There had been quite a number of relatively well-received games that made their emphasis on fully immersing the player into a game’s world. Some of them had done so while compromising either in graphics or in certain other aspects of gameplay mechanics, and one such a game was S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the 2007 FPS with RPG elements where the player took control of an amnesiac marauder in an Alternative Universe post-mutant Chernobyl and its surrounding areas.

That 2007 game is impossible not to mention when talking about 2010’s Metro 2033 - not only because both games came out from the same publisher, but also because some of the core developers of Metro 2033 are actually ex-members of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. team. And while there were rumors that 4A Games stole an early version of the engine, it does in no way negate the fact that Metro 2033 can firmly stand its 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’s story is based on a novel of the same name by the Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The action 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 station against a mysterious threat.

Artem’s progress through the underground is marked with passing through inhabited areas of the underground and looking at the post-apocalyptic lives of its dwellers. The player gets to overhear snippets of conversation, and gets a sense of the political situation and the general realistic day-to-day life of the game’s well-imagined world.

Metro 2033 is a very linear game, so don’t expect to do much free-roaming, but the scripted game events on your path add all the more to the immersive experience. As Artem’s journey takes him from station to station of the Moscow metropolitan, he encounters, apart from people, skin-numbing ghostly presences, unexplainable anomalies, fights off hordes of mutants alone and with friends, sneaks through a metro war zone, ventures top-side into the snowfall of a burnt-down Moscow, and so forth.

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 game is especially a treat to play for owners of high-end PCs who can afford to enjoy its DirectX 11 graphical features.

The choice to make a lot of cut scenes in-game, as seen with the player character’s eyes, also adds a very good layer of polish over the game.

But what these wonderful attributes do fail to compensate for, however, are the few gaping holes in the gameplay (which could have been easily avoided with a more rigorous testing phase). For example, the game gives you a nice selection of weapons, and while the weapons themselves aren’t anything too new (except perhaps for the pump-operated projectile ones), they have a unique-enough look about them for most players to identify them with the game, and not any other generic shooter.

One of the weapons that Artem can get is a set of throwing knives that most self-respecting metro-roamers (called Hunters in the game) keep about themselves in case there ever is a need to take somebody down while making as little noise as possible. There are some firearms in the game that come with silencers for that very reason as well.

And while that works for most of the game, a very apparent problem surfaces towards the middle. Specifically, when you get to the mission where you have to sneak by a bunch of Nazi and Communist troops. The problem, in that section, is that the game would only allow you to pass the way the developers had predicted.

Taking out any soldiers in the area, no matter whether any other enemies would have the means of knowing your actions, would alert everyone in the area to your presence and, by default, your exact whereabouts.

That particular segment took me a dozen tries to pass and caused a lot of frustration. But then again, trying to beat a poorly designed part of a video game just to see what happens next makes a good argument for how enjoyable Metro 2033 is at its better moments.

I am actually guilty of having given up playing during the second disappointingly unnecessary difficult segment – an 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 would try that escort mission one last time.

- Max Salnikov

Developer: 4A Games
Publisher: THQ
Platform(s): PC, Xbox 360