u/JaceFlores

Seven Ethiopian opposition and armed groups have formally announced the formation of a coalition they called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Coalition for Survival, declaring a joint objective of removing the Prosperity Party-led government and establishing an inclusive transitional government.

The announcement was made on Sunday, 20 September, in a statement read live on Tigrai TV by Zemene Kassie, chairman of the Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM).

The coalition comprises the Amhara Fano National Movement, Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), Afar National Unity Revolutionary Front, Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement, and Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement.

The announcement follows a series of developments in recent months pointing to growing coordination among armed and political opposition groups across regional and ethnic lines.
In August, Zemene said agreements had been reached with several other Ethiopian opposition armed groups to form a broader coalition working toward the “fall of Abiy Ahmed.”

The latest announcement gives a formal name and stated objectives to that emerging alignment.
In its statement, the newly established ‘Coalition for Survival’ accused the Prosperity Party-led government of presiding over what it described as widespread insecurity, armed conflict, displacement, poverty and the erosion of democratic and human rights.

Started playing FTL again cuz the power went out last night and began a run to unlock the B layout of the Federation Cruiser. The achievement I was going for was to get to sector 5 without upgrading weapons. It was pretty simple doing that, just boosted shields and engines and then blitzed the artillery beam. When I reached sector 5 I decided to just see how far I could get cuz I was having a good bit of fun with my run. I had mind control, the basic burst laser and max artillery beam.

And everything started coming together. I bought the 3 ion charge weapon and got an automated reloader augmentation sometime in sectors 4-6 (don’t recall). Then I found a Hermes missile launcher, which I decided to slot in to deal with shields and open the way for the default burst laser. Ran out of fuel in sector 6 but a random encounter with a federation ship gave me enough fuel to barely escape the rebels (if I had one more turn of no fuel I would’ve been overrun). In sector 7 I bought another automated reloader and a backup battery to temporarily charge my ion weapon and level four shields.

I barely scraped together a ship that could handle the rebel flagship. Got some last minute upgrades to doors and cams, and then went to the base. The first round went well, only took like 5 damage even though the mind control I intended to use to take out the missile launcher was hacked. Thankfully a repair base was next door and I got it repaired (I decided against saving it for later in case the rebels took it). Round two was okay, I got a bit overwhelmed with the micro and my missile launcher was bunk because of the drones, but the artillery beam and backup battery really saved me from the drone swarm and being able to get through the shields to hammer away at the flagship. I lost about a quarter of my health here. Round three was a MESS. The flagship mind control and some really unfortunate hits by the missiles led to me losing piloting, and weakening the mind control and artillery beam. Took longer then I wanted to take down the super shield, and the energy bursts wrecked my ship. By the end of it the back half of my ship was on fire or deoxygenated, health was super low for my crew, the health bar was in the red. But while I was getting hammered, after the super shield was broken I was able to pour fire with the Hermes and laser onto shields and the missile launcher while the artillery beam fired occasionally.

It was a horrible attritional fight between my ship and the flagship. One more energy surge would’ve ended my run at the cusp of victory. But at the last moment the artillery beam fired a vertical shot and destroyed the flagship, probably no more than 10 seconds before my death. And I was incredibly happy and relieved lol. I didn’t expect a run focused on the artillery beam to be able to go the distance but through a shit ton of luck it was. Made me laugh how many runs I’ve done with the intention of taking down the flagship and losing, and this one off achievement run that felt handicapped was able to pull it off first try

Saw this appear in my YouTube feed and thought maybe some others would be interested in this. 4A Games reached out to him and offered to let him play a couple hours and encouraged him to share his thoughts both good and bad, which is a good sign if it’s not a scripted demo!

TLDR: he really liked what he was able to play! Beautiful game, good gunplay, the plot he was able to do was promising but hard to judge, had no problems on the technical side outside of a crash. He was overall pleasantly surprised.

There’s no real spoilers here and a lot of the footage is B roll combat footage (which he assures is what the game looked like on his side graphics wise). So a very good sign this will be a banger! Which may not be a shocker to most but at least for me I am a bit pensive about new releases being good, and Eastern European games are, well, they have a reputation that’s pretty earned in the jank side

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi on Tuesday announced the formal dissolution of the SDF and the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), confirming that their forces and institutions would be integrated into the Syrian state.

