I love Metro 2033, it is graphically impressive and has some very nice, well directed and intense scripted events.

Disagreeing with the review. This game offers much what no other game can't to this date. Like it was said, the review was based too much on own opinion and less on facts. I've played it and enjoyed every moment of it. You won't see me complaining about a failed shotgun fire because if I was forced to move out of cover just to get close and make a good shot, well then I'd be prity damn dead. In my opinion, the best part that stands out is in fact that you are no super powered Gordon Freeman, but more human. You can't even take more than 2 hits (on hard difficulty) in crucial body parts without dying, which is sometimes a personal slip up while stealthing, or a bad looking out of cover timing. Dislike it if you want, but it only brings you more to reality, which is most games are trying to do nowadays. You can see full game play on youtube and still make a good judgemen, but still can't beat the actual gameplay experience.

Woodsey:

Oh, and for the love of God if a game's primary platform is the PC then can we please review it on that?

For christ sakes this.

The Experience changes console to console, it's not rocket science.

Besides that I disagreed with the review heavily, emphasis on the line "It seems like you should be able to run and gun..." was a clear sign that he's never played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Game.

I don't think bashing the review is necessarily bashing the Reviewer. Certainly I don't want to start a monstrous flame attack on Mr. Westbrook, I normally agree with his sentiments. But I kind of panic when I see a 2-Star review and words like "laughably" "Sucking" or "Too Simple". I want people to PLAY this, and the worst offense of all is the parting words: "but you won't miss much if you skip it."

That's... I mean, that's just wrong. I feel very strongly that that is a downright false statement.

I don't mean to jump on the Reviewer, if I thought any portion of the staff here at the Escapist were anything but consummate professionals, I'd read something else. This is about warning gamers that Mr. Westbrook's review isn't as bottom-line as its being presented. This isn't Golden Axe: Beast Rider or Rogue Warrior, this is a game that some, maybe even most, may not like but those who do will have found a real gem.

There are many, many things wrong with this review but seriously, "based on Xbox 360 version of the game"? It's screaming "PC game" at you from the very beginning.

I actually love this game. ya it has flaws, but this review seems like the reviewer got pissed, and never stopped being pissed through the game. I understand the game is ment for a small minority of gamers, but this was a rant not an actual critical review.

Its not sparta

THIS IS MOSCOW!

Yeah I loved the game. To me it was a bland grey FPS shooter done right. I mean I wish there was more physiological aspects of the game, I really felt like the game was trying to convey it more then it actually did. As for enemies or the stealth I really didn't have a problem. The game allows you to sneak past all the enemies, often though you have to wait and observe. The game is also very specific about were you have to hit people to get them to die with one shot.

Good review, I just don't agree with it.

Though the fucking amoebas at the end of the game warrants it the loss of a star or two.

I was thinking about getting this game, it seemed a lot like Fallout 3. This review made me reexamine that.

>>
Your voice.
It is awesome.
More reviews, please.

let me just say that the 360 version has a lower framerate, worse graphics, worse sound quality, pretty much worse everything. if Logan knew what he was talking about, he should´ve played the PC version, which is far superior.

I'm starting to lose faith in The Escapist's reviewers... First they mutilated Just Cause 2 (which is a fucking incredible game) and now this too, it'd be really cool if they had people who play a variety of video games to review video games instead of amateurs who don't like the games because they are bad at them.

Maybe I'm just that good, but I've played through Metro 2033 a few times on Normal and Hard and when I wanted to run and gun I did so just as easily as stealthing. Killed every Communist and Facist in "Frontline?" Done it. Didn't kill anyone in "Black Station?" Done it. Some of the video clips used in the supplement seemed dreadfully contrived as well. Standing out in the middle of three or four guys and not even hiding behind a wall when you have to reload? Even in Serious Sam you still have to occasionally hide behind things.

And those damned Librarians will still occasionally attack you even if you stare at them.

I'd like to jump on the bandwagon and say that I had a much different experience with this game than the reviewer did, while certainly not an incredible work, I found that Metro 2033 provided me with something that I've been missing from comparable first person shooters recently. I played the PC release and found a game that to me seems more like a throwback to games like Half-Life than it feels like a game from the current generation, which to me is a good thing, possibly because I'm a curmudgeon and hate everything new.

Between a relatively understated narrative, reliance on iron sight aiming, and a near constant tension caused by the all-or-nothing stealth approach to the firefights against other humans I found myself enjoying Metro far more enthralling than your standard Modern Warfare or Gears of War-style affair. I may have simply been in the mood for a survival-horror game at the time.

While I enjoyed the mechanics and atmosphere of the game, the AI was really nothing to write home about, and many of the environments, while breathtaking are not necessarily imaginative places in which to shoot men in the face. Overall though, Metro 2033 is probably a game that's both interesting enough and short enough to come back to again in a year or a few months, which for me is far more than I can say for Red Faction: Guerrilla which I received with this one in a bundle deal on Steam.

