Platinum Difficulty Rating - 3/10
Most of my gaming purchases have a certain basis of judgement to them. I don't tend to stray too far from what I know well, and the Metro collection was a new venture for me.
I never knew it was based off a popular novel going by the same name. I never knew the term "Redux" effectively meant "Remaster" and I never knew my Latin needed some work either.
The Metro Redux package includes the first 2 Metro games bundled into a single box, originally available on the Playstation 3, and Remastered for the Playstation 4.
Metro 2033 is the first of these two games, a First-Person shooter which sees you take control of Artyom, a soldier attempting to save the fate of the Moscow Metro, where survivors of a Nuclear war have taken refuge. The aftermath of the war has made the surface uninhabitable for humans due to high radiation levels and low atmosphere, mutated creatures and warring factions fighting for whatever spoils they can find. Arytom's goal is to rid Moscow of these dangers and restore it to safety for it's civilians.
The gameplay is fairly standard FPS. You go through linear levels, mostly within the Metro system itself, though you will sometimes venture to the surface for a change of pace. This isn't exactly an even split though, and I would say around 80% of the game is spent navigating the Metro system, usually at populated stations or via underground tunnels/sewers that connect them to one another. The game needed a more even split. The Metro environments are way too similar and lack identity, as are the segments exploring tunnels and passages in-between. The lack of variety within the environments you transverse make the game dull and less engaging.
I actually harbour the same feelings towards the other core elements of the game. The spread of weapons on offer lack creativity and aren't really that fun to use and the combat is hampered by bad AI and mundane execution that make it lack excitement. There are some more interesting gameplay mechanics. You'll need to collect air filters for your gas mask when you're exploring anywhere above the surface so you don't run out of oxygen and darker portions of the game require the use of night vision goggles, which require you to charge a battery in order to use them at full functionality. It is cool having to play certain segments out from a different perspective via night vision, and having to always be conscious of your air filter time whilst above the surface adds a strong element of survival, but it's not really enough to make the game stand out, and you get a finished product which leads to a very average FPS game.
Metro 2033 is purely a Single Player experience, with all 50 trophies distributed across various tasks within the main Story. There is a minimum requirement of 2 Play-throughs of the game, courtesy of having to play on both "modes", which is not to be confused with difficulty level.
The game needs to be beaten in both Survivor and Spartan mode. Survivor Mode is more focused on stealth gameplay, where resources are less abundant and the player may have to be more savvy with how they progress, whereas Spartan Mode has a much greater emphasis on combat where fighting is encouraged more often, with a higher distribution of resources, but more enemies to kill.
If you want a challenge, then the game will give it to you, and once you've chosen which mode you want to play the game in, you'll then be offered the difficulty level. These rank as Normal, Hardcore, Ranger and Ranger Hardcore, however, the trophies don't make you beat the game within a specific difficulty level, so for the purpose of unlocking the Platinum trophy, you have the freedom of choice, which is the reason the Survivor and Spartan mode trophies won't get a notable mention in this game.
I chose Normal difficulty on both occasions, and the game is rarely a challenge, regardless of whether I was playing through Survivor or Spartan mode. Most enemies are easy enough to put down and the checkpoint system is about as generous as any I've played in any game, never putting you too far back from the position you may have died in, so the consequences of death lend themselves to a much more care-free style of play.
I personally don't think the game is good enough to warrant 2 play-throughs, but it is at least only an 8-10 hour Story, so the overall experience fits into the "could have been worse" category.
The "Enlightened" trophy, awarded for finding the truth, is definitely the trophy to watch out for in this list, because it's doused in mystery and there are things you'll need to know about how you progress through this game in order to unlock it.
It's never made obvious to the player, and perhaps that's intentional game design, but Metro 2033 works off a moral system hidden away in the background, where certain actions you perform throughout the game will either grant or deduct moral points to or from you. This is never introduced, nor explained, relevant actions that lead directly to positive/negative consequences are never indicated when fulfilled and the amount of moral points required to achieve access to the correct ending are not measurable or visibly quantifiable. You just have to go through the game under the assumption that you've earned enough positive moral points, through mostly positive actions, in order to be able to choose the correct ending.
These actions range from the fairly obvious, such as donating currency to homeless people when prompted to do so or saving people from hostage situations, to the less obvious, such as finding hidden areas or interacting with enemies during nightmare sequences. You'll need to use a guide though, purely for how good the game is in keeping the moral system under wraps, and to also avoid the situations where you can potentially earn some negative moral points without realising it.
The theory behind this trophy is, the game ultimately comes down to a solitary decision that you make as the very final action. The "Dark Ones", seemingly an apparition of Artyom's nightmares that appear at frequent points throughout this game, are actually attempting to make contact to Artyom as a signal of peace, and protect him throughout various dangerous plot points in the game in an attempt to communicate this message. This is what the trophy description refers to as "finding the truth" - The realisation that the Dark Ones are a force for good and have helped Artyom reach the conclusion of the story.
