Random brain farts on tech, games and gunpla: Metro 2033 review

Overall-5/10

Why so harsh on me?

Gameplay-3/10
Win
-story based on a bestselling book
-interesting barter trade
Fail
-poor delivery of the plot
-mutant AI is horrendous
-soldier AI isnt particularly clever either
-english voice over horrible
-buggy stealth mechanics
-confusing loot implementation

Visuals-6/10
Win
-atmospheric environment
-some impressive lighting and particles
-lots of details present in the environment
Fail
-inconsistent quality in environment and model details
-character and mutant animation is downrgiht disgusting
-extremely poor performance
-lack of tweakable visual settings

From the a breakaway group of STALKER developers, their maiden project isnt that different from their previous. Metro 2033 is based on a book of the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky, and been translated to several languages.
World ravaged by nuclear explosion? Anamoly? Mutant? You probably seen them in STALKER and they are back in one form or another in Metro 2033. However, in place of a mere localised nuclear reactor accident, is replaced by an international mutual annihilation between nuclear powers. The plot follows survivors of mother russia that went into hiding in their metro stations, creating a very unique community of their own. Thats where a game built on a book start,instead of the other way round,begins to shine. The minor details of environment like how they rear animals for food, their way of life is recreate in an pseudotown from a metro station is breathtaking. They also have an interesting barter system where you trade rare high grade military bullets made before the apocalypse for gears and weapons. Since most survivors are depending on low quality bullets made in their metro, you could load these rare bullets to dish out incredible high damage in dire times. Thats really interesting mechanic where no other post apocalypse game i've played have implemented. It reinforce the atmosphere of the current civilisation as we know it have been destroyed, including our current currency and economy with it.
The visual engine did a decent job recreating the atmosphere and details. Although the developers claim their engine is very advance and can create impressive details, its not always the case. They implemented some impressive accurate lightings and particle effects, which according to them follows a scientifically accurate algorithm. However, some inconsistent amount of details on some characters and environment cause some levels to feel downward bland. However there are moments where you simply stare in awe, showcasing the engine prowess like the polis metro station. The engine supports up to directx11 with tesselation but the performance is horrendous and no current flagship could run them comfortably at decent resolutions. With the engine supporting an impressive list of advance shader effects, you have no way to off individual settings to crawl back some much need FPS.
Well, thats where the developers have done right stop there. The lame linear story telling is outdated. Theres no character development of any sort, sometimes they are simply invincible, but extremely vulnerable requiring your protection without pior notice. Talking to you in horrible monotonous english just isnt making things anymore interesting nor convincing. Theres an option to use russian voice over which to me, sounds more lively with emotions but lack of complete subtitles render it useless. During level loading, instead of summary of what happen previously, they offer you a quick wrap up of the next chapter you are about to play instead, how thoughtful of the developers! So you get ushered from point to point killing mutants, red army and even nazi with their ridiculously bad AI and animations. So notorious worth mentioning is one of the humanoid looking mutant, where they bunny hopping around like some hacker in CS, randomly hitting anyone when you are in a travelling in group. Soldiers didnt fare any better, with their extremely stiff movements and inability to post any serious threat to you. In faact they look like some jokers from amateur youtube video than a hardened soldiers surviving all the horror of a nuclear winter. They are so bad you hope they could at least have the quality and standard of a 6 year old half life 2 in terms of AI, animation, facial expression and story telling.
Level artists seems to be to engross in adding details in the game with many gas masks and guns lying around but some simply couldnt be picked up. Its fustruating to make the extra effort pushing forward to try get a item up ahead only to realize you could loot it at all! There are some level where you could choose to approach and complete the game in stealth. But the unpredictable enemy behavior towards you makes it almost unplayable and i simply give up and rambo away, collecting more ammo and new guns in the process.
Luckily the game can be completed pretty quickly, saving you from one the most disappointing gaming experience in 2010. This is one of the shining example that trying to implement all the shiny new shaders and pushing more pixels doesnt gurantee you a good game. When the credits start rolling and shows THQ Qualtiy Assurance team names coming up, i m wondering what the hell have they been doing...

Cosy station under a nuclear wasteland