Shjade:
If you blindly follow a review's score without considering the actual content described and how it might suit you differently from the reviewer who played the game, that's not the review's fault. That's a problem with the audience.

It's nice that you're idealistic, and I wish that were the case, but most people just focus on the score, see 2 stars out of 5, which translates to 40% or the equivalent of an utter crap game by today's ratings standards(basically anything under 80% these days gets classified as crap). It sucks, but that's just the way it is. And it' s selling this game way short.

I loved Metro 2033, for PC. Apparently its a different game on Xbox. I wish reviewers would mention that.

Lolz at "this is sparta too" comment XD

Shjade:
It's not idealism. You just reinforced my point: it's a problem with the audience, not the review.

It is idealistic in a sense that you expect reviews should be scored expecting the people to actually think about the text that is written above the number(which i fully agree on, just almost no other review publication really sees it that way). We both agree that people should bother to read a review(or several of them preferably) and then form an opinion based on what they find out. Except, most don't, they just look at the score and move on. The audience is definitely at fault there and I'm not gonna argue that.

One could argue that the review's fault is in grossly misrepresenting this games quality when compared how the almost all other game reviewers assign grades. Just take this game's score(40%) and compare it with the games at metacritic in that range for instance. But I'm not even going to argue that, because I don't really like how the games are rated right now.

But there's also another problem with the review that most people here complain about. It presents some of the good elements of the game as bad(story not being overexposed, relatively weak weapons, stealth elements). It reads as the reviewer went in expecting MW2 type gameplay and got disappointed, and that's, in my opinion, the problem.

Brian Hendershot:
Yeah I loved the game. To me it was a bland grey FPS shooter done right. I mean I wish there was more physiological aspects of the game, I really felt like the game was trying to convey it more then it actually did. As for enemies or the stealth I really didn't have a problem. The game allows you to sneak past all the enemies, often though you have to wait and observe. The game is also very specific about were you have to hit people to get them to die with one shot.

Good review, I just don't agree with it.

Though the fucking amoebas at the end of the game warrants it the loss of a star or two.

One of my favourite things about this game is that you have to try to aim for gaps in the armour, even places under people's arms. It's great :)

Sober Thal:
Can someone explain why Metro 2033 is compared to Stalker?? If anyone has both games, start them up, and name 1 thing that is similar.
I am being serious, so don't say, they speak w/ Russian accents, or a developer is listed to have worked on both.
They are both FPS games, but Stalker takes forever before it tries to be 'moody', while Metro is 'moody all the way through.
I have both games, and it erks me that one would compare them.
Please help!!

Oh yeah, by the way.... when will 'reviews' start being reviews and stop being opinions?

4A Games is an offshoot of GSC Game Word who made STALKER.
Both games are set in Russia featuring Russian locations, post-apocalyptic landscapes and appearances and themes.
Both games place you in the role of someone often relying on their teammates for support.
Both games have what I usually describe as the "Russian Game Factor", which means that you're put in the role of someone who has bad, inaccurate weapons, can't take many shots before they die and doesn't really know what's going on.
Both involve people called Stalkers? Now I'm getting desparate :)

But it's a little weird to say they're "incomparable". Crash Bandicoot and Sonic the Hedgehog are "comparable".

Susan Arendt:

UtopiaV1:
Watch a few of Susan Arendt's recent reviews, they were very well written.

D'awwww...thanks, man. That's sweet of you to say. :)

I'm not being nice, I'm just telling the truth! :D

Onyx Oblivion:
Horrid review. Simply horrid. The worst "official" review I've seen on this site, actually.

Metro 2033 has quite possibly the best stealth I've ever seen. It's better stealth than Splinter Cell: Conviction, imo.

Dirty Bullets "laughably weak"?

I don't know what your were playing, but I beat the game on Normal with little trouble. And never fired a single military grade round. Not even once. Towards the end, as a LOOTING MASTER, I had 700 SMG/Rifle rounds. 250 shotgun shells. 200 revolver rounds. And I used a lot of that on the "Librarians". Seriously. Those things suck. I had like 300 SMG rounds left after that level, and a few shotgun shells.

Oh, yeah. I managed to stealth through nearly every area that had human enemies. Often without killing ANYONE. This game doesn't hold your hand. I had to use trial and error to accomplish my stealth.

In fact, the only really bad element of the game were the amoeba...things towards the end.

I don't think that it is a horrid review simply because he does not agree with you. most reviewers have been saying the same thing.

Logan Westbrook? New to the escapist or have I missed something?

I ask my friends wether it's good or not as they have the same taste as me and they said it's awesome. Maybe you played the game wrong? :)

Sir_Tor:
Logan Westbrook? New to the escapist or have I missed something?