The strategy for eliminating the threats now plaguing Moscow is to reach D6, obtain some vital documents on where to find nuclear explosives and plant these on the Tower ready for detonation. If the player has collected enough positive moral points, the final decision the player will make is whether or not to kill the Dark One that attempts to sabotage the detonation. To finalise the requirements of the "Enlightened" trophy, you need to shoot the detonator and NOT the Dark One that attempts to destroy it.
If the game has deemed that you have not collected enough moral points, you won't have this decision to make and will be awarded with the default ending, where Artyom shoots the Dark One and successfully triggers the detonation. Incidentally, if you do manage to accumulate enough moral points, but choose to shoot the Dark One anyway, you will also miss out on the trophy. Finally, if the game deems you to have not accumulated enough positive moral points, you will also miss the trophy and receive the same outcome. All of these scenarios will trigger the "If it's hostile, you kill it" trophy, awarded for becoming a true Ranger, which is effectively just any ending where you allow the detonation to commence.
It makes sense to marry both ending trophies up with the respective Play-throughs of Survival and Spartan Modes, dedicating one to each, but you'll need to follow a guide closely to make sure you get more than enough moral points throughout the game so you don't miss out on the chance to trigger the true ending. The opposite ending is much easier to achieve, as emphasised above through the multiple scenarios in which you can receive it - The fact the game doesn't give you any guidance regarding the moral system makes guidance essential. I made sure I carried out every positive moral action I could, and left nothing to chance, just purely because the game never makes it clear how many of these actions is enough to trigger the correct ending scenario. I'd like to think it's fairly lenient, but you're going to be best off just leaving nothing to chance.
Outside of the trophies determined by how the game ends, there isn't really much else that stands out here. The game opts out of Progression-Based trophies, which is unusual for Story-Driven games, and, as mentioned above, also excludes any difficulty-based trophies.
Instead, there is a very heavy focus on kill accumulation trophies, requiring the player to fulfil a multitude of different tasks tied to obtaining a specific number of kills with the games variety of weapons, as well as killing enemies in certain ways. Trophies that fall into this category, by my reckoning, account for around half of the entire list, which is alot to keep track of.
However, the game comes in clutch with it's checkpoint system, allowing you to farm these trophies extremely easily via the ability to just restart at the previous checkpoint and still count the kills obtained in doing so. You can exploit this really easily by replaying segments with loads of enemies until you've achieved the necessary amount of kills for a specific weapon or situation, and being able to reload each time will not only allow you to quickly move onto the next trophy, but also make your previous actions consequence-free, which is great for making sure killing too many people doesn't impact your moral points at the same time.
At one point during my second Play-through, I farmed 7 of these trophies within a matter of 30 minutes by just playing out a heavily populated segment of the game and reloading back to a prior checkpoint to constantly clear out enemies and continue my kill accumulation progress. It's a lifesaving, trophy-hunter friendly feature and given that some of these trophies require to reach up to 100 kills in some instances, it becomes extremely useful and definitely something everyone should take advantage of on their way towards the Platinum trophy.
It is perhaps important to note that, these trophies cannot be earned across multiple Play-throughs though, and progress will reset to zero if you begin a new game. However, this is where Chapter Select comes in to save the day. Any outstanding trophies post-game can be obtained within Chapter Select, which also includes the small handful of chapter-specific trophies the list offers out. You can also use this feature to go back through and obtain any of the 51 collectible diary entries you may have missed for the "Blogger" trophy, progress for which would also reset upon starting a new game, so it's imperative to highlight the importance of the Chapter Select feature and how it makes the clean-up process very easy for the player. This is typically how most games with the ability to replay individual chapters works anyway, but it's a great alternate option to the checkpoint farming method should you need/prefer it.
Overall, the breakdown of Metro 2033 is very simple. Play through the game twice on both available game modes, and match up both endings accordingly. There's no pressure to play the game to a certain difficulty level and everything you miss can be obtained through a generous checkpoint system that retains your progress no matter how many times you go need to go back. When you add in Chapter Select, it's a trophy list gifted to any trophy-hunter on a plate. Both runs should also only take you a combined total playtime of around 20 hours too.
The lack of explanation around the Moral system is probably the only aspect of the game that makes you figure anything out for yourself, and even that isn't really too difficult to understand when you've got a guide that points out the positive moral points you'll need to fulfil as you go through the game. There are a couple of missable trophies that cannot be achieved via Chapter Select to watch out for, but even these are still slightly forgiving and can be picked up at multiple points throughout the game. You would need to devote an entire Play-through to these in worst case scenario, but this is a minimum 2 runs anyway, so even that shouldn't be an problem.
Notable Trophies -
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| Enlightened - Find the truth. |
Hardest Trophy -
Enlightened Find the truth
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