by Jonah Besenty | staff writer
In the post apocalyptic fictional universe of Metro, you are placed in the former city of Moscow, which on the surface looks nothing like it used to, blanketed with deadly radiation. Once harmless small animals became terrifying monsters, and once glorious buildings and monuments, now unrecognizable. You play as man named Artyom, who was born right before a nuclear armageddon that destroyed not only his home, but everyone else’s. Very few survived the initial attack and those who did were most likely killed off by the ensuing nuclear fallout, however there were many survivors, who survived by fleeing into the great moscow metro. These survivors established factions, colonies, cities, in what now is the deepest metro system in the world. The games are actually based off of a novel of the same name by the Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. As time passes, these factions started to dislike each other to the point of a civil war. Though the world was already devastated by a massive destructive war, human ignorance and hatred for one another still persisted.
The game was released on February 15 and is a sequel to the previous two games, Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light. It was developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver and Koch Media. It can be purchased on Epic Games Launcher, Playstation Store, Microsoft store, or retail for $59.99.
There are many new additions that haven’t been seen before in the series. One notable new mechanic is the field backpack, now players can create ammunition for certain weapons, make filters for the gas mask, create medkits, maintain or configure their weapons, and a plethora of other items. In order to use the backpack, you need to gather resources which can be found anywhere in the game. Resources range from glowing mushrooms to electrical equipment.
The game also now has somewhat of a open world system. The Volga River is the second stage you play in, characterized by frozen bogs, rivers, cultists, and railway terminals. The third stage takes place in a large part of the Caspian Desert. Here a few more mechanics are introduced, the most notable one being driveable vehicles. There are two more stages that players are introduced to. The Taiga is the fourth one you are introduced to the deadly crossbow, pirates, and crazy cultists who worship the forest. The last and final stage is the city of Novosibirsk which is the deadliest and most dangerous out of all stages. The radiation here is very extreme and there are tons of deadly horrifying creatures. These Stages actually hide a mechanic that was only mentioned outside of the game. This mechanic is seasons, The Volga stage takes place in the beginning of spring, The Caspian Desert stage takes place in the summer, The Taiga stage takes place in Autumn, and Novosibirsk takes place in the Winter.
In my honest opinion this is definitely one of the best games of 2019 so far. It features a very well driven story, many features that weren’t in previous games, the introduction of the sub-open world system. The new characters have very descriptive and interesting backstories. The game looks beautiful because it utilizes very new graphical technology that was introduced with the new Nvidia RTX graphics card, and there are barely any bugs or glitches. This hopefully wins the 2019 game of the year award, and continues to be well received by critics and players alike.
