INTRO:
Although Metro 2033 was a vaunted novel, not everyone would have been pleased by the news that a shooter title would be made from it; after all, Metro 2033 came about at a time when the likes of Half-Life 2 has already upped the ante on story-telling and gameplay in sci-fi shooters.
The game would have to contend with other known shooters of Ukrainian-make such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the fact that it is a Ukrainian-made game (which had the dubious reputation for the tendency to be unreliable products at the time). To pile on the scepticism further, there had been terribly few games that are based on novels that were unanimously considered fun.
Fortunately, tight designs and high production values made Metro 2033 quite the atmospheric interactive story, and a few peculiar game mechanics made it stand out from its peers in the sci-fi shooter league. Yet, Metro 2033 would not be flawless in everyone's eyes.
STORY DESIGNS:
Metro 2033 was marketed as a video game adaptation of Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel, but unlike so many other game adaptations from other media, the author of the source material is deeply involved in the production of the game.
Therefore, it would not be a surprise to some that it would follow the storyline in the novel. However, there are many changes and additions here and there to have the storyline fit the video game. On the other hand, only fans of the novel would be able to make comparisons readily, and certainly not all of them are expected to like the changes.
Anyway, the story is about Artyom, who is seemingly just another young man that is living in post-apocalyptic Moscow's metro stations, which have since been converted into underground settlements. Recently, the livelihood of the metro dwellers have taken a turn for the worse, due to the purported threat of a new breed of humanoids that have superhuman powers.
After the visit of a certain person that Artyom looks up to, he goes upon a quest to investigate the alleged threat. This quest is evidently fraught with many perils, half of which are supernatural and inhuman, the other half all-too-human and depressing reminders about the darker side of human nature.
Much of the game's experience is story-driven, which can give rise to an impression that the game is all-too-linear. Indeed, the game essentially shuffles the player from one scripted event to another with action sequences in between. However, even the action sequences are quite story-heavy, provided that the player is willing to pay attention and not run off looking around corners, nooks and crannies.
PLAYER CHARACTER:
The capabilities of the player character would not be raising any eyebrows; they may even suggest that 4A Games is devoid of ideas for the game as a first-person shooter.
Artyom has regenerating health and is not affected much by deteriorating health – qualities that would not make him much different from the player characters in the many, many present-day shooter titles.
For purposes of survival and defence, he can carry a few guns on his person. He also has knives (including a large one) for when shooting is not prudent, some medical kits for unbelievably convenient healing and a few makeshift grenades. Again, these designs are not new or refreshing.
Artyom can sprint for short bursts of speed, jump over small obstacles and crouch to lower his profile and stabilize his aim. These are crucial capabilities, but again, these are nothing revolutionary.
Fortunately, the gear that he has to use is far more interesting than the abilities that he has as yet another typical shooter-game protagonist.
FLASHLIGHT & NIGHT-VISION:
Artyom's flashlight is a piece of gear that he will be using a lot. Moscow's metro network (which is simply called the "Metro" in-game) may have be vast and extensively, but the nuclear apocalypse has made certain that electricity supplies to the lighting system in the Metro have been rendered unreliable.
There are kerosene lamps, torches and even luminescent fungi and algae lighting up the Metro, but only electrical lights provide reliable lighting, and the portable head- or chest-mounted flashlights happen to be some of them.
However, in the case of Artyom's own flashlight, it is powered by an electrical charger that has to be pumped frequently to keep its lighting at reliable levels of illumination. Having to remember to pump the charger often so as to ease navigation through dark tunnels and other crannies is a pervasive gameplay element that certainly makes Metro 2033 different from many other shooter titles that trivialize portable light sources.
Light sources such as the flashlight cast light that can be seen by enemies. The night-vision goggles, which offer another way to see in the dark, do not. However, night-vision obliterates a lot of visual contrast by tinting everything green, in addition to being unsuitable in areas with light sources. The goggles are also not available by default.
The goggles happen to share the same power pack as the flashlight, though the effect of diminishing charge is not so pronounced on the goggles as it is on the flashlight.
Although Metro 2033 may not trivialize portable light sources, having to check and pump the charger frequently can seem a hassle, especially considering that NPCs do not appear to have to bother with this problem if they have flashlights or night-vision goggles of their own.
KNIVES:
Artyom's trench knife is his weapon of last resort, or when the threat upon him is too small to warrant elimination via bullets. Artyom has a fast rate of slashes that can overwhelm most individual targets, but the knife is really only there for people who are stingy about the expenditure of ammunition, or ironically for those that are trigger-happy and have terrible aim.
Sharpened and balanced pieces of metal pass for throwing knives in the Metro, but skill in their use is apparently valued as kills with these are quite silent. In fact, a hit with a throwing knife on an unsuspecting enemy usually kills him/it outright. Moreover, throwing knives can be retrieved after use.
Throwing knives show how believable the consequences of impact locations are. For example, if the knives hit the armored sections of an enemy human's gear, such as his helmet or pauldron, they bounce off harmlessly. There are some convenient contrivances, such as hits on the backs of enemies being outright fatal; this design comes into play at harder difficulty settings when preserving ammunition is desirable.
However, throwing knives also happen to highlight technical issues with the collision detection scripts in the game. Although throwing knives may harm their targets, they sometimes do not stick into them and instead fall off, often into objects in the environment, thus becoming irretrievable.
