The experience I found was little short of breathtaking. I played these on Ranger Difficulty and did so with only the knowledge of the original novel in mind. The award winning remasters of the original video game adaption and its 2013 sequel, Last Light. I have, however, recently completed Metro Redux on Xbox One. Although this world was fascinating - and I was eager to explore it - it became a little muddled and unrefined in its presentation. Artyom’s role seemed too eager to satisfy this: with his journey to Polis quickly detouring to other stations to the surface and became increasingly like a tour-guide of the metro rather than anything particularly feasible. It juggled the task of establishing this world whilst providing a coherent narrative arc. All whilst the protagonist, the confused and cynical Artyom, acted as an envoy for a reader trying to make sense of it all.īut Glukhovsky’s text had many shortcomings. It even touched upon how religion would explain and justify the end of the world to those who grew up beneath it. The rival factions, bandits, fascists and communists hypothesised how humanity would order itself when all is lost. The idea of a post-apocalyptic world set within the Moscow Metro (or tube lines for us Brits) with respective stations operating under different regimes felt rich and well conceived. I enjoyed its world building and conceptual premise. An ambitious blend of horror, action, science fiction and political commentary in a lengthy - albeit poorly translated - literary package. Despite briefly playing the opening of 4A Games’ 2010 adaption some years prior to that, I recall little more than a survival shooter with some rather dramatic lighting.
Last summer I read Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033.