Screenshot from a post done by u/NiuMeee

Screenshot from a post done by u/Rotated_text

Not super new ground but I've been playing Metro 2033: Redux again and seeing the kid running around in the menu screen in a version that was released well after Last Light made me think the devs early on almost definitely had the idea in mind of Artyom becoming a father. It's one thing to have a kid show up in a throwaway slide on a bad ending, but having that kid show up in the 2033 menu strongly implies to me the devs had bigger ideas on Artyom's fatherhood. It would have fit thematically as well given a huge part of Artyom's identity, and a core theme in Last Light, was essentially parenthood. Not knowing his mother and sort of living in the void of having no direct family (RIP Sukhoi lol). A third game could have focused on Artyom now having to be a parent while dealing with the dangers and horrors of the metro as a sort of flip on Last Light.

Regardless, I do think the devs were planting the seeds of Artyom being a dad, but obviously the ideas was very rudimentary and not baked into future plans. It was likely scrapped very early on in pre-production or maybe was never even brought up at all during the troubled production of Exodus. It is to my understanding the devs weren't the most pleased with how Last Light turned out and wanted to essentially do a soft reboot and move away from a lot of Last Light, even if that meant essentially scrapping whole things that were established. So the kid (and Anna because lets be honest Anna 1.0 and Anna 2.0 are completely different characters in all but name and relations) were scrapped to focus on the themes and ideas of Exodus without bloating it with a parenthood arch.

If anyone has any further information on the kid and ideas had with him between the release of Last Light and development of Exodus I'd love to know, but this is my speculation/thoughts/ramblings about what I think was an artifact of 4A's vision on what the third game would have focused on before that third game existed at all.

I like to watch or read peoples thoughts about the Metro games for fun, and unsurprisingly the moral system gets a good bit of flak. Some criticisms I totally get, namely there being no explanation for what it is or some idea on how it works.

But the criticisms that the good ending is too hard to achieve or needs a guide to get the good ending indicates to me that that person has not played the games. What I mean by that is the moral system is essentially an encouragement to interact with the world and explore the world. Artyom is presented as a kind and curious person. If you approach the game like that, it’s frankly kinda hard to miss the good endings. When I played the trilogy I got all the good endings in my first try with no guides by following those traits. I did calculate how many moral points I got after finishing a batch of chapters and it came out to about 2/3 of the moral points across the games.

If someone is aware of the moral system and still get the bad ending, more likely then not they’re blitzing through the game just moving from one objective to another without doing anything to actually take the world in. These points aren’t well hidden by the devs, they’re not COD zombies style Easter eggs. If the game says go left, then go right first. If someone asks for help, render help. If someone is talking about the world, listen in.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh, but I just can’t take this line of criticism seriously despite its pervasiveness because with the most basic knowledge of the system and aptitude of exploration you can reliably achieve the good endings. It’s no different to me then people who skip cutscenes immediately and then complain the story makes no sense or they don’t know what’s going on

To start, here is my rating of the game: 9/10. Yes, I think this is the best Metro game of the trilogy thus far. It is a soft nine, though with the DLCs I think it’s a strong nine. Here are my thoughts on the main game:

I think Metro Exodus addresses pretty much every complaint I had with Last Light. By moving out of Moscow the locations became much more diverse and I did not find myself feeling bored like I did going through a lot of the metro sections in Last Light. It was in fact refreshing to end the game with the tunnels of Novosibirsk after spending the vast majority of the game in non-tunnel locations. The story was WAY better, in my opinion the best story of the three and the only one with an ending that did not feel clumsy (I almost shed a tear at the end actually). While there was an overarching plot it was not nearly as excessive as Last Light, but was more present then 2033. The bulk of the story writing went into the sagas you are presented with in each biome, which I think was the strength of 2033 with the stories within the story. They do the same here but on a larger and more fleshed out scale. The pacing was good too, I don't feel like any location felt too short or long except for maybe Caspian. I also think this has the best characterization of the three with pretty much every single character feeling like someone. The weakest to me was the Colonel but compared to his previous two showings I think this was his best. Anna was a vast improvement and ditched pretty much all of the cringe from Last Light. It was nice to have a ray of sunshine in a world of death and testosterone (though I do have issues with Anna I will get into).