THE REVOLVER:
Perhaps not surprisingly, the only sidearms that have managed to survive the apocalypse are revolvers, of which Artyom has one. It has only six rounds in its chamber, which means it is poor for heated fights, but at least Artyom wisely uses speedloaders instead of loading rounds one-by-one.
THE BASTARD:
Being of the carbine-&-rifle category of weapons, the Bastard gun sits in the third slot of Artyom's portable arsenal. Discounting the tutorial, it is the first primary weapon that the player would come across in the game. As its name suggests, it is a custom-made firearm with a none-too-proud backstory.
Yet, incidentally, this is a favoured weapon among characters in the Metro 2033 fiction (for its ease-of-availability) and among hardcore fans of the game for practical reasons, some of which would be mentioned later.
One of the practical reasons is that the Bastard gun is easier to reload when it has completely gone through a magazine than when it has not. This is a very rare weapon design in the shooter genre.
However, the Bastard gun has a lot of weaknesses, such as poor accuracy, that discourage its use, which is a shame as it is perhaps one of the most interesting weapons in Metro 2033.
OTHER CARBINES & RIFLES:
It is more than likely that the player will ditch the Bastard gun for something else.
One of these is expectedly the Kalash rifle. In Metro 2033, it happens to have lasted through the post-apocalypse and the collapse of pre-apocalypse society. Anyway, if the player has had any experience with any recent shooter titles, the Kalash works just like any other Kalashnikov rifle seen in other games.
Next, there is the VSV, which is an automatic sniper rifle. Its range and damage is useful for medium- and long-range engagements. However, encounters with inhuman enemies would reveal its weaknesses, chiefly its low rate of fire, thus mandating a replacement if the player is expecting fights with monsters instead of people.
Last, but not least, is the completely fictional Kalash 2012, which is a straight upgrade of the Kalash. One of its variants, which are available late into the game, is practically the best rifle in the game.
Carbines and rifles, including the Bastard gun, are the only weapons in Metro 2033 that can use military-grade rounds instead of the dirty regular rounds; military-grade rounds will be elaborated later, as they are a significant element of the game.
SHOTGUNS:
Any shotgun sits in the fourth slot of the player's arsenal. There are a few types of shotguns in the game, all of which are interestingly made from scrap.
The Automatic Shotgun, a.k.a. the Uboinik, has a substantial rate of fire for a shotgun due to its chambering mechanism, but reloading is a hassle as every shell has to be loaded by hand. Yet, it is also the only weapon that Artyom can use that can have a bayonet attachment, which can be desirable to some players.
The Duplet appears to be Metro 2033's take on the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun that has been seen in many other shooter titles.
There is one other shotgun, but it comes with a free DLC pack that will be described later.
PECULIAR WEAPONS:
Metro 2033 has a few strange but entertaining weapons that further differentiates it from other shooter titles. Two of these are the Helsing and the Tihar.
Both weapons are pneumatically powered. Although many gun enthusiasts would question the viability of such weapons, they are nevertheless lethal yet almost-silent weapons. The Helsing is a rotary crossbow with re-usable (but very expensive) bolts, whereas the Tihar launches ball bearings that can be surprisingly painful.
However, as a trade-off for the advantage of stealth, both of them have to regularly hand-pumped to maintain their pressure, especially so for the Tihar, which can waste ball bearings if it has little pressure left. Both weapons can be over-pumped until they hiss, which is a noise that can be heard by enemies that are very close.
WEAPON UPGRADES/VARIANTS:
As the player progresses in the game, he/she would find variants of the weapons mentioned above. These variants have permanent attachments that are usually straight upgrades over vanilla variants. These variants either have to be obtained via buying them at populated metro stations or picking them off corpses or caches.
Most of the attachments are useful, such as suppressors that reduce recoil and noise in return for an acceptable fall-off in damage. Laser sights are also practically a must-have in Ranger difficulty, which will be described later.
However, the scope is a double-edged sword. Although the scope allows sniping work, its lens is so dirty that this is very difficult to do. The developers may have deliberately designed it to be so in order to portray the loss of skill to maintain them among the survivors of the nuclear war, but this drawback only serves to reduce the utility of scopes in-game.
It is worth noting here that the Revolver has the greatest number of attachments of all weapons, which is perhaps appropriate as the player is stuck with it throughout the entire game.
GRENADES:
Pipe-bombs pass for grenades in Metro 2033. However, despite their crudeness, they are still the most powerful weapons, albeit the riskiest too.
There are two variants of grenades; either is as powerful as the other. However, the variant with nails embedded in its caps is nastier, because it happens to stab into a soft target and stays on it if it lands.
For better or worse, grenades are just as easy to find as guns, because just about every human combatant in the game has a grenade or two. If the player can kill them quickly before they use their grenades, he/she would not be left wanting for resupplies of explosives. However, unlit grenades that are lying around can be detonated by explosions.
Interestingly, if the player makes the mistake of having Artyom holding a grenade when he is being shot at or when he is ironically caught in an explosion, the grenade in his hand may well go off, killing him instantly. This means that grenades are best used only when he is behind cover.
AMMUNITION:
In Metro 2033's post-apocalyptic society underneath the ruins of nuked Moscow, ammunition is the only accepted currency that also, tragically enough, happens to be all-too-practical.
As the knowledge and technology to manufacture reliable military-grade munitions is long gone, military-grade rounds are especially valued over the recycled and poorly hand-loaded munitions that the dwellers of the Metro produces. There just so happen to be kiosks that are situated in the population centers of the Metro network that act as both armories and currency exchange. There are also hawkers who sell wares in exchange for military-grade rounds.
