Metro 2033

In Russia, tunnels walk in you!
Much of the early game is set in claustrophobic tunnels - they're either packed cheek-by-jowl with fellow tunnel-dwellers (who are all going about daily work - raising kids, gossiping, selling junk), or empty, spooky sections that it's best to traverse with a loaded gun and ready torch.

After an initial attack on your dwelling by mutants, you head off looking for help. With the controls mastered, this section introduces you to some other game mechanisms - most notably, the economy. While the game lacks the detailed inventory of STALKER, it does have an interesting take on a post-nuclear economy - everything's value is measured in the most common caliber of ammunition. This is pretty sweet; it shows the kind of thinking going on in these threadbare communities, and leaves you with an interesting choice early on. Do you hoard ammo, or upgrade to bigger and better boomsticks?

The weapons themselves are quite interesting, often cleverly showing in easy visual terms how many rounds remain. The early SMG, for instance, features a skeletal magazine that works its way through the weapon's breach - full clip goes in, empty one comes out.

And before you get too worried by STALKER's peashooter syndrome (man, did that game have some of the most inaccurate and underpowered weapons EVER), the guns in Metro are pleasingly powerful - even early weapons pack a punch that can single-shot mutants, or knock a bandit off their feet.

In combat you'll need to be clever, too, as positional armour can be very effective. Helmets and masks can deflect rounds, and off-center shots might only wound. The AI seems to make good use of cover, so running and gunning will merely get you killed early and often.

Clever Russians
The system of barter via bullets is not the only clever mechanic in the game. Trips above ground are only possible wearing a filtered gasmask - it's your classic timed oxygen-supply-style mechanic, but like many things in Metro, you don't get a UI timer. Instead, every time you don your mask you set a fifteen-minute timer on your wristwatch. Checking that time is only a keypress away, but it brings up your left wrist, and takes your weapon out of play.

Similarly, you have a map-folder and a lighter. When you open your map, you stow your weapon and hold each up in one hand. It's like Far Cry 2, to an extent, but with a couple of added twists. In dark areas, you'll need to right click to open the map, and left click to use the lighter. You can use the lighter by itself, too, as this is directional tool to point you to your next objective - the flame wavers in the direction you need to travel.

There's a lot of idiosyncratic design in Eastern European games, but it usually accompanies great touches like this.

Of course, you still get those idiosyncracies, like the fact that every second room has either a guitar, or a guitar player in it - a hold over from the STALKER dev team, no doubt.

Looks can kill
Finally, we've got to give big props to THQ, the game's publisher. Most previews these days run on console, but we got to see the game on PC. And it's looking stunning. Any veteran of STALKER knows that these guys really know how to develop an engine, and this is no different. The detail in each NPC's gear, or the quality of the ragdolling, down to the play of light and dark in the tunnels, is exquisite - and there's lots of room to bump that detail up and down, too.

At the same time, we were playing the game on a laptop. But even at max detail settings and 2x AA the game still delivered solid frame-rates and awesome detail.

Metro 2033 is a couple of months away from release, and is no doubt still going through the final tweaking phase. We're confident that this could go way beyond STALKER - a great game, but with some serious flaws. Not only is this a competent shooter with a great story - it's also atmospheric, and it times downright spooky. It's also an excellent window onto the Russian mode of story-telling, and of game design.

As you can probably tell, we're looking forward to that final code. You should too.