Metro 2033 is a formulaic post apocalyptic first person shooter. It is set mostly beneath the ruins of Moscow, in the subterranean metro system that lends the title its name. There are brief flurries to the surface, but expect dark tunnels filled with horrible scary monsters (and Russians). The 2033 is the year, in case you did not figure that out for yourself.
Intro/Story
The very start of the game follows the tried and tested: Show player NOW, cut to past. You basically start the game in the middle of a huge gun battle…only to be warped back in time. You play the part of a survivor, living in the dungeon that is the metro system. The game continues with a few very short and basic levels that introduce some basic game play elements. What is very evident from the get go is that it’s not just humans living in the metro, there are also hordes of mutants.
You meet a few trivial characters who basically lead you through the first few missions, before either dying or leaving you! Through a series of short action scenes and small linear levels you get introduced to the main factions in the game. Prepare for a surprise…the metro is riddled with NAZIS and COMMIES. The game goes to great lengths to tell us that despite almost total annihilation, mankind is always ready to get back to the fight.
After a fleeting encounter with the commies and the nazis, the story moves quickly towards what I found to be a silly and rather anti climatic ending. Through the entire narrative, “The Dark Ones” are referred to as an evil and menacing force that has just emerged. The problem is you only ever encounter them in confusing cut scenes, with a basic life death tunnel of white light choice. At some points you move towards the dark ones to continue, at other points away….why confuse us? I mean they are called “The Dark Ones”, we don’t want to walk towards “The Dark Ones”, presumably they live in some sort of “Dark Place”.
The conclusion to this spiraling narrative is a visit to a secret nuclear bunker (Again with the nukes). To cut a mediocre story short, you grab some device, fight some silly four armed slob mutant (which is a direct rip off of HL bte…..don’t think we did not notice). You then climb a very tall tower and nuke the dark ones. Yay!
Game play Mechanics
Money is ammo: Couple of nice game play elements I found, some not so good. I found the currency silly. Bullets are never expensive in games? Not even high end “military” ones. I found myself frequently shooting off all my ammo/money in the heat of battle, only to discover when I got back to a camp…that I was now on the social welfare.
Universal Charger: This made more sense to me than the money currency. In a post apocalyptic world, power generation will be important. This little device allows you to “pump” to generate power for your headlamp and night vision. (O and you will need your lamp 98% of the time)
I found the combat good, but very very hard. Enemies take quite a lot of ammo to put down…and not aiming down the sights you will find yourself going to your knife for some dueling action with 8 foot tall mutants.
Stealth on the other hand offers a chance to sneak past your foes. There is a stealth suit which can be purchased to aid you in this, or a heavy armor suit in case you want to slug it out. I did not use either as I could not afford them!!! I must admit that may have made the game harder for me.
GFX and Sound
This is where I must score this game a good 8 out of 10. It looks amazing on a decent PC. The lighting and textures are good, and it really helps add to the dark foreboding feeling. If anything the dark is a little too dark! The constant feeling of claustrophobia makes this an eery and scary game, with mutants bursting out of the dark to terrify you.
Conclusion
Metro 2033 is a good game. I paid €9.99, I would have been very disappointed if I had paid full price for this title. My main criticisms for this game are that it is FAR too linear. It would have been nice to have several ways to approach a task. Despite the linear approach, I frequently found myself lost, unable to find out where/what I had to do. I put this down to age and bad game design 
The ending is a farce. The abstract puzzle scenes with the dark ones in pursuit is not explained and open to LSD interpretations. The Tower level, while looking good….is completely and utterly silly. One big beef for me was having to repeatedly tap the “E” key to fend off enemies…climb in scripted cut scenes etc. This is console”y” rubbish lowest common denomination tripe, keep it out of games that say they are from the makers of STALKER!! If I had to guess what happened Metro 2033, this would be it:
– STALKER devs said lets make a cool STALKER type game on this slick new engine
– THQ said: Yes that’s a great idea…now can we make it more like COD….because we know that will sell.
Metro 2033 is the end result. I’ll score this game 6/10. Let down by weak story about “The Dark Ones”……because they are dark.