subway station, hiding from the terribly unoriginal beasties that swarm the frozen landscape above. Unless you are already a fan of of the book, that's about all the intial story you're going to get out of the box. The only other noteworthy bit is that the bulk of gameplay revolves around Artyom having to travel across Moscow in a daring attempt to request help from a nearby camp.
Visuals:
Metro 2033 is very dark and moody, and overall, the graphic presentation is one of the game's few pluses. It delivers its fair share of ambiance, and the visuals do a decent job of making you feel the bleakness of the world. Every visible surface in the darkly oppressive tunnels is rendered in beautifully dingy and dented metal, chunks of wood, and tattered fabric, and is really just a few dirty socks and used condoms away from looking just like a midwestern collegiate frat house.
The outdoor areas of the game leave a bit to be desired. You do get a nice general representation of a nuclear winterized wasteland, but not much else. While there are plenty of trashed buildings, fissured streets, and puddles of radioactive urine to go around, most of the outdoor landscape just isn't quite as polished as it probably should be. It's like the developers realized that the players wouldn't be spending a great deal of their time outdoors and didn't waste a lot of time describing that environment.
The lighting delivered by the 4A engine is actually fairly impressive for such a dark game. The shadows cast by your flashlight feel right. Most sources of light have just the right amount of falloff, and bloom is used to make you involuntarily squint at just about any major light source. The way the game treats light, especially in the tunnels is probably the biggest help to the overall visual delivery. Unfortunately, you just don't get to see a lot of light in much of the game outside of your own flashlight.
If there is any place that the graphic presentation falls short it's in the characters. The facial animation and character texturing can be really hit or miss. While facial animation certainly isn't something you generally “wow” over in games even today, there are some faces in Metro 2033 that feel like they were done about 5-7 years ago, or were perhaps motion captured by someone with a severe case of cerebral palsy.
Gameplay:
Before we start talking about gameplay, understand that Metro 2033 is simultaneously trying to be a first-person shooter and a role-playing game. If you're a reasonably flexible gamer, this prospect should excite you, as the mix of the two has certainly led to some of the more memorable gaming moments in the last decade or so.
There is a fairly limited number of weapons, which makes sense when you consider that most of the guns in the game are homemade by people living in subway stations after the entire world has been destroyed. Some of these homebrew shooters are actually pretty cool. For instance, you can get a special version of a .357 revolver outfitted with a wooden stock, an extended barrel, a foregrip, a silencer, and a scope, effectively turning a pistol into a compact six-shot medium-range sniper rifle. Unfortunately, since there are practically no bullets in this game, you get about as much out of them as I do from ladies at a nightclub, spending the whole time simply staring at their back ends and thinking how nice it would be if you could actually use it and squeeze off a round or two.
Which brings me to ammunition. Bullets are an interesting mechanic in Metro 2033. The idea is that after the war, good quality (military grade) ammunition is so rare that it's actually become currency, and can be traded for anything you need, including lower quality homemade ammunition. And to really drive home the mechanic, the developers made the game so that the military rounds could easily down a fairly large rabid bull elephant with the sheer awesomeness of their sound effect, while the lower quality rounds have all the stopping power of a half-chewed gumball thrown by semi-comatose six-year-old.
Continued...
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