Metareview: Metro 2033

Agreed. I'd say an 8.5 as well. While it isn't quite as scary and creepy as Dead Space was (my favorite game of 2008), it's still pretty darned good. Two thumbs up from me. Glad I picked it up.

Those scores seem a bit generous... while I'm enjoying the game enough to keep playing, there's a few things worth mentioning for those thinking of buying vs renting.

Firstly, there is no AI to speak of, the enemies are borderline comatose in terms of cognitive response. The only real challenge here is putting enough bullets in an enemy before he puts more in you.

Second, attempting to break light bulbs even with a silenced weapon seems to set the guards on high alert, even if they aren't in the room. It's baffling, but it's happened repeatedly in multiple locations, so it's not an isolated bug.

Third, once enemies are on high alert, they seem to automatically know where you are even if you're crouched in shadows and they have neither flashlights nor night vision. Kind of kills the stealth aspect.

Arguably these are all AI issues, but they bear mentioning. That said, the setting, story, and overall design are very good, most of the voice acting is solid, and you get a sense of the metro communities each time you arrive at a new terminal. I'm becoming more and more interested in the English translation of the book as a result. There's also some fairly good moments of fear that don't revolve around something bursting out of a closet, but they tend to be sandwiched between lots of firefights.

Anyway, contrasting opinion. Your mileage may vary.

AI issues will kill a game. FU, Metro.

I disagree. The AI has been very intelligent with me and I don't know what game you're playing. Also, walk up to the light and turn it off. Shooting out a light makes a shattering sound and yes, does alert them... I've killed people with a silenced weapon without guards noticing as long as they're far away.

Also I have "lost" an AI by running around in the shadows and he still thought I was where he was originally shooting at me at. I didn't really experience any of that.

Is "woosh" a combination of "woot" and "swish"?

Recently the term 'linear' has picked up quite a negative meaning, when there's absolutely nothing wrong with a well-polished, linear experience.

I think it's been set off by the releases of Fallout 3 and Dragon Age in the last year or so, and now everyone seems to think that every game needs to have a wide open world and infinite possibilities.

It's getting a little ridiculous.

Yeah, I think critics just have their "phases" on terms and such. They'll move on to something else...

It's like those generic quotations you see on movies and such...

"Absolutely stunning!"
-Critic no one has ever heard of

"A must see"
-Local newspaper

Some of the team came from GSC Game World, the team that made the STALKER games, which were non-linear FPS games.

And they said it was a good linear game, calm down. Linear is just used to describe the game.

Way to overreact.

FPS games by nature do not need to be linear. Deus Ex for example.

Being non-linear doesn't have to mean it's open ended. If the game lacks incentive for exploration or for going off the beaten path, it's certainly a more linear approach to an already linear game. I haven't picked up Metro 2033 yet, so I can't comment on it specifically, but I'd imagine it being linear has nothing to do with the fact that you always start and end a level in the same way, but everything to do with the fact that you don't deviate from a specific plan or method while playing through the in-between.

FarCry (PC) was a point-A to point-B linear FPS as well, but you could get there pretty much any way possible, so I wouldn't exactly call it a linear game. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory follows the same mould of approaching your level goals in any way imaginable.

B-but Granger, its an FPS! Its suppose to be that waaaaay a;lbhagbnffaaaaart

I'd just like to point out that having choices or an open world to explore doesn't make a game any less linear.

Both Fallout and Dragon Age (Oblivion, Morrowind, Deus Ex, GTA, etc) are all open world linear games.

The reality is that almost all video games are linear. There is a point A and a point B. While you might decide to spend 60 hours getting from point to point instead of 8 hours, it's still a linear experience.

The only non-linear games are MMORPG's without levels. Games where there are no point A's or point B's or point C's.

Essentially any game with a main story line is linear. Even if you do not have to do the story line, it doesn't make the game any less linear, it just means you're not completing the story line. I could walk around the ship in Dead Space for an hour and not advance the story line any but you don't call that game a non-linear experience.

This whole terminology is such rap.

Because linear is usually associated with that atavistic genre known as JRPG's. You know the Dodo of video game genres.

STALKER is an FPS and it's far from linear. Ever heard of a sandbox games? Well an FPS can take place in a sandbox world.

@ESC, you are aware that the word "linear" has been around long before Yahtzee was making terrible game reviews, right?

@ryanpaulmcgowan

There's still a major difference between a corridor shooter and an open world game even if the main story is still linear.

There really isn't anything to see here, folks. Traceur is just being ignorant (not knowing the history of the company making this, thinking all FPS games are linear).

Maybe you should actually play the game before you bitch about the review? Especially a positive one.

I actually tend to prefer the "linear" FPS's, because they allow for much better control over your engagements and allow the developer to set up particularly iconic battles. I can't really remember any particular non-boss battles from Borderlands or Fallout because it was always you just happening to come across some randomly spawned enemy group. I'm much more of a fan of the carefully constructed hallway firefights of Halo, for instance. The exceedingly linear snowy valley level from Halo:CE is one of my favorite sections of FPS game of all time. If something like that was designed in Fallout, it's possible that a lot of players would completely miss it, and that would be a huge shame, unless they shoved it into one of the very linear "dungeons". Ultimately, it seems the even a lot of the most open-world games transition into linearity for their big parts because it's the only way to control progression and story (even MMO's with their instances). This new editorial drive to call things "linear" is ridiculous. I bet they think they're cool when they call movies "linear" too.

it also doesn't help that people rarely distinguish between linearity of plot and linearity of level design. one is almost essential to telling a good story (even the mass effect games have a linear plot), the other is just a product of unimaginative level design.

Metro 2033 is linear, which is OK
FFXIII is linear, which is not OK

Terminology clarified.

Yeah I own a 360 at the moment and Im just waiting for this to drop to like...35 or 40...maybe 30...we'll see.

So it sounds like Metro 2034 will be awesome!

This is me failing at replying

It's really not possible to have a story in a truly non-linear game, at least not a main overarching one. That's what bugs me so much about the prevalence of this term lately. You could have discovered narrative, wherein you are put into a world with no preconception of what's going to happen, and there is no set objective. You could talk to people, and maybe follow through on interesting topics, but there'd have to be no end as we know it. This type of game does not exist yet, and would be impossible to market because it would have no point other than being able to do things. It'd be kind of like GTA if you weren't already a gangster, and could also go into law enforcement, or become a reporter and watch what else is going on, etc. I guess Second Life is the closest approximation, because it has no point. But that's hardly a metric against which we should be judging games.

And what? And what?! Don't leave me hanging, man!

1) ALL FF games are linear as far as their plot is concerned

2) in terms of level design, FFX was just as linear, but there was no major sh*tstorm with that one.

Except I did not have to dump 15 hours into FFX to get to a point where I could do and go wherever I pleased, making the conscious decision to spend additional hours getting from point A to point B.

Stalker comes to mind. Also you could argue that "post-apocalyptic" doesn't mean "post-nuke". So basically games like Left 4 Dead, Darksiders (literally) and even Gears of War could be described as "post-apocalyptic" games.