It is this backstory to ammunition that makes the Metro 2033 novel so depressing yet attractive. More importantly, it has made Metro 2033 thematically different from many other shooter titles, which often treat ammunition as nothing more than basic supplies for player characters.
However, gameplay-wise, the consequences of this story setting may not be felt so deeply, depending on the player's playstyle and choices of difficulty settings.
If a player has been prudent or outright stingy in using ammunition, he/she would not have much opportunity to empathise with this aspect of the story. A trigger-happy player, on the other hand, would be quite starved for ammunition and may even have wasted the military-grade rounds that could have been used to purchase other ammunition.
The Ranger difficulty settings that came with the DLC pack would have particularly emphasized this setting, but they have issues of disbelief, as will be described later.
Furthermore, depending on the player's preference for certain weapons, some types of ammunition may never see use. For example, players who prefer using shotgun shells may have to forgo on using ball bearings and vice versa, because their associated weapons compete for the same weapon slot.
In difficulty settings other than the Ranger ones, stingy/thrifty players may also find themselves accumulating a lot more military-grade rounds and other ammunition than they would need. There are only so many things that the player would desire and want to buy with military-grade rounds in the markets of the Metro.
As mentioned earlier, only carbines and rifles can use military-grade rounds. Swapping to them from the default "dirty rounds" is as simple as holding down the reload button. Military-grade rounds are much more powerful than the dirty rounds, though prudent players would learn that the dirty rounds work just as well as if they practice more finesse than resorting to spamming these precious rounds in tough fights. However, military-grade rounds are far more needed in Ranger difficulty settings, as will be described later.
As a side note, it is worth noting here that the player would never find ammunition for the DShk heavy machineguns in Metro 2033; neither can the player pilfer them off machinegun emplacements. There may be a lost opportunity in the game to feature these particularly precious munitions in more prominent manners.
OTHER GEAR:
In addition to the guns and munitions that Artyom carries around, there is the gear that he wears on his person or which he somehow always has despite his current situation.
By default, Artyom starts with a serviceable leather vest, which is also seen on many other characters. However, in a couple of points in the game, the player can have him donning one of two other suits.
One is practically little more than a tailored suit of darkly colored fabric that has almost no folds. This suit is of course intended for sneaking around. In fact, the player can move quietly past an enemy guard that is just a few feet away in the darkness and he would not even notice.
The other suit is built for combat. Consisting of layers of tough fabric and metal studs, this is probably the go-to for combat-inclined players who may appreciate the damage reduction bonuses that the suit imparts.
Among these pieces of gear, the most important (though not most useful) are his wristwatch and his journal. Incidentally, these are the most sci-fi and most unbelievable items in the game, though using them is hardly easy.
The wristwatch is associated with a few very significant aspects of the gameplay, so it will be mentioned later where relevant. The same will also be said of filters and gas masks.
Medkits are practically a package of syringes with questionable substances. The use of a syringe forces Artyom's health to completely replenish in an instant, though not without some side effects that will be mentioned later.
The journal would seem to be an ordinary book. Artyom seems to write and erase notes on the notepad on its front cover off-screen, an occurrence that is denoted by scribbling and tearing noises that can be heard whenever the player gains a new mission objective. He even has a lighter to bring to the journal, in case the player finds it hard to read the journal when he brings it up. Indeed, the journal is certainly a lot more believable than the screens or text-drops that other shooter titles tend to use.
What is not ordinary about the journal is the compass that is built into it. Instead of always pointing north, it seems to be always pointing towards where Artyom needs to go to. This can be explained away as just the visual representation of mission pointers that had been seen in so many other games, but this still causes disbelief.
The player can bring up the journal to help him/her navigate around the game's maps, but there is a swapping animation that have to be performed to switch over to Artyom's weapon, which can be undesirable when trouble looms.
STEALTH:
Considering 4A Games' portfolio, one would be sceptical about how the developer would implement the theme of the value of discretion in the novel. However, although the stealth elements of Metro 2033 would never achieve the calibre of those in well-known stealth/sneaking games, they are still functional and more importantly, provide alternative, bullet-saving ways to complete levels with.
Sound and sight are the main ways that enemies use to detect intruders, so it is in the player's interest to get the right equipment, e.g. stealth gear, night-vision goggles and suppressed weapons.
If the player wants to creep around in the dark without night-vision goggles, Artyom's watch happens to have visual indicators that inform the player how much light is falling on him. However, which of the several coloured lights on his watch are these is not immediately apparent to the player; the player has to learn this on his/her own. In addition, the player has to bring up his watch, which can obscure some of the screen.
Speaking of visual obstructions, the player needs as little of these as possible, as there are traps such as rigged bells and broken glass that can give away Artyom's presence - among other much more harmful traps that will be described later.
If the player opts to use the night-vision goggles, he/she will have to put up with the slight tunnel vision. However, the goggles have a much more convenient visual indicator of the amount of light falling on Artyom.
These stealth elements apply as long as the immediate group of enemies has not been tipped off to Artyom's presence and whereabouts. Once they have, they become alarmed and much better at spotting Artyom, even if he is sitting in pitch darkness.
However, in some scenarios, the player can have Artyom running behind obstacles out of the sight of human enemies, and proceed to slip away from them. Human enemies can be reliably given the slip this way, and eventually lose any knowledge of Artyom's whereabouts, unless they hear or see a commotion. On the other hand, they will never lose their state of alarm, so any advantage of surprise from ambushing them again will be lost quickly.
