Metro 2033

It’s not a phenomenon unique to videogames; it’s almost everywhere we look. I Am Legend, Terminator Salvation, 2012, The Book Of Eli, The Road; hell, even Wall-E got in on the action. We’re obsessed with the Apocalypse, of that there’s no doubt.

You may remember me from such magazines as 'Gimplosion' and 'Shiny Housewife'.

With Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 joined by upcoming games like Enslaved and Rage, videogames are playing their own part in documenting the end of civilisation. It seems we can’t get total annihilation out of our morbid minds. Perhaps it’s something to do with the passing of the millennium, the heavy creaking of a thousand years turning into the next a very real reminder of our own fragility in a universe bigger and stranger than we can possibly understand.

Which is partly what 4A Games explores in its first title, Metro 2033, a post-apocalyptic shooter that isn’t just concerned with hacking through zombies or taking down Ghouls with a VATS headshot. It’s an oddity: an end-of-the-world videogame that explores that most wretched of situations with real pathos and intelligence. It weaves a tale that both terrifies and captivates; while having you kill plenty of zombie dog-baboons at the same time.

Judgement day has been and gone – the cause no longer important – with the remaining humans living out an impoverished existence in the cold of Moscow’s Metro; a rabbit warren of dank, criss-crossing burrows. It’s a purgatory where extant pockets of civilisation struggle for survival against the mutant danger of the aforementioned dog-baboons. However, a new threat – one altogether darker and more dangerous – has emerged from the shadows: a bipedal mutant able to debilitate humans with a thought.

Attack of the killer moles...

Playing as the young Arytom, you’re tasked with delivering a message of these new monsters to the Metro’s political hub. It’s a journey that very much takes its cues from narrative-heavy titles like BioShock and Half-Life 2. Although many of the developers at 4A also worked on the open-world PC game S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033 is a strictly linear and choreographed game, which isn’t surprising given that its setting is also mostly on-rails.

This is hardly a criticism, however. Metro 2033 is a narrative-rich, set-piece-driven shooter, and throughout its ten or so hours of playtime, 4A confirms that it is incredibly adept at pacing, punctuating your slow journey with oscillating moments of calm and intensity. Levels feel like locations rather than corridors, the environments imparting story simply by being there. Long tunnels are covered with overgrown, mutated roots, while stations – which have now become microcosmic city states, each with its own ideology – are credible social spaces, filled with an ongoing hubbub of commerce and trading.

Metro 2033 evokes an incredible sense of place, thanks largely to the astonishing graphics engine. It may not be as impressive as its PC counterpart, but 4A has squeezed a great deal out of the 360 architecture, making for one of the most atmospheric shooters currently available on the system. The lighting effects are spectacular, light and dark playing off of each other to create a tense claustrophobia. Visual filters placed over the camera further enhance the sense of immersion. Whenever you step out into the surface chill of a frozen Moscow, for instance, you need a gas mask to breathe – a gas mask that will crack and break when under attack. It’s disorientating, but in a manner that heightens the action rather than detracts from it.

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