Metro Awakening: almost Metro by 4A Games, but in virtual reality

We first learned about the development of Metro Awakening, a spinoff to the popular Metro series of post-apocalyptic shooters, at Sony's State of Play presentation only six months ago. Back then, we were skeptical about this announcement: despite the expectation of the next installment in the main series, we were promised a game exclusively for VR, and from another developer, which fans of the series perceived as an attempt to make "easy money" on the well-known franchise.

Fortunately, our fears did not come true: despite the fact that 4A Games did not develop it, Metro Awakening turned out to be a high-quality and quite authentic VR game in the Metro universe. First of all, we should thank the developer for this: Vertigo Games is no stranger to creating games for virtual reality - their Arizona Sunshine series is considered one of the best zombie shooters in VR.

Metro Awakening is a prequel to the main series (set in 2028, 5 years before the first part) and tells the story of Serdar, a doctor who embarks on a dangerous journey to another station, first to get medicine for his wife, and later to find her. The script was written by Dmytro Glukhovsky, the author of the original book series and the screenwriter of the first two games, Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light, so in this sense, Metro Awakening is doing just fine.

The game also looks as authentic as possible: the first impression is that you're actually playing a VR mod of the original parts, like Half-Life 2: VR Mod. The graphics are very good for a VR project, but still significantly inferior to the last installment in the main series, Metro Exodus, especially in the Enhanced Edition - it can be compared to the Redux versions of the first two games. By the way, 4A Games shared their own game resources with Vertigo Games, which also contributed to a greater resemblance to the main series - and at the same time placed Kyiv cars in the Moscow subway again.

However, once again, for VR, where budgets are usually much smaller than for traditional video games, Metro Awakening looks very good. I should note that I played the Steam version and haven't seen the PS VR2 or Meta Quest versions, so I can only assume that the PS5 will look the same, while the Quest might have simpler graphics.

But in addition to graphics, the way the game is controlled is very important for VR: after all, it is impossible to create a credible world with a single image. In the case of Metro Awakening, this has an additional meaning - if we recall how it was done in traditional Metro games, where the player had to do many actions aimed at immersing him in the game world: charging a flashlight, setting fire to a web with a lighter, wiping the glass in a gas mask...

Metro Awakening has all of this, and it's adjusted for VR control: the player doesn't press the corresponding buttons on the keyboard or gamepad, but performs these actions with his or her own hands. The same goes for weapon handling, although there are some simplifications compared to other modern VR shooters.

In this respect, VR mechanics are very similar to Arizona Sunshine: the player picks up ammunition and hides it in the area near the stomach, and when reloading, he takes out ready-made magazines from the same place. When you open your palm, the gun automatically returns to its holster (although here, unlike in AS, it becomes invisible), as well as all the items you have taken out of your inventory.

Speaking of inventory. This is probably Metro Awakening's weakest point in terms of realistic VR mechanics. Like in some other VR games, it is realized in the form of a backpack that the player takes out from behind the left shoulder - but unlike, say, Into The Radius VR or Z.O.N.A: Origin, you can't look inside the backpack: it's just a "dummy" with all your stuff hanging on it.

There's no space management and no trying to cram in another store: when you get a new item or weapon in the story, it just appears in its place on a backpack that you have to turn back and forth to get the right thing. The storage of large weapons (assault rifles, shotguns, etc.) is even stranger - they hang on another backpack that you reach with your left hand from behind your right shoulder, so it turns out that you walk around with two empty backpacks filled with different things.

Other than that, Metro Awakening's controls are on point: sometimes they feel a bit arcade-like, but overall they are very immersive. Unfortunately, the interactivity of the game world is much weaker.

Most of the objects in the locations are part of the locations themselves, and it is impossible to interact with them. The player picks up ammunition and first aid kits, opens doors, turns various switches, can grab and break a bottle of vodka, strum a guitar and play the piano, and so on: but almost all other objects cannot even be touched; the interactive ones are even lighted up a little bit on purpose so that he doesn't waste time. So if sometimes the gameplay of Metro Awakening resembles a creepy version of Half-Life: Alyx, the interactivity here is on par with the already mentioned Arizona Sunshine.

The gameplay is generally very similar to the first Metro installments: it's a story-driven, linear action game that takes place either at stations or in tunnels between them. There are much fewer cinematic scenes and almost no episodes when the gameplay turns into a story video, which is good, because such solutions are clearly not for VR.

However, the plot is an important part of Metro Awakening: it does not serve as a simple connection between the different locations the protagonist has to go through, and is regularly presented as dialogues on the radio or conversations with other residents of different stations. And here, it seems to me, the scriptwriter made one uncritical, but still a mistake: the game periodically has very long dialogues during which the player just stands there and does nothing but stares at almost motionless NPCs.

This looks fine in regular computer games, and even more so in console games, because among other things, it gives you a banal opportunity to take a break, sit back in a chair or sofa and just "watch a movie" - but when you play VR, and even while standing (the game supports a "sitting" mode, but it's much worse in terms of immersion), you sometimes get bored of standing and listening. It seems that the developer should have worked more closely with Dmytro Glukhovsky and explained how to present the plot better in VR.

Of course, the game has its drawbacks, of course. For me personally, one of the main ones was the setting of the destroyed Moscow subway - now it is perceived in Ukraine much worse than when the main games of the series were released, and the emphasized Russian accent in the English-language voice acting of all the characters, especially the boy Petya.

I also didn't really like the strong emphasis on mysticism and the underworld in the second half of the game: yes, it's a very important element of the plot, but I don't play Metro to walk around empty locations for half an hour with suspense or to chase ghosts (or run away from them, depending on what kind of ghosts they are). As for me, if there were half as many such episodes, the game would benefit from it.

At the same time, the game's gameplay begins to sag in regular episodes: the same techniques are used over and over again (you'll be shooting monster invasions during long trips on an electric chainsaw more than once or twice), and the plot will periodically chase you around the same locations. Fortunately, the ending turned out to be better, but you'll have to endure a few weak chapters before it.

And, of course, spiders. The game even warns you about them every time you start, and for good reason: if you suffer from arachnophobia, you should avoid Metro Awakening. There will be episodes when spiders the size of your palm will run over your head and through the glass of your gas mask (and even turn off the flashlight on your forehead); when you reach for your backpack and get a spider instead; when spiders the size of a football jump on your face in the spirit of the Alien franchise. I don't have a fear of spiders, but even I didn't like these episodes in the game, also because they accounted for almost all of my character's deaths in the game.

But in general, these shortcomings don't spoil the overall good impression of the game - I played it with pleasure in a few days (it took me a little less than 10 hours to complete it), and now I wouldn't mind similar VR spinoffs for other popular "flat" series.