Most of the game has the next group of enemies quite far away from the previous one to know what has happened to the latter, so that the next group is not aware of Artyom's presence is a believable scenario. However, even if the next group should be within earshot of the player's tussle with the previous group, it is still unaware of Artyom's presence, which can cause some disbelief.
The stealth gameplay elements do not apply when fighting inhuman enemies. Most of the monsters in this game are well aware of the whereabouts of Artyom, so any attempts at stealth would be woefully wasted. However, there are certain monsters with territorial behaviour, such as the Lurkers, which the player may be able to exploit to get past them without using too much ammunition.
ENEMIES:
There are plenty of enemies that the player has to go through or bypass, as to be expected of a shooter title.
Nosalises are feral creatures that are impossible to escape from as they are very fast. They can also pounce from afar and immediately transition into wild slashing. One other type of mutant, which looks lankier and more bestial, is designed in almost the same manner, but its pounce, if it connects, tends to result in unpleasant quick-time events, which will be described later.
There is one type of mutant that is diminutive, but it often hunt in groups and uses a network of tunnels to ambush the player character. Their appearances from the openings of the small tunnels are not mere spawning of models; they actually travel through them, if the player bothers to observe and listen to their scuttling.
One of the mutants happens to be flight-capable and will have players looking at the sky when on the surface, watching out for their winged forms. Their dives are not scripted events; once the player has alerted them to Artyom's presence, they will keep swooping and diving at him until Artyom gets under cover. Their dives not only hurt a lot, but also shifts Artyom's model a bit, possibly causing him to drop into hazardous places.
There are more mutants, but describing them would be to mention spoilers. It should suffice to say that these would be the culmination of the mutant mayhem that the player has endured before their appearance in the game.
Fighting mutants often has little reward, as all of them take bullets but give nothing back. Human enemies, however, are worth fighting, if only because the player can loot their corpses later. On the other hand, all of them are armed, so being shot at from afar is always a possibility when fighting them.
Human enemies will flank whenever they can, but they are slow at moving from cover to cover and will always insist on staying behind a piece of cover. Such cautious behaviour may seem refreshing to players that are tired of gung-ho enemies that charge around corners (which is often the case in many other shooter titles), but such behaviour makes the human enemies in Metro 2033 easier to ambush than one would think.
More often than not, the player would slip from cover to cover and find them looking at the wrong direction. They will eventually spot Artyom, but not before the player has killed one or two for their lack of vigilance. Fortunately, switching to higher difficulty settings appear to make them more responsive to ambushes, but the same cautious behaviour remains.
Certain conventions for the shooting of human enemies in the shooter game genre are suspended in Metro 2033. Firstly, hitting them in the head may not immediately kill them; shots to the face do, but most enemies have helmets and even full-faced ones that actually protect them from headshots. Secondly, hits on their body do not inflict the same amount of damage; bits of armor on them do absorb a lot of the impact from hits.
By default, enemies will not use their night-vision goggles until they are put into a state of alarm, which is convenient if the player is resorting to stealth to get past them. However, they will always use their headlights if they have these, so the player will have to look out for the beams of light emanating from them.
The graphical and audio designs of the enemies of Metro 2033 also contribute to the challenges that they pose. However, they also cause their combat performance in negative ways, even at higher difficulty settings. This will be elaborated later.
ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS & TRAPS:
Being set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, there are plenty of hazards that the player has to contend with. However, the environments in Metro 2033 may not be as similar to other fictional post-apocalyptic environments as one would think.
For one, areas with deadly radiation are surprisingly sparse, despite the game being set in post-apocalyptic Moscow. That said, when Artyom gets too near these hotspots (as depicted by the ominous crackling of a Geiger counter that is somewhere on his person), the player may discover that instead of using a sophisticated system of radiation poisoning such as those seen in other games with nuclear post-apocalyptic settings, the effects of radiation hazards are represented as mere damage inflicted on Artyom's health, which can be disappointingly simple.
The most pervasive environmental hazard is the very surface of Moscow itself. The game mentions that the air on the surface somehow asphyxiates normal humans, which is a danger that can be managed by wearing gas masks with filters. The lasting durations of the currently used filter is depicted via Artyom's wristwatch, which he adjusts every time he uses a filter.
Doubts on the believability of the harmful surface air aside, romps on the hazardous surface can be quite tense. The gas mask that Artyom has to wear has its own separate health rating and can be separately damaged. As it takes damage, it imparts penalties on the durations of the filters that are attached to the mask. Eventually, it fails altogether once it has taken too much damage, possibly dooming Artyom and forcing the player to restart from a previous checkpoint or restart the level altogether.
Although the player may be able to hoard a lot of filters for Artyom to use, these filters are not exactly all reliable – the consequence of this is implemented via a luck-based system that determines how long a filter can last, for better or worse. Generally, all filters will last for at least four to five minutes, but for any filter to have any duration that is further than that is a matter of luck.
Sometimes, for certain levels such as the last few, the game does apply contrivances that conveniently make the durations longer, if only for the sake of the game's pacing.
There is a distressing number of traps that the player has to disarm or work around in the levels of Metro 2033. Some of these are non-lethal but still inconveniencing, such as tripwires that ring bells and broken glass that crunch surprisingly loudly when stepped on.
Others are much more dangerous, such as primitive traps that send a hunk of spiky junk slamming into complacent explorers and tripwires that trigger the fuses for grenades and gas cans. There are also traps that trigger rigged fire-arms, but these are fewer compared to the explosive sort.