Gameplay wise it felt like a decent improvement, nothing spectacular. I think the biggest improvement was combat zones took place across much greater ranges so it felt like it made sense to have long range weapons. The sniper rifles and stuff felt redundant in the previous games, but here it is viable and I felt like every weapon had its place (except the Bastard). Customization and weapon variety was increased and worked well for me. I think the resource-looting-crafting mechanic was... serviceable. I do like the idea of being able to craft gear in the field and make more complex equipment at workbenches, as well as the weapon maintenance, but it felt pretty generic. Like you only have two resources that at least on normal you get an absolute abundance of. I think it should have been more complex to make scavenging feel a lot more impactful, more like in Fallout 4.

I overall really liked the worlds presented. It's interesting because I saw people before I play describe them as not really open worlds, and thought that was weird because they are large zones. They were totally right however. The game is structured for essentially 4-5 mission equivalents from 2033/Last Light to happen in a world, and there is very little reason to not explore those subzones and never return when you finish each main story objective. Backtracking was pretty minimal outside of returning to the train. I think this quasi-open quasi-linear structure works though and keeps a good balance between world exploring and keeping the story moving, this is not like Skyrim where ignoring the main quest is essentially a key part of the experience. Moscow was a good dip back into the Metro pool and a nice expansion of the lore with surface patrols and train stations and whatnot. Volga I think was the best with interesting locations, interesting locals and interesting lore, a good encapsulation of what they were going for. Caspian was good too in this slave uprising story and I liked the derelict ships and Mad Max vibe, though the world also felt empty. I think Caspian could have really used more civilization micropockets where you meet freedom fighters or whatnot, like in Volga you can encounter multiple cultists who are friendly/tolerant, while in Caspian there is just one guy in a spider-infested ship. The only freedom fighter outside of Giul is one who shoots himself the second you save him. Yamantau was a fun shooting gallery and break from the open world and more stealthy experiences of the previous two. Taiga was good too, more on the shorter and linear side while still having interesting places to explore and bits to learn, a good in between of Volga/Caspian and Yamantau. I was a big fan of Novosibirsk as well, as previously stated.

However, I do have some criticisms that I think hold the game back from a 10/10. The biggest one by far is Artyom being a silent protagonist. At this point its annoying because everyone treats Artyom as a close friend or, in Anna's case, a lover. And this dude is just sitting there mute. It worked well in 2033 because he doesn't know anyone and okay in Last Light cuz he's still on his own by and large, but here when he is with friends and family it just falls flat. It hurts his dynamic with Anna in particular because she pours her heart and soul out... and he maybe gives her a pat on the head. It creates this uncanny valley relationship where she kinda worships him and he only expresses similar levels of love in cutscene expositions and diary entries. Without Artyom's affection, Anna at times feels kinda like a waifu then a character. I also think Anna is hurt by this love being not established frankly. Last Light did fuck all in showing Anna and Artyom falling in love, so her going from hardass who decided to fuck Artyom to lovey dovey feels unexplained. The second major critique is the movement in this game is suuuuper floaty. I in fact slid off surfaces a couple times and died because Artyom will just glide and keep on gliding. There's no traction and it makes movement in this game constantly feel a lil clumsy and annoying when you have to worry he'll do something stupid. Other criticisms I have are the Colonel's dialogue and acting are a little clumsy, he felt like the weakest character in raw writing terms. I really wish there was more horror, I think every level should have had at least one horror location, but there is only the one in the Volga (which scared the hell out of me) and the ghosts in Novosobirsk, but compared to previous entries it is practically devoid of horror. There is a general rough around the edges vibe with triggers and conversations and other little bits you'll notice that aren't impediments but do add up a bit over time.

