Metro 2033. Best SP FPS in a long time - better than BioShock

[Wolfram23]

Well I just started playing Metro 2033 again on PC. I already beat it once and played maybe halfway through again sometime last year when it came out, but decided to restart on Ranger Hardcore mode this time.

This game is fantastic. I really think it took a lot of queues from Half Life in it's delivery. Not just the silent protagonist, but right from the start people at your metro station are greeting you (similar to Gordon showing up at work) and also they really set the atmosphere well.

While the game is linear it it's progression, throughout there are many interesting areas to investigate. But perhaps most importantly is that the game isn't a straight up run-and-gun. Yes you can do that, but this playthrough I'm being especially careful. In the section that Bourbon gets captured, I didn't raise a single alarm as I made it all the way through the bandit camp (after several tries mind you =P). Throwing knives and sneaking got me through. Then making it through the battle between the Communists and the Nazis, I went pretty much killed everyone - although you can sneak through that part too! There's also sections of exploration more than fighting, and lots of story and atmosphere sections like when you're in most metro stations, and one part in particular where you follow Khan through a deserted tunnel and see all the ghosts.

I also quite like the weapons. Limited but not too limited. It's great fun buying or finding new weapons, whether it's a long barreled pistol right up to the silenced and scoped pistol with a stock on it, to different rifles to an electric ball bearing gun that can shock enemies in melee. Not to mention that your main resource is bullets - something you might need to put into your gun rather than into the hands of a merchant. I thought that was brilliant.

As much as I like BioShock, I think that Metro is a better, more fun, and more interesting game. Well - BioShock 2 had fun combat I'll admit, but I felt that game was also more arcade run and gun style - enter room, kill groups of baddies, explore, repeat. Yes it's interesting but it didn't have as much atmosphere as the first game, and the first game I felt lacked in the combat department. Metro 2033, to me, is a great combination of everything.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Does it have good Mod support? Might try it out some time.

Also, can you interact with people, go wherever you want.etc. More in line with STALKER than Bioshock which was linear (and by that I mean a long, but beautiful Corridor)? Then I might bump it up a bit higher on my "list".

 

[kane.malakos]

I thought it was a decent game, but the message felt a little heavy-handed. I also thought the art direction was a little bland. Overall, good, but not quite as good as Bioshock or Half-Life 2.

 

[Wicky_42]

Yeah, I really enjoyed the game and have been meaning to grace it with a second playthrough sometime. Really liked the mindfuckery of the ending too

 

[GiantRaven]

Personally, I found it looked like a shallower version of Stalker so I never gave it a try. Sounds like it might be worth a try though.

 

[pliusmannn]

Too bad my pc can't handle it :S i have hardware capable of running Crysis 1 and 2 at highest settings at high resolution, running all AC series at highest settings maximum resolution smoothly, but i have major problem with Metro 2033, at lowest possible settings i am around 48fps :S weird

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I've been thinking about buying this game forever and I still haven't. Every time I walk into gamestop I check to see how much it is and it hasn't budged from $30. If it goes any lower I'll grab it.

 

[Wolfram23]

Have to disagree, sorry.

It is a decent FPS, one which surprised me with how much I enjoyed it, but what I took away from the game was "This is a franchise which can potentially get very, very good" but As it stands now It is just slightly better than average (mostly because of the interesting story).

The thing which dragged me back from loving it was, mostly, the gunplay. It didn't feel quite right, like I was firing little bits of potato rather than bullets. The monster Animations weren't great and the stealth elements were broken...It needs improvement, polish.

I have high hopes for 2034

Really? The gunplay? I... don't understand what you mean by bits of potato... ???

Animations... well if you say so but I didn't see anything wrong with them. A horde of those beasts charging at me down a narrow tunnel, jumping onto the walls etc was pretty damn cool!

And as for stealth I thought it was probably one of the best done stealth elements I can remember lately. Stick to the shadows, don't make noize (stepping on glass is bad) and turn off laterns - or just shoot out lights (ideally with a silenced gun or even throwing knives). Like I said in the OP, I'm trying to be very stealthy this time and while I do fail sometimes it's always for a reason, I would never say the stealth is broken.

 

[wizard_joe88]

Yeah, Metro 2033 is a pretty awesome game, the whole world it takes places in feels pretty off the walls compared to your standard post-apocalyptic scenario, I mean, seriously, "Russians who survived the nuclear holocaust hide in the abandoned subways of moscow, where ravenous beast will attack at any time, and did we mention that there are nazi and communist too?" Who ever wrote the original novel is awesome, I just wish that I could get my hands on a copy of the novel. The enemies were great too, the humans could put up a fair fight against you, and I will always hate the mutants that zerg-rush you, those things were so annoying.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Being better than BioShock isn't saying much.

But yeah, I liked Metro 2033 alot myself. Never finished it though, was getting annoyed that there was no quick save, and had to start large sections over from scratch.

Also, I felt that there was a point in the shooter mechanics being clunky, it fit with the setting that the guns handled like ass.

 

[Pistachio101]

I agree that it had great atmosphere but I found that the actual shooting mechanics are what it lacked in; which for a FPS is kind of essential. The good thing is that I would imagine that it shouldn't be too hard to get it feeling better for the sequel.

