Xenith on 22/3/2010 at 12:34
The shape of the Dark People did have more than just a striking resemblance to the Bloodsuckers. I wonder if that was intentional or not. I liked the monsters though, can't really complain about them since they work well enough IMO.
For some reason, the whole "look in the eyes" method with the librarians didn't seem to work too well with me. I usually just got charged at until I decided to stop running and just rape one of them for the heck of it.
mothra on 22/3/2010 at 13:14
i found out how to get through the level without having any monster contact. like I said, it's just a boring MarioLevel where you have to wait for a trigger, cross it, backup in a certain arc into a certain room, wait for another trigger and commence. That way no librarian ever touched me, only looked stupid and made those funny noises which made me wanna pet, not kill him. Anyways....after I got it I saw that it's totally stupidly designed with no margin for error and decided to ignore it and spent my overabundance of military ammo on their faces. you can also just rush through the level speedrun-style. and yeah, the anomaly and dark ones are basically 1:1 ripoffs of STALKER. one of the jumping animations of the big-nosed-rat ones is EXACTLY the snork rollover-animation from ClearSky. I guess there must have been a few hard feeling when certain people left GSC and ...... took some things with them it seems ....
karmaKGB on 22/3/2010 at 16:05
I think this is one of the best games I've played in a long while. As much as I like open-world games (and I liked STALKER but wished it was more open), a well done corridor shooter can be enjoyable, as well.
Things Metro 2033 does well:
- Excellent Graphics. Great lighting and textures. The art direction is pretty awesome too. They really nail the look and feel of the gloomy tunnels/destroyed city. Really, the little details add up. And there are many little details.
- Pacing. Best pacing I've seen in a shooter since...I'm having to think pretty hard about this one. Basically, it's not all go-go-go action or boring walkarounds. You've got periods of spooky inaction, with the sounds of monsters lurking in the darkness, periods of all out shooting, brief moments of relief in occupied human stations, and a lot of times in between when you get to choose stealth or action.
- Sound. Makes me think of Thief. Thief didn't really have music, per se. What it did was use a bunch of ambient noises to go along with great background dialog and high quality sounds to create a pervasive mood. Metro 2033 does pretty much the same thing. A good example is when your first meet Bourbon, you're in Riga station surrounded by human warmth and sound. As soon as you follow Bourbon to the secret passage those sounds fade and a new chord (literally) kicks in. A subtle cue, highly reminiscent of Thief. Good times.
- Exploration. No, this is not an open-world shooter. Yes, there is optional exploration. Whether or not you have enough ammo entirely depends on two factors:
a) Did you pray-and-spray? Did you use your throwing knives? Can you get headshots?
b) Did you explore every nook and cranny or each level? Because there is ammo everywhere.
The nice part about this is that the game's atmosphere is such that you don't really want to go wandering off into the dark corners to search for ammo. For instance, early in the game on my second playthrough I found the automatic shotgun with bayonet hidden in a maze carried by a soldier who had obviously sneaked off to smoke his hookah (as evidenced by the *usable!* hookah next to him). Great little bit of storytelling without saying a word and very nice reward for exploring off the beaten path. The maze reminded me of Doom and the payoff reminded me of Morrowind, all wrapped up in a STALKER shell.
This is getting longer than I anticipated so I'll add one more piece.
- The shooting. I don't think the gunplay sucks at all. Is it the best shooting evar?!1! No. Is it clunky and impossible? Hardly. On my second playthrough I found things much easier despite playing on a harder difficulty setting. Most likely for these reasons.
a) I used throwing knives and stealth more.
b) I found better weapons earlier (autoshotty with bayonet kills monsters like woah)
c) I realized that you can kill armored soldiers easily. You have to aim for the neck below the
helmet and above the armor, especially the back of the neck. Shooting the in the armor with
the shotgun? Does nothing. Duh. In any case, I don't see any reason to penalize the game
for nailing the realism of that situation.
d) Shoot monsters in the face with the shotgun. They die just fine.
In any case, the guns are homemade anyways, so I quite expect them to be a little clunky. Works for me. *shrug*
Summary: Good game. Play it.
Ostriig on 22/3/2010 at 16:20
Quote Posted by mothra
so what now. stalker or metro2033 ?
Was asking how Metro 2033 compared to STALKER in terms of scare-factor. Being the huge, moist vagina that I am, I've found SoC to be genuinely terrifying at some points. I think that my pacing through X18 was, for the greater part, on par with my snail pacing through the Shalebridge Cradle.
As for mods, yeah, I have a feeling I'll also be yearning for them when I finally come around to playing this. For starters, what I gathered from GT's video review does paint the picture of flaky weapons, where enemies take a gazillion shots before going down. Up the damage to a more realistic level, drastically reduce the ammo supply, and things may look differently. Ooh, and a complete HUD removal. Seriously, you can give an acceptable visual indication of what your ammo status is exclusively through the weapons themselves, and I don't mean having LED displays on them like in UT.
