Metro 2033

a.k.a. "On a Rail" literally and redux*

 

Hmm, let's see, I did some city sims, a SF RPG, some adventure surviving before that, a big science fantasy RPG this past spring, a couple of Age of Wonders campaigns in between for a dose of high fantasy, what do I want next? Not fantasy... a first-person shooter might hit the spot (as long as my hand doesn't shake) but instead of returning to C77, maybe the next Fallout in line? Or, better yet, Fallout's postapocalyptic FPS competition, from some of Stalker's creators.

 

Oops. As soon as I installed Metro 2033 it became clear it's not quite what I signed up for.

Problems:

1) The stupid logo-spamming menu transition cutscene you're put through every time you start the game.

2) No manual saves. Official save points only. One of the great all-time video game timesinks.

3) The stupid 30-second postcard cutscene I'm forced to sit through when reloading from the next checkpoint lying in bed.

4) Psychic bullcrap right from the start, in a SciFi story. (At least Stalker held off until mid-game.)

5) The tutorial and first chapter is half an hour of cutscenes with a couple skeet-shooting sequences thrown in to remind you you're supposed to be playing a game.

6) Chapter 2 at least lets me move around on my own for a bit, albeit with no jumping allowed. (It upsets the pigs, I guess?) (Turns out to apply to every noncombat area.)

7) Menu system designed to minimize the amount of information on screen, so as not to confuse its core FPS twitch-gamer cretin audience. Weapon keybinds for example are buried five layers deep. Results in a lot of time-wasting clicking back and forth through menu tiers. Shop windows aren't much better. 

8) By zone 3, all I've done aside from scripted skeet-shooting scenes is scrounge around for loose ammo shells and trade them in for other varieties. I'm finally doing a thing on my own like a big gamer boi! 

9) Monsters so far come in standard generic monster shape: hulking goblin-ish things with big jaws and big claws. Oh, and also a generic flying demon-bat thing. No need for screenshots. You know the type.

10) No status feedback. What's my HP? How poisoned am I? Why the hell does my character just keel over and die here?

And how the hell was I supposed to know you can run in what looks like yet another cutscene? And how the hell am I supposed to know later on that you can only burn cobwebs, not cut them? And that simply walking forward after doing so kills you instantly?

 

So, as it turns out, Metro 2033 is (perhaps intentionally, to avoid competing with Fallout 3 which had just come out a year prior) explicitly not an open world alternative to Fallout, but (ironically as I just went through this with Colony Ship) an old-school series of mission maps with scripted events. So, so damn many scripted events! What we have here is another symptom of late-2000s Hollywood envy, when (among other issues) game designers imagining themselves movie directors got so enamoured of cutscenes as to leave very little for the actual player to play. You spend the first few maps walking between endless theater skits and wondering when the action will start.

 

Now, that being said... the cutscenes are pretty good. I don't know about the original, but Metro's "redux" version boasts excellent production values for that time period. Lovingly detailed environments eschew cartoonishness. Dialogues reinforce the bleak setting while not sounding too whiny about it. The underground is dark enough to make you squint a bit and use your flashlight but not stumble blindly everywhere like, say, Doom 3 or Amnesia: Rebirth. Level design, when it at long last comes into play, proves intricate without devolving to unworkable mazes, and even offers enough nooks and crannies to reward a bit of exploration. Navigate some above-ground ruins, shoot up a bandit lair, good times. Monsters are a bit passive when not scripted (in contrast to Stalker's noteworthy improvements in mob tactics) but, eh, it was 2010. So in itself, a linear progression can make an alright game... until... you start climbing from trolley to trolley, so you can be treated to moving cutscenes. And then:

After a level which consisted of nothing but one noncombat chase and some light shopping therapy, you get thrown into a fucking six minute cutscene where your character is hiding prone under a trolley with nothing to look at except some shameless product placement, listening to inane chatter from the army grunts above as you grind along the rails on automatic... at which point I had to take a day off to keep myself from punching my monitor.

 

I'm not entirely sorry I came back to it, because the next zone turned out to be a satisfying stealth-based adventure through a warzone, with some laudable 3D level design to boot.

But immediately after that: more trolleys! Your FPS turns into a rail shooter for no discernible reason, making you man a turret through an entire map, rat-a-tat-tatting soldiers behind sandbags and other rail cars with their own machine guns and more soldiers and more sandbags and more trolleys, and then finally the level ends... and you move on to the next... and you're

still!

on!

the!

mother.fucking!

TROLLEY!!

 

Okay, no.

I'm done, sorry. A linear series of FPS maps would be one thing. Even if you're interspersing a walking simulator with simplistic action scenes where generic goblins just jump out of the walls to be mowed down, eh, it'd be dumb but at least I'm advancing my own adventure. But I seem to be a little over halfway through the campaign and I've spent a third of my time either unable to move my character or with no choice as to where I walk just because I have to follow the next NPC through the next cutscene (Khaaaaaaaan!) I could be watching Black Mirror right now instead of pretending to play a video game.

 

Maybe I'll return to Metro when I get bored next month. I considered skipping to the sequel, Last Light, which came in the same bundle, but broke out laughing as soon as it booted and turned it off again, seeing as even the title screen puts you on another damn trolley!

Oh, fffuck all the way off!
 

 

 

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* It occurs to me that many nowadays may not have played the original Half-Life, where On a Rail was a chapter named ironically for centering on electric tram tracks, but which did not literally force you to stay on said rail.

 

P.S.: One good thing to come out of this mess: in looking up a walkthrough when stuck on knife-proof cobwebs I landed on Almar's Guides, which proved exactly the type of straightforward, informative, text with minimal illustrations walkthrough archive I only wish we still kept in the era of infuriatingly time-wasting "Let'sPlays"

While it doesn't cover the genres I normally play, lovely work nonetheless.