The game's atmospheric setting and attention to detail bring the eerie tunnels and desolate surface to life, making you feel like you're right there in the action.

With a mix of intense shooting, stealth, and resource management, Metro 2033 keeps you on your toes, never knowing what lurks around the next corner.

The gripping story and memorable characters add depth to the experience, making you genuinely care about the fate of this war-torn world.

...the librarian holy shit.

It's not bad, but I'd rather recommend reading the book. While it is certainly useful for the original story to contain a lot of shooting, getting shot at, sneaking and weapons, in the form of an FPS it becomes too much of a focus. It's questionable if a bigger focus on the narrative would have been an improvement though, as the book's descriptions of Artyom's mental state might not be easily conveyed through a game. The result is a jarring contrast between the extended shooting parts and the journey through the stations. Still a good journey.

A very good first entry in a varied trilogy. This one is a little more rough around the edges than the sequels but a lot of what made them enjoyable started here.

The story is interesting due to a lot of factors, the world being one very different to our own. Learning about the different factions that live in the Metro, what they want and who they are. The paranormal phenomena that happens throughout the Metro, the ghost trains and actual ghosts or the ethereal entities. The main character who has never set foot outside of his home station who sets out to try and save it. All of this mixed together makes for a nicely crafted narrative.

Gameplay is a little rough but the gunfights are some of the best I've seen in a video game. Cover and tactics are important to any firefight and the sense of accomplishment afterwards is well earned. You also have to keep an eye on your inventory, especially when venturing across the surface. Otherwise you may need to reload a save or start again.

One critique I do have of this game and it's sequels is it's ending. The alternate ending can be quite hard to get unless you are quite lucky in the choices you make or if you have a guide. That said you can never be certain until the end of you've done enough to get that alternate ending.

Post-apocalyptic games seem to be very popular these days and are ever more changing the FPS genre as a whole. Metro 2033 may not change it, but it does add incredible atmosphere and a dark interesting story that will keep you playing through this 12 hours adventure to the end. You play as a man named Artyom who lives in the Moscow metro system after a nuclear war destroyed everything in existence. Everyone is on the run and hiding, from strange creatures, and no one can go to the surface due to flying “demons”. You follow Artyom as he travels under, and above, ground to find a hidden nuclear missile silo to destroy the Dark One’s lair. While the story is enticing you never really find out who the Dark Ones are, or what they’re even doing to the people of Russia. Not to mention the supremely disappointing ending that hardly satisfies.

The game has some very interesting elements that make you really feel like you’re fighting for your survival and scrounging around to make ends meet. The guns in the game are very original since they are handmade (especially the first guns you get) and they feel cheap and unreliable like any post-apocalyptic gun would be. As you make your way further into the game you can find pre-war guns that do more damage including guns that have silencers etc. There are sniper rifles, shotguns, and pistols in the game as well as throwing knives, grenades, night vision goggles. You get a battery charger at the beginning of the game that makes you recharge your battery for your goggles and flashlight. It doesn’t feel like a nuisance since this is a post-apocalyptic game and this is something you’d expect.


The guns feel very nice to shoot, but you have two different types of ammo. Pre-war bullets are used as currency in the game, but if you’re running low on “dirty ammo” you can use your money as bullets to do more damage. This makes you search dead bodies for ammo, guns, gas masks, filter, health etc. I never really had to use the precious pre-war ammo until the very end of the game. You will probably only hit maybe 5 stores through the whole game to buy items so you don’t have to preserve it as much as you think. However, ammo in a lot of places is scarce and it really makes you take your shots.

While running and gunning sound fun that’s not all you do. There are stealth levels, but these are extremely broken and almost ruin the game (thus the lower score). Sneaking through enemy encampments isn’t as easy as you think. Sure you can memorize a patrol route, find out where all the enemies are located, use throwing knives to silently kill, use silenced weapons etc., but it just doesn’t work right. The levels are laid out wrong for this type of thing, and you have to be so precise and accurate with everything, and this includes staying in the shadows. You have a meter on your right-hand watch that tells you how well you’re hidden, but regardless if you’re in the yellow or not everyone will see you. You MUST be in the green or nothing matters. You can put out lights, shoot them out, but enemies will come charging even if you do this. I found this extremely frustrating and had no choice but to shoot my way out on certain levels.


Using your compass makes finding your way pretty easy, but you have to actually switch to this and sometimes hold your lighter up to it to see it. This makes things hard when you’re running from a creature, trying to maneuver your way through some maze, and switch back to a weapon to shoot. Shooting humans may be easy, but the creatures require so much ammo to take down it makes saving rounds a pain. No matter how powerful of a weapon you have sometimes it’ll take three clips or more to take a creature down, and when you have like 5 or 6 coming at you this makes thing extremely difficult. Some areas require you to use a gas mask to breathe (especially above ground) and you have a timer on your watch that lets you know when to replace your filter. I still could not figure out when to do this right even at the end of the game. Some things just aren’t clear in this game. If you take too much damage your gas mask will take damage as well and eventually break and you’ll have to find a new one. This is no good when there aren’t any around, and sometimes you won’t see one for 2-3 levels. Regardless of these issues, the game is still fun and exciting to play.

The best part about the game, however, is the atmosphere. Boy is this game scary! Turn off all the lights and you’re in for one scary treat! Just the way the game is designed with all the scary lighting, creature design, and the feeling of being alone. A lot of the times you are all alone and it really makes you cautious and thinks before you make any moves or enter any rooms. The sound design is superb, and the graphics look amazing. This is by far the best part of the game along with originality of the weapons. The main character is very generic as well as some other characters, but there are a select few that you will get attached to. Having a Russian language track option makes the game more authentic, but the English voice acting is just as superb.


All in all Metro 2033 is an excellent game for FPS/survival horror fans, but don’t come into this game thinking it’s revolutionary per se Fallout 3. There are even some choice elements thrown in here such as helping a kid, but they are only a few and I wish they would have dwelled on this more. You should really only pick this up if you are into atmosphere and story otherwise stay away.

NEW COPY: For a certain amount of time copies will include a code for the automatic shotgun that you can pick up midway through the game. This shotgun is awesome and is faster than the double barrel, and will soon become your best friend.

A game that shows lots of promise. Has an incredible atmosphere, decent gunplay, cool survival/ammo management mechanics, great visuals. It has three problems IMO: It is way too linear, It lacks diversity, and third and the biggest issue: It's just "too cinematic". Lots of in-game pauses for dialog, the game won't let you do things and completely takes the player's freedom. Sometimes I'm having so much fun with this and getting invested in the atmosphere but whoops another cutscene time. Overall its a fine game that has a great basis, could've been perfected on future releases