Overall, I think the base game essentially addressed literally all of my problems with Last Light and made for a really solid finale for the Artyom trilogy. Of course, they released two DLCs which I will give my thoughts about now. The first I played was The Two Colonels, and that was a very neat cinematic experience seeing the fall of Novosibirsk. I liked the writing, pacing, plot, action, pretty much everything about it. I spent an overly long amount of time burning all the goo in the start only to learn that doesn't net you anything and that they'll have crews handle the rest. I think this DLC was a solid 10/10 experience. Then there was Sam's Story. This one felt a bit weaker, the world just was missing a bit of that spark. Exploring Vladivostok felt a bit empty. Tom and the Captain were interesting characters but you only see them for a bit (the Captain aura farmed the fuck out when he showed up at the end in his old uniform). Sam was good, his one liners were a lil silly and this isn't the game's fault but I could not help but thinking I was playing Tank Dempsey from Nazi Zombies cuz its the exact same VA and in many ways similar character. Weirdly the game kept showing the Golden Gate Bridge even though Sam is from San Diego. Beyond this, the story was interesting and I liked the dilemma in it. 8/10. I do wish this game had more DLC, I reeeeeally liked how Last Light had a lot of DLC covering a wealth of different ideas and things. I think Exodus could have used shorter and more compact DLCs to just flesh it out instead of two. Had it had Last Light style DLC I would have given this game a 10/10.

Anyways, that's my likely controversial opinion. I think 2033 is better pound for pound, but Exodus just offers way more that makes up for being slightly lower on the strictly qualitative scale. Certainly better then Last Light in my opinion. Having finished this and the trilogy, I gladly await for 2039 to drop which at least based on the trailers is looking pretty good and interesting!

I finished Metro Exodus last night and the ending (the good one I got) got me thinking because Artyom essentially sequel baits about going back to Moscow to bring more people to Lake Baikal and out of the wretched tunnels of Moscow.

I imagine the sequel was going to be a straightforward one, but then Russia did the whole “invade Ukraine for genocidal and imperialist reasons” thing in 2022 that made development reset to be based on this ongoing experience. We’re getting a new protag who I will be calling Angeryom and Moscow has been completely remolded to revolve around the Novoreich as the only faction left (it seems at least).

However, I don’t think that precludes Artyom and his merry band coming back for a few reasons. The first is that, time wise, it taking a few years for them to reach Moscow isn’t unthinkable. It took a year for them to get from Moscow to Lake Baikal, so it’s roughly a year to get back minimum. There may also be a couple years spent on the group doing the things they wanted to do. Sam going to Vladivostok, Alyosha finding Olga, perhaps Damir checking in on the slave revolt in Kazakhstan. Artyom and Anna having a child of course. So by the time they get their affairs settled and make the trek to Moscow it could reasonably be 2039.

The second and what I think is most important is Artyom and Angeryom would have a really fascinating thematic chemistry. It’s clear right off the bat from the trailer that Angeryom is furious and filled with rage and scorn, representing how many Ukrainians feel now. He is the opposite of Artyom, someone who represents someone optimistic if perhaps naive that things can get worse, a relic of the pre-2022 world. The moral system in 2039 (if it comes back) could be a contest between the hope of the past and cynicism of the present. Perhaps Angeryom could be remolded to be a fighter like he is, but one that’s fighting for something better, not just fighting for the sake of it. Or perhaps Artyom can be remolded into a cynical man like his new counterpart and see that this is fundamentally a world where all that matters if firepower and power.

The third and smallest reason is I find it interesting Angeryom doesn’t say the order is dead. Merely that they’re gone. Now obviously the shot of a dead Spartan heavily implies Hunter Order 66’d them, but it leaves room open for other Spartan survivors to make an appearance, including the merry band.

We’ll see how it goes but that’s my speculation on why I think Artyom may make an appearance in Metro 2039, albeit as an NPC. God willing he will be properly voice acted too

As I’m playing the games, and from what I know of the book lore, there’s a real mystery to WWIII and the weapons used that makes it feel like there’s more under the surface then is implied. Now I am a big Fallout fan as well so I could be colored by that. Nevertheless, there’s a few things that stick out to me from the world that makes WWIII feel like things were happening in secret.

The first is the games are pretty clear Russia had a late response to the war. The missiles in Moscow barely took off before Moscow itself was hit (and I would not be surprised if a lot of the Russian missiles got destroyed that way, further ruining Moscow). Additionally, nuclear submarine crews straight up didn’t receive orders to launch as that’s how quickly it was over for Russia. Lastly is the government wasn’t evacuated (which I’ll get into) from Moscow which highlights that they just legit didn’t expect WWIII to break out. Could be overanalysis, but the implication seems to be that the world situation (which I’ll also get into) wasn’t sufficiently bad enough to warrant Russia taking precautions for WWIII to break out.

