It’s not often you hear the words ‘unique’ and ‘shooter’ in the same sentence. For every Bioshock or Portal there seem to be dozens of relatively similar military/futuristic shooters that work harder to imitate others and emulate their success than they do to really innovate. If you’re looking for something to spice up your shooter experience and take you down the path less travelled then Metro 2033 is your golden ticket to happy gamersville. It’s really not like anything else right now in how it handles its gameplay and the world it works in.

Bad Tovarich, Bad Tovarich, watcha gonna do?

Adapted from a Russian novel, the game has a good narrative base to draw from and it sets up a pretty compelling world. Nuclear war has decimated Russia making the surface world uninhabitable and the remaining pockets of humanity have survived in the Moscow subway system, which in real life was built to double as a system of habitable underground bunkers in the event of the USA getting their ballistic nuclear missile on. Sure the Cold War worst case scenario might not seem like a good premise, but don't forget all those nuclear missiles didn't turn into chocolate crapping unicorns when the Berlin Wall started coming down, they're all still there and, presumably, still pointed at the other guys who are pointing them back. Metro 2033 uses this interesting Cold War footnote about train stations serving as bunkers to create a claustrophobic and deeply creepy world that's dark, dank and generally inhospitable. You play as a young man living in one of the metro stations that have sprung up as villages hundreds of years after the war. People live uncomfortable, harsh and often short lives in the Metro, either defending the stations from giant mutant rats, bandits and some of the even odder denizens of the tunnels, or going topside to the surface world to forage for useful items, food and water.

Welcome back to the Metro, did you remember the milk?

Journeying between the stations, as you frequently do, is fraught with danger. In addition to mutant monsters there are human factions who are extremely hostile to the Metro communities and booby trap areas to ambush travelers. There are even communities still following the communist doctrine to the letter and executing outsiders as traitors to Russia, and other stations controlled by self described Nazi’s. There are also the supernatural Dark Ones, who make a few eerie appearances and do a good job of scaring people, literally, to death. The main focus of the plot is trying to stop the weird Dark Ones from overrunning Metro 2033 and killing your neighbours by appealing to one of the more powerful station communities to send aid.

The world of Metro 2033 is filled with unique and interesting concepts. When the air becomes dusty or murky and your character starts to gasp or choke this is the signal to tug on your gas mask. Prolonged use of your gas mask, such as traveling on the surface, requires you to change the filter on your gas mask from time to time, signaled by your watch ticking into the red section and the mask beginning to fog up as your breathing becomes more laboured. A bad fall or melee attack from a monster can crack or break your gas mask so you’d better hope you have a replacement. To see in the consuming darkness of the underground you have a shoulder mounted torch that casts a faint light. While you might be reluctant to use this as it gives away your position, not using it can have you falling down a very deep hole or through a broken piece of track. Or even worse, walking past some precious ammunition or weapons lying by a rotting corpse. Later in the game you do happen across a pair of night vision goggles that become extremely useful in the games tense stealth sections.

For vacation they go to Chernobyl and soak up the rays (and the radium)

Pre war ammunition is used as currency at the stores in the Metros and can be traded in for regular cruddy ammunition or items like health packs, filters and throwing knives. Your lamp also has a limited battery life and when it goes out you’ll need to pull out the battery and crank it by hand (pulling the fire trigger till the battery dial refills) to charge it back up again. If you get lost you can crack out your compass to see where to go, of course if its dark you might need to flick on your lighter to read it, alerting nearby enemies to your position. Little elements like this suck your right into the world of Metro 2033, they may sound like annoying gameplay quirks but they’re a perfect fit for the world you occupy. I should also mention that there’s almost no HUD in the game so take care of your ammo, it runs out pretty quick and often at really bad times. It’s surprising just how scary the game is at times, but rather than the sudden shocks of games like F.E.A.R., Metro 2033 pushes the whole creeping dread. You never feel safe in the Metro, or on the winter wasteland of the surface, no matter how long you play the creepy atmosphere never becomes comfortable.

This is Khan, the games most interesting character who seems to know everything and disappears just as suddenly as he appeared

While Metro 2033 hits a lot of pleasingly original high points in its run it does have a fair share of annoying problems that keep it back. There are the odd glitches in the graphics that, unfortunately, happen during some of the more exciting sections of the game. You’ll see a mutant rat monster charging towards a comrade, then in a blink they’re on the ground wrestling and you realise a whole animated sequence of pouncing and tackling has been missed. The controls at release are actually pretty broken making aiming and shooting a real hit and miss affair. The game is pretty hard at normal difficulty and requires a lot of quick and careful shooting to survive and the ballsed up control scheme can make the game almost impossible at times. A patch has been released that makes the controls far more user friendly and you’ll want to download that as soon as possible. The game’s stealth sections, that often have you trying to sneak through very dangerous areas full of heavily armed enemies, are at often torturously difficult due to unpredictable AI. Sometimes the AI responds to someone getting killed and sometimes it doesn’t. Eventually success in these sections comes down to luck and doesn’t feel like much of a success at all. You may find yourself just running hell for leather through some of the harder sections and trying to get to the next checkpoint to survive which also feels like cheating. On top of this the realistic setting, one of the games real strengths, has a flip side that means the game is far to easy to find yourself stuck with the wrong weapons for the job at hand, or the right weapons and no ammo. The opportunities to redo tool your kit are few and far between and while you can find some great weapons lying around in the tunnels, the dim lights and cluttered environments mean it's really easy to miss them.

This bizarre living ball of lightening is one of the new life forms that roams the metro tunnels, don't whiz on it

The story line is very linear, despite the sweeping map of the subway station that pops up during load screens your journey is a straight line from A to B. Don’t expect a Fallout 3 experience where you can explore and wonder around. You’ve often got a friend you need to stay pretty close to as well as their death means game over and this tends to hamstring even the most basic exploration, like back tracking to check a corner you didn't check for ammo or tools. The plot offers a satisfying conclusion to the story but it doesn’t feel like a real end, so many questions are unanswered and so much isn’t explored that you may feel a little cheated by the games conclusion. It’s definitely a one play game, you won’t likely to journey back into the Metro after your first run through, but your first experience will be a lot of fun. If you're a fan of Bioshock, STALKER or any first person game that the description doesn't start with 'it's like blank', then Metro 2033 will be an enjoyable romp.