I ask my friends wether it's good or not as they have the same taste as me and they said it's awesome. Maybe you played the game wrong? :)

I'm one of the people who like Metro-2033, but I'll say that if you are "playing a game wrong", the developers are probably at fault somewhere :) If you try running in in Splinter Cell, it makes it pretty damn clear you're playing it wrong. That's not the case in Metro. Most of the time you feel like a survivor, sneaking through the shadows, then suddenly it'll throw you into an action set-piece where there's no chance for stealth :)

... Did I just convince someone not to play a game I've been defending? :)

In contrary to the fanboys here I played the game fully trough twice and I can understand the marks. What I don't understand are fanboys trying to make somthing better than it actually is. Just some points I snapped up here:

Stealth:
You can stealth, yes, but it's as annoying as carrying out trash cans all day long. These people saying the stealth is great "never" ever player a real stealth game as otherwise they would kick themselves for such an incorrect comment.

Weak weapons:
They are horribly weak. some people attack the reviewer in his video for standing in the open but he "damn tried to show a point"! With other words he stood on purpose in front of a bandit to show how broken the shotgun is. Took 3 blasts until he went down and I can confirm this. I often even had to use 5 blasts to the head until he went down. On the other hand an air-gun kills with one hit. The balancing is totally off. Making weapons weak is not what makes a game good. It's the combination of weapon strength, enemy weapon strength and consistency which makes a good game where you fight for survival. No problem with a game where you die fast but then the enemies have to die fast the same way if you are smarter. For example he showed "sparta" in the video. At two times NPCs in cut scenes kill enemies with one knife-throw or knife-stab. You as the player you can throw 5 knives silently and the enemy doesn't go down. Try stab monsters/people with a knife. You are stabbing like 5 minutes until the go down. This is not survival, this is bad implemented and balanced weapon design.

Librarians don't attack when you look at them:
As incorrect as it gets. Tried that out. They always attack you also if you look at them. Should this not be the case you hit a game bug. The only ones which often don't attack you when you look at them (if your lamp is enabled) is the black coated "thing" in D6 which comes down from the ceiling. Otherwise Librarians eat your ammo like nothing else.

Atmosphere:
I disagree here with the reviewer and many others. While the scenery itself would lend to good atmosphere it fails at it for various reason I don't want to repeat (as I did it already on another website). In general though Stalker-SoC had better atmosphere than this game and that's a pity as the scenery itself would have been a good starting point for well done atmosphere.

There are many more points to send into the field but I don't want to make this post any longer. So in the end I agree with the reviewer, it's a game you should only rent if possible (careful, it has steam-sucks included... get yourself first a steam-remover before you play if you value your PC!). I would say though 3/5 would be okay or 3.5/5 . It's not bad by any stretch of imagination but it's not the big thing they claimed beforehand it would be.

EDIT: As some people liked to attack me previously here a reminder before-hand. My view is always the one from the view of a game-developer as this is what I do. So I'm not a hater or otherwise moron but a critic fellow developer who judges products with hard but fair means as only this can improve quality in the long run.

Odjin:
*snip*

Considering that I comepltely accept a hell of a lot of flaws this game has... I completely disagree with you on most of the ones you picked out :)

The stealth is "different" from any other game I've played and I like it. It doesn't feel like most stealth games where you get seen, hide for ten minutes and everyone says "Well, I guess he must have moved to Canada. That said, the stealth is badly flawed, but... meh :)

And yeah, the weak bullets are "supposed" to be weak. It's part of the story. Think that this shotgun is more like the old style blunderpusses you'd fill with pebbles. You could take five shots from one of those and still be standing. These bullets were made by people bashing them out with hammers in a dark tunnel. Bullets count for a lot in the real world too. I think the dirty ammo is -too powerful-. I rarely felt the need to switch to Military Grade.

The "balance" of weapons you mention is another weird thing. The arrow gun is stronger because to use it you have to "pump it up". That's an intentional thing to add a weak point to the strong gun. Back in the early days of guns there were times when you'd rather be shot with a gun than arrow.

Also throwing a knife is a one hit kill nine times out of ten. You just have to try to hit one of the gaps in the armour, like under the arm or the back of the neck. Like the NPCs do.

The librarians don't attack if you look at them, crouched and don't approach them when they are looking at you. I also heard something about how if they stand up on their hind legs you have to stand up too to make yourself look taller, but never had a chance to try it out.

And the atmospehere in the stations is spectacular (if you don't spend much time there. It's a shame you don't). I also found that hiding in the dark I was more tense than any other game as I saw flashlights pass "right by me" but not hit me.

And whilst I've disagreed with most of your points, I do think this game is seriously flawed. I do think that it's crippling in some areas. But I also think that if you don't at least "play" it you are missing out on a unique experience.

Crap, I am a fanboy, aren't I? Well, nothing I said was untrue.