Mixed Feelings at the end of Metro 2033

It’s actually been something like a week since a gaming post…I’ve got the shakes, man!!!

Metro 2033 is a linear, first person shooter variant on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. The other comparable between the two…both are based on a Russian novel. Now, on the plus side for Metro is that I was so taken with the atmosphere and setting that I actually really want to track down an English translation of the book and give it a read.

It’s the year 2033. A few decades after a nuclear holocaust, what’s left of Russian society lives in the Moscow metro network (which is actually pretty realistic, seeing as the subway systems were built to also be used as gigantic fallout shelters). Seeing as it’s a post apocalyptic universe, money is pointless…the currency here is military grade ammunition. I really liked that…not only is a reasonable value item that would be prized, but it creates an interesting game play dynamic as you work your way through the levels. Do I stick with my reload ammo, or do I risk blasting off a mag’s worth of mil-grade stuff? Sure, I can kill that demon more easily, but I might also not be able to afford that kickass sniper rifle between missions.

The stations defend themselves from mutants, but there are also demons who roam the surface. Gigantic winged bastards who swoop in and maul the shit out of you, or big ape-like beasts that roam certain sections of the ruins. Whether or not they’re actually demonic creatures is unknown…the game doesn’t exactly load up on religious or spiritual overtones, so I suspect they’ve just been tabbed as demonic since the damn things are near impossible to kill without some heavy artillery.

And that brings us to my big, BIG problem with this game.

There are several levels where you’re picking your way through, trying to find something, unsure of where to go next. That’s fine. Then they throw in numerous demonic creatures you have to run with. And that mix produces frustration to a level that you will want to track down the level designers and curb stomp their entire family in front of them. You’re running around, trying to keep away, not sure where to go, turn here and…dead end. Great. Now I’m dead. Start over and…okay, turn THIs way, good…oh, there’s a hole I should have jumped! Cornered. Dead. It turns in to memorization, where any false move results in a monstrous entity eating your face. I HATE shit like this in a game. This isn’t a fucking game of Simon! I cannot stand game levels where I die not because I screwed up, or because someone got the drop on me…but simply because I guessed wrong. Again…and again…and again. That isn’t creative, it isn’t interesting, it’s shitty level design.

Aside from those levels, I loved it. Sure it’s linear, but you can kind of play the game how you want to play it. Feel like loading up on throwing knives and silenced weapons and sneaking through levels of bad guys? Do it. Want to arm up with auto shotguns, sticky bombs and enough other firepower to make you a Russian version of Rambo? You can do that, too.

A you travel through the Metro network, you’ll encounter various human factions as well. Bandits want to take out everyone they see to sell their gear. Hardcore commies and fascists have returned to this part of the world, and are engaging in open warfare. Couple them with gigantic mutated dog-like creatures and demons and you have a lot of shit trying to kill your ass.

The world in which you encounter them is fantastic. You need to maintain your gas mask for those trips to the surface. Let it get busted up, and you’d better scramble and find a replacement before the air poisons you. Oh, and grab every filter you can get your hands on. See the blur in that screen shot I posted up there with the winged guy coming in to snack on your flesh? Yeah, that’s condensation building up in your mask…that, and the sound of your breathing, tells you how much longer your filter has. And stay away from the shadows. I don’t mean actual shadows, I mean the shadows of people who have died badly, and which very much are still ‘alive’ in the catacombs of the subway tunnels.

Then there is the unknown. Weird vortexes that seem to be opening up between dimensions. Balls of static electricity that travel down tunnels until they find something alive and purge it out of existence with one gigantic zap.

Finally, there are The Dark Ones. Who knows what they are? They seem sort of humanoid, consisting of shifting shadowy light around some sort of form. Their touch can bring madness, but they seem to have some sort of link with you. More than once, as you and someone else are about to be pulled in to some spatial anomaly, a shifting hand comes out of nowhere and pulls you to safety.

And the ending deals directly with them. A missile strike has been suggested against the area of what used to the city where they’re most often seen. You need to set up the targeting of that strike. The final level is a madness of shifting between reality and…some other form of reality, where floors are manifesting in front of you out of a void. Voices hiss, some saying you must be destroyed before you destroy them, others begging patience. Turn a corner and a dark one is coming for you. Go back the other way, and you’re facing a different path than was there before. And you reach the end…

There are two endings. One is technically called the ‘good’ ending and the other the ‘bad’ version, but they’re both open enough that I don’t really think either is necessarily heroic or villainous. They certainly don’t paint you one way or the other. Do you help devastate the Dark Ones? Okay. Maybe it works out, and you’ve saved humanity. Of course, their very creation seems to have been the result of war and destruction, so who the fuck knows what might manifest itself to replace them? You stopped the strike? Okay. Maybe humanity and these mysterious things can live together, or maybe you’ve damned what’s left of your species to be replaced in a cruel twist of evolution. I’ve become a much bigger fan of more nebulous endings as time has gone on, so I definitely appreciated it.

There’s so much good here that I need to read the source material to see if it fills in some blanks and gets more deeply in to the richness that’s there. Unfortunately, the few bad levels were so fucking infuriating that I don’t think I will ever pick this up to play it through again.