Also, when I played it I did wonder if the shooting wasn't great because that way you'd be more likely to try out some of the stealth mechanics. Then again, I didn't enjoy stealthing much either. XD

 

[Meggiepants]

I don't know that you can really compare the two quite like this. Metro is more of a traditional survival shooter whereas Bioshock has a little more of that RPG element with the upgrading of abilities and such. Also, in Bioshock, you don't really get that same sense of danger. I certainly wouldn't call Bioshock survival horror, not with vita chambers everywhere. Metro with it's limited ammo and mask filters does have more of that survival element going for it.

As to the point that Metro is better than Bioshock, I would disagree there as well. Metro is really good, I loved it. But the details of the world were far less fleshed out than the details of Bioshock, and really, Bioshock shines because of those little details. Metro 2034 might be better on that front, since it can build on top of 2033. But it might also fail to capture the same wonder as the first, the same way Bioshock 2 did.

I think Bioshock is going the right direction to take things out of Rapture with Infinite rather than retreading the old city again.

 

[Avaloner]

I wouldn't say that Metro is better than Bioshock.

Metro sure has its own right as an average game and it is alright in its own little niche of "survival" shooters, but its by far worse in the game play itself and it does not triumph over raptures awesome and surreal setting.

The fact that annoyed me the most is the forced stealth, in this one mission where you get into the frontlines between the reds and the Nazis is just plain broken, I want to kill those two guards down under the guy speaking and freaking ~singing~ and yet the moment I kill one of those guys everyone storms towards me, no matter if someone has seen it.

So I had to go to the nazis...kill everyone there and actually go back and snipe of every red bastard as I made my way from the nazis to the red ones, the payoff in munition was not worth it.

Furthermore I'm annoyed by this load of scripts you can't stop, where some monster grabs npc x and you never know if you actually should waste your ammunition to kill the monster, or if that is just another scripted event, where you will just waste your shells, not to forget that even shotgun blasts can be wasted as monsters just seem to be made out of bulletabsorbing skin.

So the npc's are forgettable, as they die of anyway and the game does actually do too less to pay homage to the source material, I liked the book alot more than the game.

 

[Wolfram23]

I don't know that you can really compare the two quite like this. Metro is more of a traditional survival shooter whereas Bioshock has a little more of that RPG element with the upgrading of abilities and such. Also, in Bioshock, you don't really get that same sense of danger. I certainly wouldn't call Bioshock survival horror, not with vita chambers everywhere. Metro with it's limited ammo and mask filters does have more of that survival element going for it.

As to the point that Metro is better than Bioshock, I would disagree there as well. Metro is really good, I loved it. But the details of the world were far less fleshed out than the details of Bioshock, and really, Bioshock shines because of those little details. Metro 2034 might be better on that front, since it can build on top of 2033. But it might also fail to capture the same wonder as the first, the same way Bioshock 2 did.

I think Bioshock is going the right direction to take things out of Rapture with Infinite rather than retreading the old city again.

Well I wasn't trying to compare genres, but meerly that BioShock tends to be upheld as this epitome of the single player FPS in recent times, but I think Metro is better. I think you're wrong about the details... I mean for the most part in BioShock you just had the tapes. Yeah they did give you plenty of insight into the past, but did you ever try taking your time and listening to the conversations in Metro 2033 between NPCs? It's brilliant!

 

[Wolfram23]

I wouldn't say that Metro is better than Bioshock.

Metro sure has its own right as an average game and it is alright in its own little niche of "survival" shooters, but its by far worse in the game play itself and it does not triumph over raptures awesome and surreal setting.

The fact that annoyed me the most is the forced stealth, in this one mission where you get into the frontlines between the reds and the Nazis is just plain broken, I want to kill those two guards down under the guy speaking and freaking ~singing~ and yet the moment I kill one of those guys everyone storms towards me, no matter if someone has seen it.

So I had to go to the nazis...kill everyone there and actually go back and snipe of every red bastard as I made my way from the nazis to the red ones, the payoff in munition was not worth it.

Furthermore I'm annoyed by this load of scripts you can't stop, where some monster grabs npc x and you never know if you actually should waste your ammunition to kill the monster, or if that is just another scripted event, where you will just waste your shells, not to forget that even shotgun blasts can be wasted as monsters just seem to be made out of bulletabsorbing skin.

So the npc's are forgettable, as they die of anyway and the game does actually do too less to pay homage to the source material, I liked the book alot more than the game.

You don't have to stealth if you don't want to... for that frontlines mission to stealth it you have to carefully jump down to the very depths of the map. You can't stealth across the battlefield. Also I had no problems wiping out everything with a gun I bought right before that part. A silenced and scoped VSV rifle.

I do somewhat agree with the scripted monster events but that's pretty rare, like near the beginning on the rail cart but I can't think of another example. And really, you're wasting maybe a couple shots it's not a big deal if you explore and loot everything.

I don't doubt the book is a lot better though, I'd like to read it sometime.

 

[Kyle Roberts]

I liked the game alot although there wasn't much replayabilty i hope at 2034 has Co-op survival since that would be awesome!