The use of certain weapons also raises interesting questions about what could have happened elsewhere and why this war was conducted the way it was. The Kremlin got hit with a fancy biological weapon that absorbed the government and staff. If the U.S./West had that capability, what other times were other unique weapons used? There could be blob monsters across Russia, or maybe other weapons deployed that haven’t been mentioned. Novosibirsk was hit by a neutron bomb, which begs the question why? What about a regular nuclear warhead isn’t sufficient? Again, could be overanalysis, but it just seems weird to drop a neutron bomb on one city!

With the world situation at the eve of the war, I also find it interesting that, at least in Last Light, WWIII begins after Israel and Iran nuke each other. The two countries annihilate each other… and then the U.S. strikes Russia. Again, why? Sure the world is far more volatile after the Israel-Iran strikes, but enough to just pull the plug on the world and annihilate everyone else, dialogue be damned? This is further reinforced by the fact the Russians didn’t think anything would happen, that they were caught genuinely off guard by the war. If the Russians launched the same time as the Americans then it could be seen as panic, but if feels there’s something more deliberate going on.

It would be cheesy of me to say that this feels like the basis of an Enclave-esque situation in the Metro world where, at least for the U.S./West, there’s more at play here then just a bog standard nuclear exchange. But frankly it kinda does lol. It’s not like the Metro series doesn’t dabble with that, the Invisible Watchers are literally the Russian Enclave. So it’s possible that WWIII was the product of more sinister and secret motivations that the Russian government was clearly not in on.

Now I’m not saying that that’s the truth, nor do I want an answer. I think it’s better to keep it vague (and I’m not super fond Fallout has just explained the big mystery of why the war happened). But there is a lot of food for thought here that makes the world feel really interesting. I think its clear that, in line with the rest of the franchise, Dmitry wants there to be the seeds of more going on then meets the eye, and him and the game devs have done well with that in my opinion.

Off the high that was Metro 2033: Redux, I naturally moved on to the next installment. This is the game that got me aware of the franchise when I watched a YouTube play through of it years ago, and thinking it was very cool. Having said that, I feel disappointed that I found the game a good bit disappointing. I rate it a 6/10*.

Now unsurprisingly as the redux version it shares a lot of similarities gameplay wise with 2033 redux. It would be foolish of me to knock it for having gameplay that’s largely similar to its predecessor as its predecessor was overhauled to have that gameplay. Even with these similarities it is undeniable that Last Light improves on the gameplay in key ways. The first is the enemy diversity is soooooo much better. I never once got bored of fighting a certain type of foe, compared to 2033 where it was endless nosalises. The second is the gun variety is a lot better with new bolt action rifles, a pistol/SMG thing, and other weapons plus DLC weapons as well. There’s more customization and flexibility.

I also really appreciated the increase in horror elements in the game with multiple levels having notable horror stretches or being horror from start to finish. It felt rare in 2033 but in Last Light it just feels right. Some of the tensest but satisfying sections with ghosts and voices and hallucinations. Shoutout to the church catacombs, dead city and the subway side room hallucination.

The other major plus is the expansion of the metro world with the cultural stuff, namely Venice (at least conceptually) and the Bolshoi. That there’s a whole multi minute show you can watch is just really cool! Seeing what a disease breakout and subsequent containment would look like was also interesting, though I am a bit critical of this section that I’ll get to later.

Thing is, for the base game what’s next are my critiques, which is the story and writing. Right off the bat the story felt off with a glaring pacing issue as you’re immediately told there’s a surviving Dark One and there’s a plan to go find it at the nest and recover it. There’s no breathing room or real establishment, you’re just thrown right in and don’t feel like you get time to be immersed. Then there’s the issue that things happen quickly. The Battle of D6 for instance happens literally after it’s exposed the Reds are planning an attack with no time spent on preparing or setting it up. There’s of course some pretty gnarly plot contrivances, like it being revealed there’s Dark Ones in a vault in D6 the entire time that comes out of nowhere, and Artyom being “adopted” by them. The plot overall is flimsy, forced and feels often like fan fiction.