A scant few of these are duds (it is impossible to tell which are duds without trial-and-error), but generally, most are still operational.
Other hazards in the game include spiked barricades, which appear early in the game and will injure Artyom if the player is not wise enough to realize that staying near sharp things are bad for health.
Then, there are fall hazards; some of these are depicted as ominously dark and foggy chasms that cannot be illuminated in any way, but most are falls from great heights, which can occur if the player is not cautious about having Artyom step on obviously precarious platforms.
CHECKPOINT SYSTEM:
For better or worse, the Steam version of Metro 2033 uses a checkpoint system to record the player's progress, much like the Xbox 360 version does. There is only one auto-save slot for these checkpoints; if the player wants to replay any moment in a previous level, he/she has to replay the level from the start up to that point.
QUICK-TIME EVENTS & ON-RAILS SEQUENCES:
Unfortunately, the developer has decided that there should be sequences where the player has to mash away on a button to save Artyom's life. Some of these are mandated sequences, usually when the game has scripted an event such that Artyom is caught in a precarious situation. Others are more avoidable, namely shooting monsters down before they manage to pounce on Artyom.
In either case, mashing away at a button can be an annoying experience that contrasts with the rest of the game's gameplay, which is far more sophisticated in comparison.
Other contrived gameplay sequences that the developer has included are some on-rails sequences, in which Artyom is stuck on a moving platform and have to shoot away at enemies like he is a human turret.
In one particular sequence, he is actually controlling a turret that is armed with a heavy machinegun, but again, not everyone would like the restriction on freedom of movement. Furthermore, the player has to worry about the slow turning rate of the turret, in addition to the usual worries about overheating the machinegun.
DIFFICULTY SETTINGS:
Unlike so many other shooter titles, Metro 2033 does not have straightforward designs for its difficulty settings. This is not a compliment, however, as the labels for these settings can seem misleading.
The "Easy" setting grants the player much more generous rewards from raiding supply caches and looting corpses; it also makes mutants weaker and reduces the awareness of enemies. All of these are designs that make the "Easy" label understandable.
What is not understandable is that it makes every human character, including Artyom, much tougher to kill. They can take a lot of rounds to be taken down, which makes combat a slog.
"Normal" is a typical setting that is best used by newcomers to the game and the shooter genre.
The "Hardcore" setting would be the go-to for experienced players, considering the scarcer finds for ammunition in it. However, it compensates by increasing the damage output of fire-arms, which inadvertently makes the game easier for players with remarkable aim and twitch reflexes.
The free Ranger Pack for the Steam version of the game adds two more difficulty settings, as will be described shortly. Unfortunately, they are not without problems either.
RANGER PACK – OVERVIEW:
A few months after the official launch of the Steam version of the game, the Ranger Pack was made available as a free DLC package for said version. Considering what it adds to the game, this is a much appreciated addition of value (especially when contrasted with the small fee that customers of the Xbox 360 version have to pay to get it).
ADDITIONAL WEAPONS:
The Ranger Pack inserts two weapons into the game at various points in the story.
One of these is the Heavy Automatic Shotgun, which is practically a heavy machinegun that has been converted to fire shotgun shells instead.
As its rugged appearance would suggest, it is a very powerful weapon that perhaps makes better use of shotgun shells compared to the other two shotguns, which cannot achieve its damage output. It does have drawbacks, such as lower damage-per-shot and long reload animations.
The Volt Driver is another weapon that is introduced by the Ranger Pack. It is the Metro franchise's own take on the sci-fi railgun seen in sci-fi shooters. In-game, it is practically the electrical version of the Tihar gun, but it also has a melee attack that shocks anyone that gets too close and a laser sight for easier aiming.
There can be gameplay balance issues that arise from where in the story that the Volt Driver is inserted. It can be retrieved quite early in the game, which can make the next few chapters far easier than they should be.
RANGER DIFFICULTY:
The two ranger difficulty settings are perhaps the main draw of the Ranger Pack, as they make Artyom's journey all the more challenging.
Most of the already-sparse visual aids that the player has are removed, such as the targeting crosshair that shows the spread of the currently wielded gun. This makes laser sights more valuable, but it also highlights a gap in the A.I. designs of enemies, who cannot perceive the red dot.
In Ranger Hardcore, the visual indicators for gear can only be called up by bringing up Artyom's journal or wristwatch, which is best only done in quieter moments.
The durability of human characters, including Artyom, are severely diminished, making firefights very short and brutal. Inhuman enemies are unaffected, making them all the more dangerous in Ranger difficulties.
The most prominent characteristic of the Ranger difficulty settings is the severely reduced amounts of ammunition that can be pilfered from corpses and supply caches. This makes military-grade rounds much more valuable, as the player will need them to buy spare ammo for weapons other than the carbines and rifles.
However, this can require a suspension of belief. It would be difficult to rationalize how the armed enemies in this game could fire away at Artyom seemingly endlessly but when they are dead and the player goes over to pilfer stuff off them, he/she only gets one or two usable rounds from them.
This gives the impression that the otherwise believable challenges offered by the Ranger difficulty options have been offset by less believable, artificially-imposed ones.
GRAPHICS – GENERAL STATEMENTS:
The Steam version of Metro 2033 can be argued to be the game that utilized DirectX 9 graphics to its best. Although it has the usual flaws of DirectX 9 graphics, such as not very adequate rounding of edges for polygons and many models that clip into each other, it has so much detail in its environments and models that one would wonder how the developer managed to optimize the game for smooth performance on so many machines.
