2010 | Metro 2033

Developer: 4A Games
Publisher: THQ
Platform: Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
Genre(s): First-person Shooting; Survival Horror
Mode: Single-Player
First Released: March 16, 2010 (NA)
Played on: Microsoft Windows

If you are bored enough in playing standard FPS games such as the Call of Duty and Battlefield games, and misses a lot of the gory and shocking scenes from Resident Evil, this game is for you. No, it’s not as bad as Left For Dead 2. It is, however, will challenge both your shooting skills and your fright powers. Metro 2033 is both an FPS and a survival horror game. Set in the year of 2033, you play the character named Artyom, and you are in the post-apocalyptic era of Russia, particularly in The Metro, within Moscow. You are one out of less than a thousand more survivors, eating, sleeping, living inside the inner of the subway, just to stay away of those what they call “The Dark Ones”. These monsters are very scary, yet vogue. They are, however shaped like animals but with long sharp claws. There is a monster that looks a lot like the licker in Resident Evil series, and the lurker in the Silent Hill series, but this time it looks more realistic (without the tongue). I have heard that this game is quite similar to the games of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and yes it is, it is proven by the game developers and that they consider it as an influence upon making this game. It is based on a novel also published around Russia, which is also referenced in a scene in the game, during Artyom’s secret departure using a cart, shown here:

Here’s the Intro video of the game:

A thing that caught my attention to play this game, aside from being exclusive to XboX 360 and PC (which means I won’t be able to play this on my PS3), is that it has demanding but awesome Graphics and Physics. Yes, it will push your GPU almost up to the limit, especially if you only have Radeon 3xxx or GeForce 9xxx. It is able to render graphics from Direct3D 9, 10 and even 11. What’s more good is that, whatever you choose among those 3 Direct 3D technology, the game will still look very nice (in my opinion), but still depends to your taste though. As for me, I only have a Radeon HD4850, enough to render high quality frames of the game. Thanks to it, I can play the game in DirectX 10 mode safely, all in high settings. But do not forget, use Direct3D Overrider to force Vsync and to completely say goodbye to screen-tearings and frame drops. In my case, I decently got 50~60fps in DirectX 10 mode with all the options set to high. It is also recommended to have atleast a dual-core processor, specifically Intel Core 2 Duo processors, however, to meet extreme performance, it is better to have quad-core processors.

Although it is graphically impressive, I can’t just let this game win my heart easily. I found some flaws during my gameplay. One thing is the animation. Of course, the animation is good but here’s something that bothered me for a while.

This monster above is actually dead. I killed it using a knife and as far as I know, it is supposed to be lying on the floor and not standing like that in a weird position. You get what I mean? In any way, that is the only major flaw of the game for me.

Here’s the whole gameplay video of Chapter 7 (Tower):

I have finished the game a month ago (late post). It is decently long, but what takes it long is because there are a lot of time wherein you’ll just wander around a community to look for bullets, and since bullets play very important role in the game, you’ll have to find it. There’s no currency or any paper-like you can use to buy ammo, instead, you’ll have to keep on looting used and old bullets (with different classes) to exchange for new and usable ones, body armor/suits.

Here’s the Ending cutscene of the game:

Final Score: 10/10 – as an FPS game, multiplayer is not really necessary. Everything is almost right, vast variety amount of firepower, realistic gameplay and environment. As a survival horror game, it performed well, but needs to show more. Although it is a very demanding game, which will let you upgrade your PC components off the air, it satisfies what you paid for, your visual and imaginative desires. Good storyline! Now let’s wait for the sequel Metro 2034!

|> Slapshock – Adios