The worst part is the characters though. By this point Artyom being unvoiced is a clear holdback for the game as he frequently interacts with people he’s friends or in the case of Anna lovers with, and he doesn’t say shit. Pavel I can understand conceptually, but it just feels like it wasn’t allowed to bake enough. Maybe it’s because I knew the plot twist in advance, but I just did not find the friendship that convincing, which didn’t make the betrayal feel that impactful. Anna is the WORST oh my god. Her writing is just painful. The arrogant start with the “don’t look at my ass” comment heading up a ladder, and all of a sudden bagging her in a quarantine. And then nothing with her again! Not even in the Battle of D6 where she just looks at you blankly as you’re about to go off and fight! She’s probably the worst character I’ve ever personally experienced in a video game. The lil Dark One is good IMO but too short to really sell what they’re going for, he’s only your side bro for a couple missions, and it was cute and offered a nice twist with his vision powers.

The problem with these shortcomings is that the world of metro is still largely the same as the previous game. There’s the Reds, and the Nazis, and Hansa, and tunnels and corridors and such. There’s only so much you can do underground and so I see where the devs were going for emphasizing story (which on paper is what I wanted with 2033) and characters, but when they both fall apart it makes the world feel more hollow because at times there’s a lot of sameness. Thankfully the devs add enough new elements like Venice/Bolshoi and horror parts and whatnot to keep the world from feeling stale enough that I’d give the game a 5, but there are parts where it drags from similarity. This is made worse by the interactions you can have in new locales be the same style of gallery walks. The quarantine station in particular felt weak because it just felt like a walking simulator after doing the same thing in like a dozen stations in this game and the prior one. I can see why the devs wanted to shift to open world in the sequel because there are just hard limits to what you can do in a subway system in an established universe.

I’ll also add that the sexual elements just felt off. Beyond the Anna sequence it just felt a lil jarring seeing breast physics, and I laughed out loud when I saw you could get a lap dance immediately after starting a pursuit of Pavel. Like imagine the mindset of “Pavel is moving quick and I gotta keep up… but also I got time for this pretty lady I scared the bejeezus out of 😈”. It’s silly.

Overall, the base game is in my opinion a victim to ambition. I could see what the devs were doing trying to make a more thrilling story with multiple parts and major characters, compared to 2033 where it’s one overarching story and one character really, but they just bungle the landing. Ironically for my complaints, the best parts of Last Light were those that felt more like stories bumping into Artyom, like helping refugees go through a bandit trap, escaping a Nazi prison, and navigating a station under attack and being razed. When the story or characters were more front and center is when by and large the game felt much weaker.

Of course, it’s not just the base game. There’s a fuck ton of DLCs that are by and large great. 8/10 experiences with these DLCs overall. I’ll give one sentence ratings for each of them to keep this from being too long. Developers Pack is a cool way to see the game from a meta perspective and the arena is a neat concept that could use a lot more animal options. The Tower is the only one I didn’t finish but it’s good for those who really want a challenge. Spider Lair is a really neat semi-horror experience of surviving the spiders with increasing tools that are still limited, and a fun look at just one possibility on how all those dead stalkers you find end up where they are. Kshatriya is a fantastic level, my favorite, where it’s a roguish stalker experience finding various items in the library from 2033 that is tense but satisfying. Heavy Squad is a fun shooting gallery of mowing down dozens with a minigun, railway gun and grenade launcher to just see people go boom. Sniper Team is the inverse as an ultra stealth (detection will likely lead to auto failure) that’s reminiscent of COD stealth missions and is a fun experience. Pavel is meh, it’s a pretty generic crawl of just getting from point A to point B that doesn’t really add much to his character except an interesting interaction with a crystal ball lady (and rigging a Russian roulette style game). Anna is also meh, you’re just playing the opening level from her perspective. Khan is a good level as you experience the supernatural of the metro to the max with ghosts, an anomaly, hallucinations and seeing a key moment in Khan’s past (though Uhlman getting voice acting while playing him felt a bit like a slap in the face).

So with the DLCs I think Last Light as a whole is a *7/10. The devs bit off more then they can chew, and I can totally see where a lot of impetus for Exodus comes from because I think that game was created in a lot of ways to address the shortcomings of Last Light. I am keen to play it, though I’m tempering my expectations after what felt like a fairly underwhelming time with Last Light

I’m playing the Metro trilogy after buying it for a real steal on Steam. I’d rate Metro 2033 an easy 8/10. Now I know there’s some real Metroheads that swear the original is better for atmosphere and such, but I gotta say I really dig this game.

