Take a claustrophobic trip through the tunnels

Let's get this out of the way first, yes I realized this was released in March, but I haven't had a chance to play it until now. Either way, I rented and after beating it decided I might as well write a review of it. Now here's is the review part. Metro 2033 is an interesting game. The atmosphere, story, graphics, and shooting are all uniformly great, but the game is bogged down by incredible difficulty and terrible AI. As for the good, the atmosphere and world are fantastic. The game is based on a book of the same name, written by Dmitri long-Russian-name. The game takes place in the year 2033, in a reality in which only 40,000 people escaped nuclear holocaust by retreating to the Metro tunnels underneath Moscow. You play Artyom, who leaves his home station to get help from the "capital station" Polis, in order to fight an enemy called the Dark Ones, which have been driving people insane. The game has excellent pacing, and takes you from fighting mutated beasts, to psychological hallucinations, to the remnants of Nazi's and Communist fighting it out. Two out of those three scenarios are great, with the monsters truly scaring you and testing you, and the hallucinations showing who the Dark Ones truly are. Whenever you're fighting humans however, the game nosedives. The AI is either broken or incredibly smart, and it makes fighting other humans a frustrating and difficult ordeal. However, using stealth is a usually more viable option, reducing the difficulty of the human on human fights. Speaking of difficulty, the game is incredibly hard, and the fight against exploding mucus monsters was one that I must have retried over ten times. Ammo consumption also adds to the difficulty. There are two types of ammo, "dirty" ammo, which was made in the tunnels, or pre-war rounds, which deal more damage but also serve as your currency. When you run out of the much more plentiful dirty ammo, you are forced to literally shoot money at them, making it harder to buy more dirty ammo at the next station. However, the ammo system also adds to the atmosphere, and whenever you catch yourself counting the rounds you have, you'll smile at how the game sucks you in to its world. Other interesting ways that the game portrays its setting is in the use of gas masks. You will go above ground quite a bit in the game, and gas masks with extra filters are needed to stop you from suffocating on the contaminated air. You're gas mask can crack and even break if you take too much damage, making above ground fights even more difficult. However, this (and many other aspects of the game) is very realistic, so if that's your thing jump in. Even with some of the pneumatic weapons, which require regular pumping to keep up the air pressure, show the attention to detail. Metro 2033 is a brisk ride, which will take 10-12 hours to beat, and with no multiplayer or co-op, or any type of incentive to play it again besides an alternate ending, wait for the $40 dollar price tag before picking this one up. Even with all these problems though, the atmosphere, story, solid shooting, and some intriguing design decisions make Metro 2033 an experimental game that you owe to yourself to play.
Final score 8.75 out of 10

-Smith