Introduction

Meet Artyom. Born just before the war that virtually annihilated the planet, he grew up knowing nothing beyond his metro station home except what could be seen on a handful of postcards. The subway system beneath Moscow was one of the largest and busiest in the world, but now it is the only refuge for the scant survivors in the region. Mutated creatures prowl the irradiated surface, but it is not entirely uncommon for them to venture into the bowels of the city. A new breed of sentient beings called Homo Novus or, more commonly, Dark Ones, have been stirring the monsters into a frenzy. Little is known of these creatures, except that encounters with them have resulted in the melting of men’s minds..

Based on the novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 is the first game from developer 4A Games. About a year before the release of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, some GSC Game World employees left to form this new studio.

Notably among them were two programmers that helped produce the X-Ray game engine, who cited its weaknesses as reason for going off and doing their own thing and denied accusations that the engine used in this game is based on the work they did for GSC. Regardless of whether or not that is true, near-endless comparisons are made between the two games, and for good reason. While they are set in different areas of Russia, both involve post-apocalyptic survival themes with emphasis on scavenging and FPS combat.



When I first found out about this game, I thought “STALKER meets Fallout 3.” However, unlike the latter, where you spend most of your time exploring the outside world, Metro 2033 takes place mostly in the ruined tunnels underneath Moscow that inspired the name. Survivors have made their homes in defensible stations throughout the subway system, fearing bandit attacks, military raids, and other… incursions. The game has been described as a “love letter to PC gamers,” but what does that mean to you? Keep reading and find out!