Granted, one can argue that 4A Games had time to iron out flaws after the launch of the Xbox 360 version of the game, but it would seem to be time well-spent.
ENVIRONMENT DESIGNS:
There are a lot of grey and drab textures that are used to decorate the many, many polygons in the environments on the surface of Moscow, but this is quite appropriate as it accentuates the nuclear winter that has befallen the former city. The layer of dust and snow on the ground may be quite static and unappealing, but there are plenty of particle effects on-screen to simulate the fall of said precipitation.
The forlorn and dangerous surface is contrasted by the claustrophobic and dark tunnels of the underground; there are more ominous places, but the majority of environments in the game are these. The tunnels looks especially decrepit and dirty, especially the narrower tunnels which may well have been sewer pipes.
Darkness in Metro 2033 is indeed absolute darkness, making sources of illumination especially valuable.
Speaking of illumination, a lot of normal mapping is used to simulate the lighting of surfaces with textures; close examination will reveal this graphical trickery. However, to give the developer some credit, a lot of normal mapping patterns can appear on the same screen without issues of technical performance; this can be particularly experienced very late into the game, where there are many more types of textures to be seen than in earlier levels.
For the levels located on the surface, there are brilliant flare effects from the sun, especially when the player is looking out of the windows.
Perhaps the most brilliant levels in Metro 2033 are those that feature human habitation in the Metro network. These population centers resemble squatter ghettos and are visibly unsanitary, but the game would not hesitate to inform the player that this is all the shelter that the humans in Moscow have left. The most poignant of such levels is perhaps the very first one, where humans are shown rearing pigs, the only farm animals that survived.
Unfortunately, these population centers tend to have many places that are simply walled off, limiting exploration and thus any potential for more immersion into the sad-but-hardy societies of post-apocalyptic Moscow.
MODELS:
Plenty of effort has also been invested into the creation of human character models, as would be apparent from the amount of details on them. Almost every piece of gear is represented on them with their own models. The Rangers, in particular, are often seen heavily equipped with so much gear, almost to the point of silliness.
Yet, the game ultimately does have a limited variety of models and will eventually reuse and recycle them in multiple places. However, this would only be apparent upon close observation. The aforementioned darkness and lighting effects help to disguise this.
Artyom does have several character models for his presentation within the game world, but as of yet, there has not been any official confirmation by the developer of how his face looks like. What there is to be seen are attempts by players to have Artyom's model appear on-screen during in-game cutscenes where the camera takes a third-person perspective.
Ultimately, the details of his models are unimportant, as much of the game occurs with the camera taking the first-person perspective. On the other hand, the developer has gone to great lengths to simulate movements of his head, especially in a cutscene where Artyom communicates with another character with nods.
There are several mutant monsters in the game, but differentiating from a glance can be a bit difficult as most of their models are coloured in shades of grey. However, the player will eventually learn how to recognize them using their gaits, postures and silhouettes. After all, the game will throw quite a sizable number of them at the player.
The guns in Metro 2033 have been described as having been made from scrap, and they certainly look so. They are ballistic Frankenstein monsters, having details such as exposed magazines, gas chambers and other parts that gun enthusiasts would recognize – and be aghast at.
Speaking of whom, the guns in Metro 2033 have drawn remarks from gun enthusiasts about the viability of their scrap-built designs. Their animations in particular have been scrutinized; this will be elaborated later.
Questions of believability aside, they do emphasize the limited resources and need for firearms in Moscow's post-apocalyptic society, which have to contend with monsters on a near-daily basis.
For gameplay purposes, military-grade rounds have models that look very clean and shiny despite their backstory suggesting that they should already be quite old. Despite being shinier than common ammunition, most of these precious rounds appear in-game as small, easily overlooked clips. There are entire magazines of them, but they tend to appear only in scripted events and in supply caches that occur very, very late into the game.
VISUAL & AUDIO DESIGNS OF GUNS:
The scrap-built aesthetics of the guns are complemented with animations and noises which further emphasize their crudeness. These are not so exaggerated as to be comical, but they have enough variety in sliding, locking, chattering and such other mechanical motions so that they are convincing products of resource-strapped and none-too-skilled gunsmiths.
Most of these designs can be experienced via the first-person camera, e.g. when Artyom is firing his guns.
The Bastard gun would be easily the most iconic weapon of Metro 2033 due to its visual designs. The most visually notable part of this odd weapon is its magazine, which is almost completely exposed such that the rounds can be counted. This is very convenient in Ranger difficulty settings.
Being a freak of a fire-arm, the Bastard gun has its own unique animations that make it seem more special than it is, if it is compared with the firearms that have been seen in so many other shooters that feature believable guns.
However, gun enthusiasts have also noticed some dubious animations that make the Bastard gun less believable, such as doubts over how it ejects spent cartridges from its rack-like magazine.
Moreover, its other animations and graphical effects only highlight how unreliable the Bastard gun is. For example, there is a set of animations that is used when it overheats and Artyom tries to cool it; although they are impressive to look at for the first time, it will not be pleasant to look at when the player is under pressure from enemies.
Such shortcomings prevented the Bastard gun from becoming a pervasive trademark of the Metro franchise, unfortunately.
The same could be said for the Automatic Shotgun, but not for reasons that are its faults.
The Automatic Shotgun has an interesting revolving mechanism for its reloading process. The shells are practically exposed, mounted on partially-open rings that rotate as the gun fires. The player can see each shell being spent and its casing ejected, as well as Artyom manually mounting new shells onto the rings. Of course, such animations, which reflect well on the efforts by the developer to design and animate these hand-made guns, are best examined in the more peaceful moments of the game.
