Metro Redux

Remakes are out of control and with the turn of console technology, many are using the shift as an excuse for another needless repackaging. Metro Redux is such an item, coming off the back of a release just a year prior, but it does its damn best to try and improve on more than just looks. With added content and some minor adjustments, the cult shooter does manage to add value to this repurposed release. Then again, it also inexplicably keeps many technical flaws it should’ve handled the second time around.

So, are the graphics better for this remastered edition? Yes, indeed so. In particular, the bundle that features both Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light makes the former a lot more impressive to go through. Environment textures are sharp enough that roughed up concrete grains are almost tangible. Added blurring masks a few lesser nuanced visuals, mostly seen with flat skin tones, though it doesn’t help for most of the character models’ behavior, nor their bolted on facial hair. In particular, the lighting system that cascades everything in refracted light from visors splatters a rainbow of color over an otherwise desolate apocalypse. Furthermore, the game’s many somber areas aren’t as radically dark anymore, making zero visibility less of an aggravation.

Still, darkness and stealth is still important in Metro Redux. More battles are won trying to get a grip on the open level design and making use of the many ledges and obscured segments. Going further, turning off lights or even cutting power supplies forces enemies to join the dark void. That brings a different challenge to the game, as soldiers will turn on blinding headlights, spotlights can become too bright to handle or obscured areas could have threats of their own, such as booby traps.

Stealth is the game’s preferred method and that takes a lot of patience, carefully knocking one opponent down, before crawling to the next. Should it come to gunfights, Metro Redux is now a lot more lenient when it comes to ammo drops in the standard difficulty; too forgiving even. Luckily, each version comes with higher tiers that really spice up the tension. Being left in a dark metro line without a means of defense makes those crawly noises a lot scarier than they already are.

Metro’s real threat aren’t the humans. In fact, this part is much more satisfying in movement through the level design than it is in combat, since the artificial intelligence (AI) is still erratic, spotting players through solid objects, wildly flailing around or not being able to see a takedown happen right in front of their vision.  That’s without mentioning the nonstop barrage of annoying, repetitive voice acting modeled after Aaron Paul. Let’s just say that lexicons are limited in the metro.

It’s a lot tenser to try and move through completely desolate areas where mutated freaks live, suddenly striking from off-screen and always heard lurking somewhere beyond. It’s taxing to stay in these environments, as monsters can pop up out of any area at any time and suddenly disorient the player with heavy blows. Radiation crackling only makes it so much more unnerving. And yet, these landscapes can also hold within them such calm and beauty, but it’s hard to appreciate it when there are creatures with giant claws looming.

With monsters, however, the new version has updated the AI so that strikes are more hit and run, where it used to just be a blinding pummel. It holds the same dangers, but with lesser frustrations from otherwise constantly pulsating low health vision. Now if the health starts flashing, the error is more player-driven than just the result from getting slammed endlessly on all sides. Sadly, these sections are often more plagued by confusing level design, almost in an 180° difference from their human counter side. In particular, the first Metro is plagued with poor direction that adds a lot more trudging through these aggravating areas than necessary.

Fortunately, one of the better parts of Metro Redux is that its pacing knows to pack these intense moments in between settlement locations, where it’s possible to look around and see how people live in the end of times. These much slower sections offer some rest to gear up for the next wild ride, where unspeakable horrors and supernatural events lie. Still, the toll of the story’s warring struggles and nuclear dangers are omnipresent, presenting heart-wrenching scenes of dying families or graphic executions. There are few light-hearted moments in the game that aren’t immediately washed away by tons of atrocities.

Metro Redux still has all the necessary elements for a properly themed post-apocalypse shooter, also from a gameplay design. Gunplay has a terrible kick to it. Explosives detonate with a hollow blast that resonates doom through the tight corridors. Upgrade possibilities for guns are makeshift scraps used to make visors, handles and so on. Currency comes in bullet form, because that’s what’s most important in this society. This is serious; there is no room for entertainment in this experience and the more of it that’s explored, the more it will become apparent.

Still, it’s harder to sell a game mostly on visual enhancement alone, even if it managed to make Metro: Last Light a lot clearer, despite it being a recent title. To be more than just an HD tag, Metro Redux also introduces several new game modes with hours of added content. It offers points of view from notable characters in the game, some extra missions or even a virtual reality setup with things like wave defense games. It’s certainly refreshing to see the game in a new way like this, which can break out from its original scope. Some modes still use horror, but the ones that don’t shine a light on how there’s also just a satisfying shooter inside this game. If a better smoother experience wasn’t enough to go on, then more of it, at a lower price nonetheless, should do the trick.

Metro Redux is the same old horrifying shooter classic, some technical flaws strangely included, but now shinier, more welcoming and with a lot more to go on than before. It may not get it perfectly right, but it does iron out a lot of things and packs in novelties enough to warrant a second run around. One thing is certain; there are few games with this sort of tone and that alone makes it special.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed (@Daavpuke)