Metro 2033 Redux is a remastered version of the 2010 original. Metro 2033 Redux is a post-apocalyptic survival horror first person shooter developed by 4a games and published by Deep Silver. Originally Metro 2033 was published by THQ but soon after Deep Silver acquired the IP (Intellectual Property) rights.
The Redux version is available for Next Gen consoles and PC.
This story begins with Artyom, A Russian man whose mother gave him up as a child in the hope of saving him from the nuclear war destined for Moscow, during the games fictional World War III nuclear fire event which destroyed the world as we know it today.
Before the missiles struck Artyom and several other Moscow citizens were able to enter the underground Metro System to avoid being brutally killed by the incoming strike. This section of the story is later explained in the games sequel.
At the start of the game you are called out of your living quarters in VDNKh, otherwise known as Exhibition Station, by your stepfather Alex (or in the books he is known as Sukhoi) who announces that Hunter, a trusted Ranger, is returning from the surface of the Metro and may have news from other stations. It’s unclear as to what news they are talking about.
Soon after hearing from Hunter at the infirmary your station is attacked by a horde of Nosalis’. When they are all dead a Ranger runs in to announce that the Dark Ones have destroyed the outer guard post. This is when Hunter gives you your first mission, “If I do not return by morning get to Polis Station and find a man named Miller”. To ensure authentication Hunter gives you his Ranger dogtags.
Joining you on your journey is a man named Miller, he is a member of the Rangers faction (a group of soldiers) and during the opening scene he is essentially a dialogue version of onscreen tutorials. Artyom’s underlying goal in Metro 2033 Redux is to notify any other faction within the Metro tunnels as to the new threat identified as the Dark Ones and eliminate them. Not much is known about the Dark Ones; like why they need to be eliminated or why they are deemed as dangerous even though you never face them at all in the game.
The Dark Ones are portrayed as being hostile but nothing is said about the precautions the soldiers who encounter them went through to understand if they are indeed hostile enemies – I’ll explain more on that in a moment.
Along the way you will face creatures such as Watchers (watchmen resemble a mutated dog-like creature); Demons (a large flying beast that sometimes doesn’t want to die) and Nosalis’ (a mole‑like creature with a funny looking snout).
The other notable creature is the Librarian. These things you can either deal with by standing your ground in a staring contest or waste most of your ammo trying to kill it… essentially they are fierce and will hurt you horribly so your best line of defence is to simply run away and don’t look back.
Although your main objective is to destroy the Dark Ones, the only time they are ever referred to is if a ranger mentions something about the mission or when you are having visions of the Dark Ones. This annoyed me seeing as they seemed to be a huge part of the plot yet you don’t find out why they are bad creatures or even face one physically within the game. So I would have liked a bit more knowledge served around the Dark Ones which would have filled the gaps, however the story was still enjoyable…. Dark but enjoyable.
The horror elements within this game aren’t really horror related other than running from mutants and screech noises so I’m not sure why 4a slapped that tag on the game.
4a chose to add two new gamemodes to the Redux version of Metro 2033. Spartan and Survival. Survival offers less ammo and filters with a more challenging stealth and combat experience which is more towards the original Metro 2033 playstyle. Whereas Spartan provides a more forgiving combat and stealth experience with more filters and ammo, more like Metro: Last Light.
Whichever play style you choose, the stealth sections can still be played however you want them to, ie you can go guns blazing if you have enough ammo, go around knifing everyone or simply move stealthily past everyone. It’s entirely up to you.
Metro 2033 Redux provided a sense of survival as you are required to constantly monitor your gas mask filter time and scrounge around for any ammo and med packs you can possibly find. This helped the game provide the player with some incentive to actually look around for supplies because if you don’t… you will not survive the Metro especially on harder difficulties.
Artyom can only hold one revolver or pistol, one automatic weapon and one heavy weapon at a time, if you are playing on Ranger Hardcore you will not have the luxury of a third weapon. You can also carry a heap of throwing knifes and explosives, which include molotovs, a normal grenade type and a sticky grenade.
Also every gun in the game can be customised from interchangeable sights, silencers, stocks and bayonets. However some guns do not support all of these attachments which is a slight bummer.
