My Metro 2033 Review

User Rating: 6.5 | Metro 2033 X360
This game takes place in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, in which you are mostly in the underground metro areas where a lot of the people take refuge, but there are above ground areas that you travel through as well. I would say it is mixed between a FPS, survival horror, and some RPG type elements as well. You can talk to different people and choose to accept their requests or not (not that it will make much of a difference), upgrade your weapons and buy different supplies. The graphics are really well done and the atmosphere are filled with everything to make it feel like a living breathing place. People have conversations with each other and entertain themselves with activities. It really makes it stand out amongst other shooters.

The story is very eerie and dark, with these strange scary creatures that run rampant throughout the metro system and the land above. When your above ground, you must use a gas mask to stay alive. It feels realistic with your lens being cracked if hit or get fogged up when your gas mask filter is near depleted. But this can sometimes be troublesome when most of the areas you explore are dark and riddled with booby traps and instant death scenarios. You have a handy flashlight that needs to be pumped to regenerate once in awhile. So all these realistic elements make it more believable, but also adds the element of survival that can be a challenge at times. Scavenging for mask filters when your nearly depleted, and its dark, and your confused as to wear to go in a maze-like crumbled building, can be frustrating. Your able to look at a compass on your clip holder pad, which also lists your goals, but with a foggy lens, it makes it hard to see anything at times, being it's all being viewed in real-time.

Yes, your going to feel very disoriented at times when a creature keeps slashing you and your screen goes red, your lens is foggy and cracked, and its dark and you don't know where your going. This might have been the planned setup all along to make you feel your right there in the action, but can be frustrating as well. Ammo is also sparse. And when you start to encounter the bigger enemies that take a hundred rounds to kill them, you will see that some things are a little unbalanced. There are not a whole lot of variety with creatures, given only a few land ones, and one air flying creature, and then your standard soldier enemies. There were no great boss fights to speak of. So everything feels like your barely surviving, trying to get from point A to B, and the same types of enemies get in your way. The environments can be nice to look at for awhile, but nothing seemed to keep my interest to keep on going. The story was bland ( I beat the game and all I know is that we were surviving the monster infested place). None of the characters had me really care enough for, so that was disappointing. There really isn't any music to speak of, everything was just ambient (which I guess was the point, given the type of game it was). There was no great boss encounter in the end and the ending itself was disappointing. This game really could have been something better, but fell short. I recommend trying it out. But it falls in that mediocre category for me.