Some words about the game. I'm now on a very limited connection, so will only be able to check my facts later (release of STALKER, and whether there was any legal action against 4A or not).
Bet Classic Game Room aren't going to pay me [censored] just like they didn't bother paying me for my Batman: Arkham Asylum review, but it's not the green that matters, right? (yeah, right...)
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Review: Metro 2033
***
There had been quite a number of relatively well-received games that made their accent on the atmospherics, on the immersion of the player’s experience, while compromising either in graphics or in certain other aspects of gameplay mechanics. One such a game is S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the 2008 FPS with RPG elements where the player takes control of an amnesiac marauder in an Alternative Universe post-mutant Chernobyl and its surrounding areas.
That 2008 game is impossible for any educated gamer not to mention when talking about the 2010’s Metro 2033. The biggest reason for this is because the core developers of Metro 2033 are actually compromised from the ex-members of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. team. And while there were rumors (yet to be legally proven) that 4A Games stole the engine, all that does in no way negate the fact that Metro 2033 can firmly stand its atmospheric FPS ground against the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and the like.
Immersive atmosphere is what Metro 2033 does best, and does so from the very title screen and follows through the beginning, middle, and end (or at least up to where I managed to get to in the game, but more on that later).
The game is based on an apparently famous work by a Russian of the same name author (even though I had, much unfortunately, never heard of the man before). The story takes place in the Moscow underground during a post-apocalyptic Nuclear Winter, and follows the young man Artem and his quest to help defend his home metro station against a threat from those who appear to be the next step in human evolution.
Metro 2033 is a very linear game, the scripted game events adding all the more to the immersive experience. As Artem’s journey takes him through the network of the Moscow metropolitan, he encounters (apart from the rougher elements of the society’s remnants) skin-numbing ghostly presences, anomalies, sneaks through a Communist versus Nazi war between stations, fights off hordes of mutants alone and with friends, ventures top-side into the snowfall of a burnt-down Moscow, and many things beyond.
This game shines in its presentation. While the character models might slightly fall behind the current generation of the Unreal 3 engine powered games, the lighting, the shadows, and the ambience of the art design more than make up for that minor flaw. The choice to make a lot of cutscenes in-game, as seen with the player character’s eyes, adds a very good layer of polish over the game.
What these wonderful attributes do sometime fail to compensate, however, are a few gaping holes in the gameplay experience (which could have been easily avoided with a more rigorous testing phase). For an example, the game gives you a nice selection of weapons – make-shift modifications of which can be purchased later on in the game. The weapons themselves aren’t anything too new, except perhaps for the pump-operated projectile ones, but they look in such a way that there’s almost no chance that you could mistake this game for another by looking at the weapon alone.
One such a weapon is a set of throwing knives that most self-respecting Stalkers (or, in this game, Hunters) keep on one of their sleeves just in case there ever comes a need to take someone down and make as less noise about the business as all self-respecting Hunters should. Some firearms in the game come with silencers for that reason as well.
And while that works for most of the game, when I got to the mission where I had to sneak through a warzone and by a bunch of Nazi and Communist troops, I realized that some parts of the game only allow you to pass the way the developers had predicted. Taking out any soldiers in the area, no matter whether done in both silence and darkness, or whether any other enemies had any means of knowing, everybody in the area became alerted to the player’s presence (and also, his exact whereabouts). That particular segment took me a dozen of tries to pass and cost a lot of frustration. But then again, trying to beat a poorly designed part of the game just to see what happens next makes a good argument for how enjoyable the game is at its better moments.
But all that aside, I am actually guilty of having given up playing during the second disappointingly unnecessary difficult escort mission towards the end of the game. But while I’ve given up on it for now, I would still tell any FPS fan that money spent on this game is money well spent. And then, perhaps, I will try the escort mission one last time.
Bet Classic Game Room aren't going to pay me [censored] just like they didn't bother paying me for my Batman: Arkham Asylum review, but it's not the green that matters, right? (yeah, right...)
***
Review: Metro 2033
***
There had been quite a number of relatively well-received games that made their accent on the atmospherics, on the immersion of the player’s experience, while compromising either in graphics or in certain other aspects of gameplay mechanics. One such a game is S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the 2008 FPS with RPG elements where the player takes control of an amnesiac marauder in an Alternative Universe post-mutant Chernobyl and its surrounding areas.
That 2008 game is impossible for any educated gamer not to mention when talking about the 2010’s Metro 2033. The biggest reason for this is because the core developers of Metro 2033 are actually compromised from the ex-members of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. team. And while there were rumors (yet to be legally proven) that 4A Games stole the engine, all that does in no way negate the fact that Metro 2033 can firmly stand its atmospheric FPS ground against the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and the like.
Immersive atmosphere is what Metro 2033 does best, and does so from the very title screen and follows through the beginning, middle, and end (or at least up to where I managed to get to in the game, but more on that later).
The game is based on an apparently famous work by a Russian of the same name author (even though I had, much unfortunately, never heard of the man before). The story takes place in the Moscow underground during a post-apocalyptic Nuclear Winter, and follows the young man Artem and his quest to help defend his home metro station against a threat from those who appear to be the next step in human evolution.
Metro 2033 is a very linear game, the scripted game events adding all the more to the immersive experience. As Artem’s journey takes him through the network of the Moscow metropolitan, he encounters (apart from the rougher elements of the society’s remnants) skin-numbing ghostly presences, anomalies, sneaks through a Communist versus Nazi war between stations, fights off hordes of mutants alone and with friends, ventures top-side into the snowfall of a burnt-down Moscow, and many things beyond.
This game shines in its presentation. While the character models might slightly fall behind the current generation of the Unreal 3 engine powered games, the lighting, the shadows, and the ambience of the art design more than make up for that minor flaw. The choice to make a lot of cutscenes in-game, as seen with the player character’s eyes, adds a very good layer of polish over the game.
What these wonderful attributes do sometime fail to compensate, however, are a few gaping holes in the gameplay experience (which could have been easily avoided with a more rigorous testing phase). For an example, the game gives you a nice selection of weapons – make-shift modifications of which can be purchased later on in the game. The weapons themselves aren’t anything too new, except perhaps for the pump-operated projectile ones, but they look in such a way that there’s almost no chance that you could mistake this game for another by looking at the weapon alone.
One such a weapon is a set of throwing knives that most self-respecting Stalkers (or, in this game, Hunters) keep on one of their sleeves just in case there ever comes a need to take someone down and make as less noise about the business as all self-respecting Hunters should. Some firearms in the game come with silencers for that reason as well.
And while that works for most of the game, when I got to the mission where I had to sneak through a warzone and by a bunch of Nazi and Communist troops, I realized that some parts of the game only allow you to pass the way the developers had predicted. Taking out any soldiers in the area, no matter whether done in both silence and darkness, or whether any other enemies had any means of knowing, everybody in the area became alerted to the player’s presence (and also, his exact whereabouts). That particular segment took me a dozen of tries to pass and cost a lot of frustration. But then again, trying to beat a poorly designed part of the game just to see what happens next makes a good argument for how enjoyable the game is at its better moments.
But all that aside, I am actually guilty of having given up playing during the second disappointingly unnecessary difficult escort mission towards the end of the game. But while I’ve given up on it for now, I would still tell any FPS fan that money spent on this game is money well spent. And then, perhaps, I will try the escort mission one last time.
幻術
