Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is a single-player first-person adventure post-apocalyptic shooter. The Metro universe tells the story of the inhabitants of Moscow, a city destroyed by a nuclear strike in 2013. The only salvation was the metro, which was originally designed as a bomb shelter.

Humanity ekes out a miserable existence in stations controlled by various factions (from Nazis to communists). Some stations are overrun by monsters, making it dangerous to travel alone. However, the greatest danger is the surface, where prolonged exposure is tantamount to death.

The Metro universe unfolds in an alternate reality and begins in 2013 after a global nuclear conflict, when Russia, China, and North Korea exchanged missile strikes with NATO countries. Climate changes turned the northern hemisphere into an icy wasteland, and rising water levels destroyed all coastal infrastructure. States were wiped off the face of the Earth, and the world is ruled by anarchy.

In Moscow, where the events of Metro 2033 take place, people took refuge underground, turning metro stations and bunkers into their homes. But instead of uniting, the sparse population divided along ideological, religious, or selfish lines, with some just trying to survive. Often, one has to fight their way through.

The metro network is abandoned and crumbling, physically isolating stations, forcing people to venture to the surface, where survival conditions are the harshest. One has to navigate between ruined buildings, avoid patrols of local paramilitary gangs, various mutants, dangerous radiation levels, and induced psi-radiation. Due to the shortage of filters, ammunition, and proper weapons, lone individuals quickly retreat back to the metro.

Metro 2033 is practically a corridor shooter, with small but meticulously designed game locations — life of some sort continues at the stations, people argue, communicate, and trade despite the meager living conditions and their dire situation. Sometimes, locations feature branches leading to interesting events, supplies, diaries, or secret passages.

All locations are made dark and ominous, perfectly conveying the atmosphere of post-apocalypse, universal desolation, and global catastrophe. Moving between stations, the character may hear strange noises, see inexplicable flashes, and experience other visual glitches.

The main character of Metro 2033 is a young man named Artyom, who grew up after the nuclear war at the VDNKh station and was raised by his stepfather. Like everyone, he is attached to his home station, helps its residents, works at the factory, learns to shoot, and defends his home, which is on the border of the "inhabited zone."

For several years, this metro line has been restless — the outer stations are dying out under the attacks of brutal mutants called the Dark Ones, who come from the surface and torment people with telepathic hallucinations. At the start of the game, the turn has come to VDNKh — several of its residents have already died after patrols due to the psi-impact of the Dark Ones.

A friend of his stepfather asks Artyom to report the appearance of the Dark Ones to Polis — the largest and most powerful metro station, friendly to VDNKh and other common stations — and ask them for help in destroying the Dark Ones. However, VDNKh is too far from the central metro stations, so Artyom has to go through a very difficult path full of various dangers.

The narrative of Metro 2033 is linear, like the game itself, and focuses on the story of one man striving to save his station at any cost. The main plot details are narrated by Artyom himself, while others can be learned during cutscenes and dialogues by eavesdropping on local conversations. Often, the characters just talk among themselves without distracting the player from the gameplay.

A feature of the plot is the numerous secondary characters in the role of companions — they join Artyom for literally 2-3 missions, after which they achieve their goals, die, or disappear. Constant interaction creates a feeling of a living and open narrative.

Being a standard corridor shooter, Metro 2033 offers to move forward and solve most problems with the power of your weapon, but you can try to play the game in stealth.

The plot is closely intertwined with the gameplay, as depending on the play style, the player will have one of two endings — the main or the alternative. By committing bad deeds and hoarding resources, the player will get the bad ending, while good deeds, help, resource support, and minimal kills will lead to the alternative ending.

In the original, the stealth mode had issues, so most players chose the shooter mechanics. This was also facilitated by the fact that signal traps were placed everywhere, raising the station on alert and provoking an attack by people (mutants), where the only chance to survive and move on was to shoot everyone from a machine gun while hiding behind cover.

The player has a small arsenal at their disposal, consisting of commonly found homemade weapons and rare industrial ones left over from the nuclear war era. There are also grenades and throwing knives. The metro population does not experiment much with weapons due to the shortage of ammunition.

People have learned to produce ammunition by hand, but they have low lethality. Meanwhile, industrial 5.45 cartridges serve as the local currency — they can be exchanged for anything... or used against particularly dangerous enemies.

In Metro 2033, there is a diverse bestiary created based on the creatures imagined in the novel. Since during the conflict, the sides used not only nuclear but also chemical and bacteriological weapons, under this influence, animals changed and merged into terrifying organisms — hybrids of rats, dogs and cats, pigs and moles.

All mutants have their own habitat — some are found only in the metro, others prefer to live on the surface and rarely appear underground, and others, like "Librarians" and "Demons," simply cannot descend underground due to their size.

Mutants have been given a certain behavioral logic. The simplest, "Kikimoras," always attack in a pack and scatter when they lose their numerical advantage, being nimble and fast. "Orlojuks" — bipedal insects with a bird's skeleton and an eagle's face, covered with thick chitin armor — hunt alone and attack in the dark, always going straight ahead.

The flying "Demon" stalks its prey and dives at it from above, lifting it into the air and dropping it. Due to their size and ability to fly, they are the most dangerous opponents.