The gas mask needs to be used when around radioactive gas or material, which on one hand is a neat thing to add to provide a sense of… you will die otherwise but I noticed you also needed to use it in colder climate areas as well. Yet if your filter was nearly depleted, running towards a fire doesn’t slow the timer or stop it at all… which didn’t make a whole lot of sense as going around a flame should help warm you up and warm the air around it which shouldn’t hurt you if you breathed in. Understandably different if the air was radioactive.
A few sections in the Redux version also got some alterations, such as the Ghosts mission – the little boy shadow + Nosalis got blocked by spider webs and forced the player to use the lighter in order to see which causes a pointless jump scare.
Another notable change was the alley – to library missions getting combined into one yet cutting short of the Depository mission… this was a little awkward as the end of the alley mission in redux ends right where you face the librarian which looks like you should be able to continue from there.
So combining these missions was a nice touch and made them flow a little better but to cut it short of the depository mission was a little weird.
The main menu in the game was also replaced with a Metro: Last Light styled menu which removed a few of the old options such as the alternate Antialiasing solution (AAA or Analytical Antialiasing and MSAA) Direct X rendering and Direct X 11 specific options.
At this point it is unclear as to why they opted to do this as It was a nice thing in the original game to be able to change the games API (direct X version) on the fly however you were still required to restart the game.
With that being said though you are able to change the games API with the games ini file yet I didn’t end up testing it, so it may work.. 🙂
4a Games has also decided not to allow the player to see the inventory (by holding tab) on Ranger Hardcore mode… AGAIN… a design choice that I still cannot comprehend.
However, for some reason if you hold M to bring up the map device you can then see your inventory, which still doesn’t make any sense to me and is a little weird. This was also the case in Metro 2033 but I didn’t find that out until I beat the game.
So maybe a little more explanations on how some of the mechanics work would have helped or make it simple by allowing players TO HOLD TAB ON RANGER HC TO GET THE INVENTORY… angry rant over.
If you are playing the game on anything but Ranger Hardcore Difficulty you will have a decent supply of ammo and med packs. However on Ranger Hardcore even on the Spartan game mode you still get next to nothing.
Seeing as this is supposed to be a remastered version of Metro 2033, what have they added to make it worthy of the name? Well for starters the Redux version was redeveloped on the 4a Engine this time around which allowed the game to actually work with Direct X 11 features enabled so kudos to 4a on that.
However, performance with dx11 features like tessellation disabled didn’t add any huge performance gain like it did for the original so that saddened me a little inside.
There were also some character re-skins and revamped textures but that’s not what stuck out to me… what did however is the fact they revamped lighting and added little details to snow and particles which for snowy environments improves the overall quality dramatically.
The game’s overall colour palate looked to have changed by adding more colour to the game, rather than being greys, browns and whites which made the game look a little more vibrant while still maintaining the look of a post-apocalyptic environment, which was nice.
With the plus factors out of the way, there were some weird texture bugs once again in this remastered version as well.
These included extremely weird shadow effects being cast by lighting coming towards the player, texture flickering on the ground and walls as well as random objects disappearing at certain viewing angles.
NPC’s walking through objects like car tyres and other smaller objects; enemy creatures being able to run through most objects and even run through ground textures were probably the weirdest bugs experienced while playing this game.
Leaving these bugs in the final version makes 4a look a little slack in terms of QA (quality assurance). If I was on that team these would have been the first thing I’d annoy the designer about.
The sound in Metro 2033 has always provided a sense of YOU WILL DIE IF YOU DON’T PAY ATTENTION… and as expected Metro 2033 Redux provides the same feelings.
Now what does that even mean, well you can hear every footstep, every bullet even the subtle screeching noises makes you feel worried about your own survival… let’s face it Metro is a gloriously harsh place.
The sound not only makes the environments feel realistic but it also helps the games horror elements that little bit more frightening… there’s nothing like having a watcher sneak attack you out of nowhere to get the blood pumping though.
Metro 2033 Redux did have some overall performance improves from the original which was nice to see however with that being said I still can’t run this game on very high which is somewhat disappointing.
As well as having some severe enemy and NPC clipping issues the game was still fun to play, these issues in most cases didn’t take anything away from the experience if you are willing to stress through them but they should still be fixed.
Overall Metro 2033 Redux is an outstanding game especially if you want to look into the back story a little as I find the environment/ post-apocalyptic worlds to have some of the more entertaining storylines. However Metro 2033’s initial story isn’t all that but the characters make up for that.
This version of Metro 2033 is a welcomed addition to my game collection.