The short version of this review is as follows: If you enjoyed the gritty post-apocalyptic Russian setting of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you enjoyed the mutated creatures constantly trying to kill you in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you enjoyed the humans who ironically also constantly try to kill you in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you liked the plotline wherein you play a silent hero who is heroically(?) chasing a MacGuffin composed of 99% pure handwavium, but you did not like the open world or RPG elements of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., then this game is for you!
Speaking for myself, I really enjoy the look-and-feel of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., so Metro's strong resemblance to its predecessor in that regard does not bother me a bit. The game engine used in Metro is significantly better than that used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and even with the game's default graphics setting of "very high," it ran on my computer with very little slowdown and looked like a million bucks. There are some nits I can pick about the graphics, but most of them are about the uncanny-valley-lookin' dudes you're always hanging around in the game. The world looks good, the monsters look good, light looks great, it all hangs together quite nicely.
I can't be quite so positive about the story and the storytelling, however. You play a silent hero (with the exception of one f-bomb, but given the circumstances it takes place in, anyone would break their vow of silence) who apparently communicates telepathically whenever anyone asks him a question. His silence is played for laughs a few times in the game but it mostly just served to make me not give a crap about the hero, Artyom.
At the start, the story has potential: about 20 years prior to the game's setting, nuclear war broke out and Moscow was obliterated. About 40,000 people survived by taking refuge in the subway system, which was improved over time into a series of fortified underground villages connected by the subway tunnels, and people get along in a fair approximation of business as usual if you discount the mutants roaming the tunnels and the several factions of humans who are engaged in open war in the tunnels.
Then, at Artyom's home station, a new threat surfaces: the Dark Ones, mutants who kill by telepathically shattering the minds of everyone they come into contact with. Danger! Panic! Then, the Dark Ones enter Artyom's mind, and speak to him in a way which can be interpreted as non-threatening. And so, we have the standard moral dilemma on the table: are the bad guys really bad? Like for reals? Spoiler: no. And yet Artyom, in a stunning display of non-genre-savviness, does not see the obvious telegraphing of the "misunderstood monster" punch in the very first cutscene, and he neglects to inform anyone else of the numerous times he is in contact with peace-seeking Dark Ones. Because the character of Artyom is not developed and every one of the major scenes in the story (excepting the contacts by the Dark Ones, of course) take place off screen, it never felt like I was part of the story. There was never a scene where Artyom sits down with someone and talks out the question of peaceful Dark Ones, there's never a scene where Artyom explains why he feels compelled to continue on his quest to see the Dark Ones destroyed in spite of their communications... the story is the part of this game that feels the most "on rails," just careening towards the ending without explanation or detour, and that's a shame because it had so much potential.
Not to mention the many, many times the player is subjected to the "omg guyz something haz blocked teh path and I iz separated from teh NPC homies so I iz gonna pew pew sum monsters until I findz themz againz lolololorafl" device. I realize writing friendly AI is hard so you want the player away from his buddies as much as possible to make things harder on the player and easier on the programmers, but surely the writers could have thought of some other plot device to separate me from my escorts, just to change things up once in a while.
The combat is both good and bad. Good when you're fighting humans and in a few mutant-fighting set pieces, and entirely mediocre when you're fighting mutants. When you are fighting humans, stealth has a role: with silent weapons, you can strike from the shadows and often manage to avoid notice so that you can do it again. When you are fighting mutants, stealth never matters, because they detect you anyway. Every mutant fight is a stand-up slugfest where you burn through huge amounts of ammunition (a precious commodity until near the end of the game) to waste the pile of mutants that the designers throw at you, then once you've killed the magic number of mutants, the fight ends.
You fight a single kind of mutant, called a nosalis, throughout the entire game except a bare handful of set pieces. Which is not bad, because most of the set pieces where you are dealing with other mutants are among the low points in the game. I'm looking at you, Library levels, with your invincible Mutant Du Jour and your loading screen tips to "move when they can't see you" and your enemy placement that ensures that it is impossible to avoid being seen by nearly all of them. This section pissed me off real quick, because having to figure out where to run in a dark room when my only guide is a compass arrow which I can't stop to check because I need to keep running at a sprint to stay ahead of the invincible monster chasing me is not fun. I wound up playing this section by running a bit further than I ran last time, then being clawed to death while checking my compass so I could figure out where I need to go on the next try. That is one definition of "the opposite of fun."
The boring and/or crappy mutant-fighting action (which is, unfortunately, the majority of combat in the game) was made up for by the several entertaining people-killing sections. Using a silenced, scoped revolver to shoot a man in the back of the neck between his helmet and his body armor was enjoyable every time I did it, as was clearing a room with a shotgun, as was throwing a lit pipe bomb into a room filled with enemies.
Speaking of the weapons, the weapons are a lot of fun, although poorly designed in the context of the game. For mutant-fighting, there's really only one weapon worth using: the semiautomatic shotgun. Everything else burns through too many bullets per nosalis. When you're fighting people, your options are somewhat broader but still come down to the several silenced weapons, because once the enemies know where you are, they are alert and watchful and are very good shots, so stealth kills are the smartest tactic for much of the game. Metro has a couple of very cool and unique weapons, the two pneumatic weapons. These are air-powered guns, one of which shoots crossbow bolts, and the other one shoots 5mm balls. The game has a nifty pumping mechanic; the damage dealt by the projectiles is directly related to the air pressure in the gun, so you need to keep it topped up. Both the pneumatic guns count as silenced weapons, and both are pretty accurate. The crossbow gun is a guaranteed one-hit kill on a mutant, and the bolts can be retrieved from the bodies. Unfortunately, it is not a guaranteed one-hit kill on a person, because the human enemies wear body armor. Thanks to that, and to the fact that the pneumatic weapons share the same inventory slot as the shotguns, I gave up on using the pneumatic guns despite their coolness.
The world of Metro 2033 didn't feel as developed as it could have. Each time the story dragged me into a station (that is, a town), I was able to explore less of it than the last station, so that the last few stations you're in are one-room affairs where you buy ammo and then get frog-marched towards the next leg of the story. This was disappointing to me, because I was hoping to have some of that "plot development" stuff happening, but no such luck.
Overall, I liked the game, although I feel that it is not worth full price, being a competent but not great single-player FPS with a lackluster story, fairly short playing time and no replayability. Once it is on sale on Steam you should jump on it, because there's more good than bad in this game, and really, who can ever have enough of post-apocalyptic Russia?
