When I read a review of somebody who just played a game like Metro 2033 and can STILL give the game 8/10 because of atmosphere and graphics alone, he or she has to be really messed up in the head. Its like the first Just Cause; people seem to like to defend it because it gives them pretty graphics and an excuse to show off that new video-card they just bought.
When I play a game, I want a game that presents a good sense of immersion, and / or gameplay that will keep me interested in playing. To start off, Metro 2033 is just like any other nuts and bolts shooter and it's extremely linear. Even classic Doom wasn't as linear as this. The level of linearity of this game can be described as walking down a narrow corridor in one straight path, while sometimes the path gets pillaged by monsters that take way too many bullets to kill. This experience is also said to be scary at some point, but the only scary thing I noticed was the horrible voice-acting. Seriously, Americans doing Russian accents should be banned from videogames already.
So the game is already nothing special, as I established, but the developers still managed to screw things over in the technical department. Glitches are a natural occurrence in Metro 2033, and the first time the game tells you to replace your oxygen filter for your gasmask, you just know that this feature will come around and bite you in the ass later in the game. One of the ways it will do this, is by autosaving the game after you used up your last filter. So when you load your checkpoint, you will have exactly three seconds to run around and poke at the dirt before collapsing to the ground and try again.
"Morkulv, you noob!" I hear you say while you pound your head angrily on your keyboard. "There's nothing wrong with a good challenge!", to which I would reply: indeed there isn't. But there's a key difference between difficulty, and taking a player out of the experience. The gasmask feature wouldn't aggravate me so much if it wasn't such a hassle. Now, instead of immersing me, the player, it just draws me away from the game, which can never be a good thing for a video game. Which brings me to another key aspect of Metro 2033 that was royally screwed over.
Leveldesign. Let us keep in mind here, we are dealing with a linear shooter, so the game should be clear as to where the player should go. Especially in the outside areas of the game, the level is just a mess of snow, garbage, and nukage and it's never clear where the developer wants you to go. This shouldn't be this hard to figure out. Either make a straight path, or give me the option to roam around, but don't make it a guessing game. To make matters worse, some of the levels (like the mentioned outside areas) contain tripwires that insta kill you and are conveniently placed under water where you can't see them.
And now for the final nail in the Metro 2033 coffin: Quick Time Events! Yes, this game has QTE's. I don't think I need to go into detail why a game shouldn't have QTE's.
While I love singleplayer games, this doesn't mean that garbage like Metro 2033 gets away with it. On top of the very mediocre gameplay, the game contains many technical flaws that only make it harder for you to persevere playing. If you're really a hardcore fan of this 'post-apocalyptic FPS' type of games, go play STALKER again and leave this in the budget bin where it belongs.