However, as there are other weapons that compete for the same slot as the Automatic Shotgun, there are very few opportunities to appreciate its visual designs. The same can also be said about the Duplet.
For weapons that have to be manually charged, there are sets of first-person camera animations that show Artyom pumping their compressors and dynamos. Dials handily show the player's progress, and for weapons that have overcharged states, Artyom visibly strains with audible grunts when pumping them past acceptable pressures.
The scrap-built and home-made weapons have the advantage of having the rounds that they have left in their magazines being visible without the need for icons. Also, for throwing knives, he holds out the remaining knives in his other hand.
There are animations for when Artyom is idle while holding something. Most of the time, he just examines them and turns them around in his hands, showing that the first-person models of the weapons are fully designed and there had not been lazy cutting of corners. There is also some silliness to be had, such as when Artyom accidentally breaks off a few parts from shoddy weapons, like the Bastard gun, and puts them back.
ANIMATIONS & AUDIO DESIGNS OF ENEMIES:
When combat occurs, the player gets to see and hear the design efforts that the developer has invested into making enemies seem believable. However, the observant player may also notice design oversights that unwittingly made enemies easier to defeat than they should be.
Mutants are relentless creatures; once they have discovered Artyom's presence, they may do one of two things.
They may run after him, which is an unsettling sight, especially if the player is illuminating them as they scamper down dark tunnels. They are almost silent, if not for the crunching of debris underneath their claws and feet; this makes them difficult to detect if the player is not already looking at them.
Alternatively, some monsters may stalk him by making use of tunnels or holes that create openings between two floors. If the player is vigilant, the player can see them scuttling along the tunnels or in the other floor, which shows how intelligent their A.I. designs are. Eventually, they will climb out to move towards Artyom; this is a mostly silent action, but if the player had been looking at them, this climbing animation renders them vulnerable to attack.
When they do attack, they will always utter growls, howls or yelps. By the time the unsuspecting player hears these (usually when they are looking at corpses or loot), it is already too late and the player can expect to take a hit or two. This makes the game quite suspenseful when Artyom is moving through monster-infested places.
However, when the player is actively fighting them off, he/she may notice the weaknesses that they have which arise from their animations.
Certain enemies pounce forward; if their pounces fail to land, they have to perform recovery animations that render them quite vulnerable to retaliatory fire.
If they perform slashing or mauling animations from a crouching or standing position, they are rooted to the spot. Anything stupid enough to be in front of them is hit outright, as is anything adjacent to them in the case of wide arcs of attack. However, if the player has Artyom backing away, they still have to complete said animations, which also render them vulnerable.
Most mutants have turning animations that would seem slow when compared to how fast their running or flying animations are. This makes individual mutants a lot easier to fight in close combat than one would think. They do compensate by having wide arcs to their attacks, but as long as the player kites them while keeping in mind their surroundings to prevent being cornered (which is a sure death), monsters on their lonesome can be despatched quite efficiently.
Human enemies have very believable animations when they are engaged in battle, but these are also their weaknesses in combat.
They have lengthy animations for ducking behind cover, which give the player a couple of seconds to put a round or two into their heads or shoulders. They also have lengthy animations for getting out of cover, which make them vulnerable to ambush; the only exception is when they have noticed an incoming grenade, for which they have diving animations to get out of the way.
Almost all enemies, except very tough mutants (which appear late into the game), have animations for when they are staggered by sustained gunfire. Sometimes, they may even get knocked over, which is also an indication that they are getting very weak; in the case of humans, they may limp when near-death.
Although such animations makes them very believably mortal, which in turn makes for impressive aesthetics, these animations also make them easier to kill as they cannot fire in these states. More often than not, they would turn into ragdolls before they can complete their animations if the player had continued to fire on them.
Speaking of ragdolls, after having seen so many well-done animations for the models in this game, that enemies go limp when they die and have their models turned into contorted ragdolls can be a disappointment.
ICONS & OTHER VISUAL INDICATORS:
The icons for types of munitions may be a bit difficult to differentiate for people who are not gun enthusiasts because they tend to use the bases of cartridges for the visual designs; only ball bearings and bolts have very unique-looking icons. Fortunately, this is a minor issue, as there are other visual indicators when the player is looting these types of munitions.
For example, when picking rounds off corpses, the icons that are associated with the type of rounds that the player is about to retrieve would appear under the aiming cursor (if any). When perusing exchange kiosks, there is always a view of the models for the rounds on-screen.
Most importantly, the icon for the military-grade rounds has a nimbus of light around it.
Artyom's lighter is mostly there for cosmetic purposes. It does have some neat lighting, but it is not always needed to read the high-contrast notepad on the front of Artyom's journal. There are some other objects on Artyom's person that are only there to look pretty, such as the timer on his wristwatch that follows the computer clock in the player's machine.
GRAPHICAL ISSUES:
For better or worse, the developer has decided that Artyom's state of health should be depicted via changes in the visual display of the first-person camera. The edges of the screen turn redder as he takes damage, and the red tint gets closer to the middle of the screen too. This can obscure the screen when a clear screen matters most to the player, such as when trying to spot enemies that are attempting to flank Artyom.
Using a health syringe to wipe away the red does not immediately help the player either. The screen will warp to Artyom's rapid heartbeat for a couple of moments, which is a drastic change that can be disorienting.