Quote Posted by Xenith
@ Ostriig
I thought the indoor levels of Metro were pretty much similar to Stalkers underground. It definitely gave off the same vibe most of the time. There are sounds used in this game, that were used in Stalkers underground too. So really, it can't go wrong with keeping you on the edge.
Cheers, good to know!
By the way, people, screenshots are always nice! :) Getting tired of seeing the same press release crap that every publication seems to shamelessly use, as if they forgot where the Print Screen button is. Well, the few who aren't riding the Xbox version.
Sulphur on 22/3/2010 at 18:32
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Since you have a HD4890, wouldn't it actually be using DX10.1, not just 10?
I would suppose so. The tech interviews I've read only mention DX10/11. I've tried checking, but I'll be damned if the game actually points it out in the options menu - you get a choice of DX9/DX10 and that's it.
Jokerman on 22/3/2010 at 19:13
I don't get the moaning about checkpoints in this game- they re so close to one another, it's more like an auto-quicksave system.
mothra on 23/3/2010 at 10:54
some checkpoints trigger seconds after you pass them. meaning you can have one in the middle of a fight and die everytime you reload.
karmaKGB
amount of ammo does not depend on how you proceed, only if you actually can hit anything. I had 2 playthroughs and in my aggressive one I killed each and every one I encountered and came out with MORE bullets than doing it partly stealthed with knives. also you can ignore most of the monsters if you like that. some monster encounters can be circumvented completely if you hop over the triggers (even accidently). that design is so lame are it's ripe for a patch. There's also a game-breaking bug where you cannot choose any weapon or use objects after a cutscene, I had to replay whole level because of that.
Jashin on 23/3/2010 at 11:51
Don't get this game yet. Wait for the price to drop and the patches to drop. The physics in this game reminds me of early havoc games with the floating bottles, anti-gravity planks... Really takes the wind of the experience.
As for the game itself, it's...okay. The only other significant stalker deja vu I've had, apart from the obvious Russian-ness of it, is the renderer. It makes the art look like stalker's. And the shooter mechanics are a bit rough, like soc. These guys really lived up to the history, having left GSC before they released SOC and all. Timeless mantra of GSC games - Get better gun, get scoped gun.
The level of details in the game is even higher than Clear Sky, the highest detailed stalker, so the ambiance is great. But it's entirely linear and there are tropes to a linear shooter that are all too familiar, like if you come upon an ammo pile somewhere during the middle of the game, it typically means get ready to defend a spot or tough/bossfight ahead. So really it's like an alien stole your dad's skin, and while he still looks the part, on the inside where it matters it's about as different as can be.
Story...is a lot less compelling than Stalker's. Subway stations as fallout shelters is a great setup, too bad rest of the components don't gel as well as stalker's. Some stuff just feel too fantastic to be in a postapoc game.
I don't know why I was in such a hurry to play it when I sometimes wait 1-2 years before cracking open a case. Guess I'm just that much of a lover of stalker games. Well, Call of Pripyat is far FAR superior at a fraction of the cost.
Angel Dust on 23/3/2010 at 23:32
OK, I'm about 4 hours into this game and I think I'm just about over it. For those that have finished it ; does the story go anywhere interesting or involving because at the moment it's seriously just treading water. It seems to just consist of meeting one bland character, hanging out with them for a level or two before they die/bugger off. The shooting and stealth are both clunky and unsatisfying, and the atmosphere isn't quite working for me since each level is so tiny and self-contained I never get a real sense of place. There have been some great moments but in between that you have a dull, drab FPS. I was hoping that it would be like Cryostasis, a game that overcomes it's clunky combat through sheer atmosphere and a fantastic story, but I ain't seeing it yet.
mothra on 24/3/2010 at 09:31
Quote Posted by Angel Dust
OK, I'm about 4 hours into this game and I think I'm just about over it. For those that have finished it ; does the story go anywhere interesting or involving because at the moment it's seriously just treading water. It seems to just consist of meeting one bland character, hanging out with them for a level or two before they die/bugger off. The shooting and stealth are both clunky and unsatisfying, and the atmosphere isn't quite working for me since each level is so tiny and self-contained I never get a real sense of place. There have been some great moments but in between that you have a dull, drab FPS. I was hoping that it would be like
Cryostasis, a game that overcomes it's clunky combat through sheer atmosphere and a fantastic story, but I ain't seeing it yet.
the story goes somewhere and where it goes should be clear after your first trip to Riga (first level), it IS that predictable unfortunately (at least I guessed it right from the first hint you get). I thought the atmosphere and sense of place is awesome in this game, only the levels and stations are so disappointing. The shooting and stealth is pretty good though. I never died once on hardcore when i played it first time except those "have to do what we want" sequences where you sometimes have to guess due to bad design. and I played the whole game almost fully stealthed or all-out aggressive. both work but like I said: welcome to trigger land.
