My first experience with this franchise was back in December after playing Metro Exodus during the weeklong playtest for Amazon's Luna cloud gaming client. I then picked up the first game in the series Metro 2033 Redux through GOG after discovering that the copy that I had on Steam would not play for whatever reason. I liked the post-apocalyptic setting and a first person survival horror game based off of a novel series of the same name was very appealing. Even after playing less than an hour of Metro Exodus I probably should have had a better idea of what I was getting into but so far that has not been the case.
When I read that a game is survival horror, the first game that comes to mind is Resident Evil (1996) and the Resident Evil remake (2002) on the Game Cube. I am sure there are dissertations on what survival horror can be defined by, but to me, it is a feeling of dread, not characterized by fast-moving over-powered enemies, but being caught in confined spaces where panicking is often worse than the actual damage that the enemies can do. So far, for me at least, Metro 2033 Redux is less survival horror and more a first-person action shooter with supernatural and horror elements. But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Currently, as of this writing, I am only about six hours into the game, Bourbon has just been captured as he and the playable character of Artyom are attempting to reach the Polis Station. The game has been somewhat stressful as like in a lot of survival horror games (Resident Evil, Silent Hill), ammunition is somewhat scarce, which is made more so by the fact that this is a first-person shooter where you normally kill enemies and scavenge ammunition off of their corpses. In Metro 2033 Redux, you are often going up against large mutant creatures who are trying to eat you with their teeth who all take more than a couple of shots to take down, so scavenging resources off of naked monsters is going to be next to impossible. You can collect ammunition and special bullet-currency (more on that next) from corpses of other survivors when you are out in the tunnels and on the surface, but half the time if seems like those bodies are already picked clean. More often than not, by the end of each stage, you typically have a lot fewer rounds of ammunition than what you started with. Which is very much an aspect of survival horror, so I can appreciate that. Somewhat.
Because this is also a first-person shooter though, conserving ammunition is something that I have had to make a conscious effort to do, as previously mentioned since the mutant enemies do not carry ammunition. Combined with that that this is a post-apocalyptic setting, having there be piles of bullets and shells lying around is not going to be commonplace, which makes you wonder why there are not more people taking the Daryl Dixon route and using bows and crossbows. But having a limited amount of ammunition is both a genre-defining decision as well as a narrative decision so we will run with it. Whereas normally I might hold down the firing button willy-nilly in games like Wolfenstein or Left 4 Dead, in Metro 2033 Redux, I do not have the luxury of finding a cache of bullets and so I do a lot of single-shot click-firing even when using the Bastard. And then there is the issue with the currency in-game. In this world, ammunition is used to buy everything, but I have not figured out if there is special ammunition used for currency, or if any rifle ammunition (based on the logo that pops up when you collect it) counts as one denomination of currency. Am i literally shooting away my money? I have no idea, but when you are faced with the future purchasing power or immediate survival, I am going to be choosing immediate survival.
One mechanic in the game that I do not recall having used before is that when above ground and in certain toxic areas, the player character Artoym (and NPCs as well, but to a lesser extent) are outfitted with a gas mask and disposable filters. The filters last only five minutes before the game prompts you to replace them and the game does tell you that you only have a cumulative amount of time left. You are told about gas masks and filters in the opening of the game, but due to the game having a very limited UI HUB, it is sometimes difficult to tell how long you have been wearing a mask, how much time you have left before you run out of filters, what the toxicity level is if your mask is off, or even how much life you have and if you really should use one of the three health packs you have stored. I tend to play survival horror somewhat dangerously in that I will often see how far I can go on as little health, sometimes cheesing the game if I know that after a cutscene or if I make it to a populated station, my health will be fully restored and I will be able to save a health pack for when I really need it. But again, that is something that I have comes to terms with after a couple of hours. Sort of.
In the above-ground section of Moscow, most of that level is above ground, meaning you need to have enough filters to run through a maze of areas to get to wherever the exit for the stage is. This is normally fine as at this point you have been following the smuggler Bourbon, but here you become separated as some flying monstrosity threatens to pick you up and smash you on the ground (or in my case, actually do it a number of times), and trying to find your way away from the aforementioned flying mutant while trying to listen to your guide's directions became nearly impossible. So I ended up running from building to building, trying numerous places where I thought I was either able or supposed to jump across a radioactive river or duck inside a partially collapsed building because I could just barely crouch/crawl through a broken window only to find out that there were only bodies to loot and a pair of non-violent mutants cowering in the corner away from me. It was a very tense level, more so when I finally came across Bourbon (by accident) and then had to engage in a fight against a mass of violent mutants (and the flying one too for good measure) where I was killed three times before I finally figured out where I was supposed to go during the fight.
That was where I ended up leaving off before writing my First Impressions. Right now, the game feels like it follows the format of having to explore a stage, a couple of areas where you fight mutants and gathering supplies, followed by a final encounter against a large number of mutants designed to deplete you of all/most of the ammunition you picked up earlier in the stage. Then there will be a stage in a station where you are either railroaded through to another series of tunnels, or you might be lucky enough to be able to purchase weapon upgrades, additional filters, or just get some world-building exposition from NPCs.
But you know what, I am having quite a lot of fun if I do not think of Metro 2033 Redux as a survival horror game and instead think of it as a first-person shooter with horror elements (kind of like Doom 3). The setting of the Moscow Metro reminds me a bit of the subway and tunnels in Fallout 3, which is not a criticism, but I wish that the health and filter mechanic was a little more obvious. But this is the first game in a series so one would think that there will be some improvements when I get to Metro Last Light Redux because there are some creepy moments and the gunplay does feel pretty good, and unless something really bad happens in terms of game mechanics (run out of filters right after an autosave or run out of money before a Station and I do not have enough money to make any additional purchases, or the game just pulls an asshole move and becomes super-cheap in its attempt(s) to kill me), I do not see myself stopping after finishing this first game.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I've Been Chewing on Tin Foil
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