The developer has designed many convincing animations for the movement of the human body (much of which are likely motion-captured), but have not done enough for facial animations. The faces for human characters in Metro 2033 are creepily rigid, often only showing movement for blinking and lip-synching.
The consequences of these lopsided efforts at animation can be seen in one segment of the game where Artyom is accompanied by an enigmatic man. The otherwise splendid animations for his superstitious habits are marred by lack of facial animations and awkward positioning of his head.
Unlike other shooter titles, guns that have had their magazines or chambers emptied for spare ammo do not disappear; they stay behind, just in case the player needs to swap for more useful guns.
This would not have been an issue if not for the developer's failure to include appropriate models of guns that have their magazines pilfered for all weapons. While there are such models for weapons like the vanilla Kalash and the Bastard gun, other weapons such as the Uboinik and the variants of the standard guns lack these.
This is a minor issue if the player is a person who casually loots corpses and stashes and moves on without looking back, but for more anal-retentive players, this lack of models can be an annoyance.
VOICE-OVERS, SUBTITLES & WRITING:
Of all the sound assets in the game, the player will be listening to voice-overs the most.
The game has two sets of voice-overs, one in Russian and the other in English. Both voice-overs draw from the same surprisingly limited cast, though it is not entirely clear whether a character is voiced by the same person in both versions.
For those who are not versed in one or the other language, it is better to just set the game to use the voice-overs with the more familiar language. This is because the game lacks many subtitles for many conversations, especially those in the inhabited Metro stations. Players who use the other set of voice-overs anyway would be left out of many otherwise interesting pieces of dialogue.
Unfortunately for English-centric players, the English set of voice-overs has certain exclamations in Russian that just could not be translated over to English, and even their subtitles remain in Cyrillic.
For the most part, the descriptions for things in the game – usually imparted via dialogue or monologue – are technically correct. However, there are minor factual errors anyway, such as the Bastard gun being referred to as a submachinegun by an armory caretaker when it is more of a carbine. This can irk people with trivial knowledge about the things seen in Metro 2033.
There will not be many memorable quotes to be heard in Metro 2033, at least not from the main characters, most of whom are taciturn. In fact, the few memorable ones there are have to be gleaned from the conversations among strangers in the Metro stations. In particular, there is a macabre remark about the ammunition-based economy that can be heard from an unimportant, unnamed NPC.
There are attempts to create memorable characters, but the results can be seen as mixed. For example, Ulman is a character that is intended for comic relief, but his tendency to make jokes even when the situation is grave can be grating.
One of the most prominent characters appears in the early parts of the game, highlighting how the harsh life of post-apocalyptic Moscow has turned the best survivors into hard-bitten cynics as well as foolhardy risk-takers. On the other hand, there may be some complaints about the consistency of the portrayal of this character.
In the novels and according to some other characters in the game, he is suspected to be a dishonourable scoundrel. Yet, he conveniently hands Artyom quite a lot of supplies and military-grade rounds at opportune moments. Of course, it can be argued that these bouts of unexpected generosity would seem practical from the perspective of gameplay as he and Artyom will be getting into nasty situations.
A particular character with his peculiar superstitions and enigmatic but tough personality would have been memorable, but as mentioned earlier, his screen-time is marred with rigid facial animations that ruin the impact of the scenes that involve him.
Artyom himself seems to be a compromise between the completely silent protagonist and a person with self-conflicts. Most of his character design can only be experienced through his monologues (presumably his journal entries) that play during loading screens; he otherwise keeps his mouth shut even when people are addressing him and asking questions. Granted, he is not the only character that refuses to talk more than he should in the game, so his character designs are not in stark contrast with those of other characters in the game.
SOUND EFFECTS & MUSIC:
Although the developer has created a set of different sound effects for each monster, they would eventually lose their appeal because every type of monster will recur many times throughout the game. Some of these sounds are also recycled for variants of the same genus of monsters, the Nosalises being a particular example.
Eventually, the player would likely appreciate them just for the fact that they indicate that monsters are nearby.
The other sound effects, such as the moaning of a breeze as it passes down tunnels or the howling of winds on the surface are at least more understandable, and they also happen to add to the atmosphere of the game.
Being a shooter title, most of the sound effects that the player hears are of course gunfire. Most of the guns sound as they should, being facsimiles of gun archetypes that had been seen in so many shooters after all.
However, the pneumatic guns and the Volt Driver can be entertaining. Of course, their discharge is quite silent, but listening to a near inaudible thump followed by a louder thump hitting someone that is quite surprised at being killed by a ball bearing can be satisfying, or in the case of the Helsing, the thud of its bolt shanking someone.
The loudest noises are of course explosions, which leave Artyom's ears ringing. There are also other loud noises in the game, usually for ominous occurrences such as the creaking of rickety platforms under Artyom's weight.
There is not much music to be listened to in this game. What there is are mainly forlorn guitar tracks, and if not these, ominous tunes that often play during suspenseful cutscenes or dire situations where the player cannot do much but have Artyom run away from something that he cannot fight.
CONCLUSION:
Metro 2033 can be seen as another trans-media cashing-in or another title to jump on the bandwagon of post-apocalyptic stories.
However, it does have qualities that differentiate it from other games that try to do either of the above, and many more that certainly makes it stand out from among so many first-person shooter titles. Chief of these qualities are a great atmosphere and gear that works refreshingly differently from those seen in other shooters.
On the other hand, some of these qualities are diminished by many minor flaws that could have been easily overlooked if not for their effects on gameplay and immersion of the game.