Metro 2033 Redux (PC) review "Subway: Eat Flesh!"

History and the future cast opposing shadows in the horror genre. The past terrifies because our understanding of science and technology were limited then, and superstition reigned supreme. Scary pieces that look back do so under the Gothic, western, or folk horror lens, depicting just how vulnerable we were as a species. So we advanced our technology to deal with the nasties that go bump in the dark, only to push ourselves too hard. For instance, we invented weapons powerful enough to sear the surface of the Earth and make it inhospitable. If the frightening aspects of our speculative future don't predict dystopia, they usually show us living on the edge: hiding in tunnels, slinking away into bunkers, and waiting for the radiation to subside. However, we know all too well that it's not just the radiation that threatens us. Sometimes it's other life forms, and sometimes it's us...

Metro 2033 doesn't show all the worst sides of humanity with a grisly future drama, but it does cast a light on a few of its faces. To a fault, we're paranoid and tribal. 2013 saw a nuclear war of global proportions that nearly wiped out humanity, leaving the survivors to scurry to whatever hidden hovels they could find. For Russia, that meant escaping to the underground metro system and forging small, makeshift communities. People trained to scrounge supplies from the surface, though not all of them returned. You see, not everything above died with the war, and some are all the worse for it. Animals evolved into blood-thirsty monsters, with mole-like “nosalises” serving as the most plentiful foe.

Even backed into a corner, humanity looks for ways to advance itself. This is where our protagonist, Artyom, comes in. Artyom believes he may know of a way to maintain human survival by removing their greatest threat: the Dark Ones, a group of humanoid creatures that enter people's minds and break them mentally. Sent by a family friend, Artyom searches for a man named Miller in the hopes of forming alliances to fight the menace.



You learn a few things traveling through the tunnels and nuclear winter in this first-person shooter. First, friendships are fleeting. You pair up with a scoundrel who wheedles and cheats his way out of situations until someone finally shoots him. Later, you team with several minor characters who help you drive vehicles of fight in squad-like combat, only to watch mutants drag them off into the dark to feast on them. As a result, you get used to supporting characters not hanging around...

Second, victory is not guaranteed, especially if you're careless. Metro isn't entirely a frenetic shooter. You don't run circles around the opposition, launching rockets aplenty and coughing up hundreds of blasts of hot plasma. You only carry three weapons that you can occasionally modify by spending your own ammo as cash, with supply chests and dead bodies not always so frequent. If you're not careful, you'll run low on bullets quickly and find yourself punching your way through flying “demons” and gorilla-like “librarians.”

And that's what's so terrifying about this game. You're perfectly capable of killing anything because you have the firepower at your disposal, but you're constantly worried that your guns are going to munch too much of it, and you're going to be left alone in the cold, dark tunnels with perhaps thousands of eyes watching you, including the Dark Ones keeping track of your progress.



The creepiest part: you hear enemies long before you see them. They pounce from the darkness and you train your shots on one, not realizing another has appeared behind you. So you rush off to a different location where you can have all of your targets in front of you, your heart beating as you watch Artyom reload his blaster while nosalises bear down on him. Sometimes you desperately pump out shots with reckless abandon and watch as the last remaining beasts collapse. But now and then, their claws prove to be too much and you only see a 'game over' screen...

And yet, the monsters aren't by a long shot the worst things to worry about—and yes, that's the third thing we've learned here. The restless souls of the dead threaten to rip your own spirit out of its body during some of the more claustrophobic scenes, and the constant threat of collapsing structures and masonry dogs you with every step. Worse, you occasionally creep just close enough to the surface to catch a whiff of radiation, so you slap on your suit. You can only wear it for so long, though, because your filter eventually wears out. If you haven't been fortunate enough to snatch some from item caches or corpses along the way, you could be stuck at a phase in the campaign where you only watch as Artyom repeatedly dies. This happened to me during a section called “D6,” where my curiosity and exploration of the complex drained my filters. As a result, I became trapped at a checkpoint where I only had about twenty seconds of filter time left, and thus watched my own demise play out time and again.

I tried to reload a previous chapter, and at first it seemed like Metro wasn't going to let me. I'd go into the “chapters” section of the main menu and select an early stage, only for the app to crash. After numerous tries and opening the game in safe mode, I was finally able to get through.



Honestly, that wasn't even the hardest part of this journey. At one point, I stormed a bandit base and fought off tons of gun-toting thieves, but only after a few deaths. I eventually landed in communist territory, where I would've been executed for not fully aligning with their political system. That area wasn't so bad, except for one really thrilling cinematic action scene where I outran Soviet gunners in their base, charging down hallways and dodging passers-by, all while following someone who could potentially set me on the correct path.

Eventually, I came upon Nazi land. The game more or less told me I could take the stealthy approach, but I've never been quiet with fascists. I unloaded everything I had, plugging shots into heads and cursing every time they overwhelmed me. However, I never relented. I kept retrying, figuring out different ways to approach each situation so that I didn't end up a bullet-riddled cadaver. I persevered and moved on to a segment where I manned a gun attached to a rail car, causing numerous explosions and pulverizing Nazis with my high-powered turret.

It's a given to say that Metro is a tense game, but it finds different ways to build tension. You either fear for your supplies, or you fear whatever lurks in the shadows, or you fear the forbidding surface, or you fear radiation, or you fear your own species, or you fear whatever surreal nastiness manifes in your head. The point is you never feel safe in this adventure, even after the credits roll on the canonical ending and you wonder if Artyom made the right choice. Our future is full of so many uncertainties and so many ways we could perish, and this game captures the fear of an indefinite fate very effectively...

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (October 18, 2025) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.