They mostly come out at night, mostly - Metro 2033 (PC)

 In a world where the only light is artificial, “day” and “night” become formalized concepts based around sleep. Children might grow and never once see the sky, living a lifetime in a concrete fortress surrounded by decaying vents, tunnels and hallways. Survival becomes the only task at hand as disease, vermin and external threats are ever present. Hope is the only thing more valuable than fire and ammunition.

This is the world of Metro 2033.

Based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, the story is a non-sensical meandering through a fully realized post apocalyptic world built out of crumbling subway lines. The surface is a poisoned wasteland where the air is deadly but the roaming population of mutated animals is worse. Those mutants crawl throughout the darkness below as well.

In order to fully immerse myself in this truly foreign world, I played the game with Russian voices but English subtitles. The ambient soundscape of every station became a chorus of Russian speech, song, and laughter, as the population huddled around fires.








The only currency in the game is military grade ammunition, a scarce but lootable commodity. Light is provided by hand-pumped generators, and travel through fumes and topside necessitates a gasmask and plenty of filters, neither of which are readily available.

Ostensibly a shooter, Metro 2033 is also a surprisingly deep RPG, where resources and loadout can literally determine life and death. An unexpectedly long foray above ground left me literally gasping for air as I reached a checkpoint in one of the most unrelentingly grueling but thrilling pieces of gameplay I have ever experienced.










It is also a stunningly beautiful game, where light is used wonderfully, both in its terrifying absence below ground, and as it blasts through ruined buildings above.








Metro 2033 is a bleak and occasionally overwhelming piece of fiction, leading the player through objectives that are never very clear. There is no endgame, no bigger picture.

You are a small piece of the machine with a single purpose: survive.