The obvious strength of the game is its atmosphere and world. It’s just a gorgeously crafted world with the different stations, the factions, the lore, the supernatural and just everything. I loved being in the world and wanted to see more go this bleak yet trudging world.

For me the game does well with the horror. I’m not a big horror guy so maybe I’m just more susceptible but there were plenty of times I felt tense or scared, and the game does it with all sorts of different ways. Sometimes you got the supernatural/paranormal, other times big fucking creatures, and being alone in a claustrophobic environment. Great sound design complements this too.

I thought the story was good and did feel invested in this odyssey Artyom embarked on, as well as the mini plots experienced along the way. I particularly liked the no mans land frontline plot, as well as defending and then wandering through a station overrun by nosalis’. The characters encountered along the way were good, and I thought the voice acting in English was actually surprisingly decent. There are a couple exceptions to the plot and VA stuff I’ll get into shortly.

There’s also just nice details that show the devs put in some time and effort. When you pick up a kid in the overrun station your movement is heavier. You can get high on a hookah that gives a unique experience for a moment. Delivering a radio broadcast that is totally optional. The devs really care about this game.

The morality system is really cool and it’s a lot easier than you’d think given how many points you need to open the good ending (50+ points). It all really boils down to actually exploring the game and doing good deeds. Since I’m a professional Bethesda player, exploring every corner of a game came to me easily. I like that the game has this system both as its own gameplay feature and to compel you to explore.

Lastly, I thought the gameplay was good. I like the stealth, not too hard but not too easy either (I am bad at stealth though lol). AI could be dumb but for a game of its era it’s not bad. The guns felt good and I really liked the customization. Made a limited suite of weapons feel quite broad.

Of course I have critiques.

While I thought the plot was solid overall, I think the Dark Ones are way too underused in the game. There were long stretches where I just totally forgot they are the overarching antagonist (or however you wanna label them). I never understood the danger they actually posed, I saw literally infinite more people die to nosalis’ then actual Dark Ones. There should have been a prologue showing them destroying a patrol and such.

The controls are pretty clunky and not super explained. Crouching has to be held down to my knowledge which left my finger feeling sore during stealth missions lol. Other controls are not adequately explained IMO like recharging or night vision goggles (which I had a hell of a time turning on). The menus are also clunky to navigate. You can remap a lot of the controls but I just wonder what hands Ukrainian gamers got where the basic mapped controls are considered good.

The enemy variety could be better. The humans felt varied between the bandits, commies and Nazis who had their own flavor, but the creatures get stale. Nosalis’ and Watchers are 80% of the creatures, and they’re boring. They also swarm you in a way that’s really annoying, especially with lower tier guns. There’s no easy way to extricate yourself from a horde.

Smaller critiques are I think Artyom should have been fully VA’d, it felt weird having his character development locked behind diary entries that can be missed. Also having him VA’d in loading screens just makes his lack of voice in game more baffling. The child character models are creepy as hell and the VAs for them are just plain bad. The English in said diary entries can be sloppy at times. Subtitles only apply to main characters, so you can’t do the native Russian VA because you can’t understand any of the side conversations. The in-game advertising for the books felt out of place and excessive, which felt distracting (especially exploring every nook and cranny for a world interaction or bit of supply).

Overall it’s a really enjoyable game. Great start to the trilogy

So I’m playing a heavy knight assassin, which essentially means I wear heavy armor but alternate between sneak and dagger or sword and board. I use an invisibility spell to sneak up on opponents (even though I’ve learned the AI just doesn’t detect you at all while sneaking but gotta roleplay). Now the balance for that is if you do any sort of action like interact with an item, cast a spell or hit an enemy it will eliminate the invisibility.

However, last night I was invisible but wielding my sword and board and accidentally bashed an enemy with my shield. The enemy staggered and I got a hit marker, but my invisibility held up. To test if damage was actually being done I repeatedly shield bashed this land dreugh until he toppled over and died. The whole time I remained undetected, the dreugh being bashed didn’t react and I remained invisible.

So, unless this is a bug related exclusively to the shadow shape spell, you could create a build where once you get your block up to 75 and illusion to 50 you just run around invisibly and shield bash entire dungeons to death without ever once being detected and risking open combat.

I don’t intend to use this at all for my character cuz it’s silly but I thought people here would get a kick out of this