Test - Metro: Awakening : Test: dark tunnels, terrible mutants, nerve-racking shootouts

Dark tunnels, terrible mutants, nerve-racking shootouts. At first glance, a series like Metro seems tailor-made when it comes to an oppressive VR experience. Developer Vertigo Games also largely succeeds in bringing the essence of the video game adaptation of those famous books by Dmitri Gluchowski into virtual reality. But not all game elements survived the jump into Metro: Awakening equally well.

The Metro series has always drawn on its post-apocalyptic setting and the associated plot. The idea of ​​having to live in Moscow's subway system after a nuclear war in order to escape the thermonuclear winter and radiation, viewed purely as a construct, makes you clench your ass cheeks.

Add to that a few mutated animals that, driven by the will to survive, dig shafts into the walls and tear apart anyone who dares to approach them, and you have a scenario that even Resident Evil can hardly hold a candle to in its hopelessness.

Horror with a butcher shop ambience has rarely been the driving factor in Metro, as the series has so far remained more down-to-earth, oppressive than excessively macabre. A few severed arms, slashed corpses and admittedly macabre depictions of other victims by disfigured beasts compare poorly with mutated zombies, bloodthirsty monk tormentors and giants roaring “Staaaaars”.

Despite an undeniable fantasy factor, the narrative surrounding the fight for survival in the subway tunnels should always be frightening because of its closeness. Because of the thought that, apart from a short period in the 1990s, the nuclear war clock has been at five to twelve for what feels like an eternity and that it could possibly be more terrible to survive the third world war than to be vaporized in a nuclear explosion. Through the contrast of a society that is barely able to survive and has to hoard the bare necessities of life every day instead of sitting comfortably in front of the television, as we do.

New balance for VR

The video game adaptation Metro 2033 and its sequels focused less on the social stakes and more on pure action in defending the last human bastions. A ratio that the new VR variant can no longer afford because many players would be overwhelmed as soon as they strapped a headset over their eyes. It's something completely different to use your head and body than just tugging on a small joystick.

That's why Metro: Awakening is noticeably quieter than its big brothers. Battles occur less frequently, but are all the more nerve-wracking due to the shortage of ammunition. The main character, Sedar, is a doctor and not a soldier, which is more than enough to legitimize the change.

Set in 2028, five years before the first part, the VR offshoot for PSVR2, PC VR and Meta Quest 3 instead takes more time to break down the dilemma of the fight for survival into individual parts. The hook is very simple:

Sedar and his wife are not exactly considered model members of the underground society, but they do their share of work. He is a doctor, she takes care of mushroom cultivation, which is particularly important for food supplies.

However, Sedar's wife suffers from hallucinations due to trauma. She thinks she hears her deceased son. When she runs out of psychotropic drugs and destroys a mushroom harvest, Sedar goes looking for the pills. A dangerous mission, because on the one hand the population of mutants in the subway shafts is constantly increasing, on the other hand the journey leads through contaminated regions near the surface.

As you would expect, the plot takes a very different course than the start suggests, and since it has retroactive consequences for the rest of the series, we don't want to expose you to any spoilers. Suffice it to say: desperation has brought many an upright man into misfortune.

Use the crank to create tension

Metro: Awakening is a cleverly reduced variant of the famous first-person adventures, which does not follow all the rules of flat games, but skilfully puts a lot of things together in a condensed form. Action passages are short and clear, but full of tension because there is a fundamental lack of ammunition.

The exploration of the shafts is linear, but this is cleverly covered up with criss-crossing paths in which you essentially walk in circles due to locked doors until you can find certain switches. There is a lot of successful planning in the game design that only makes sense in a VR title.

Playing through on the TV with a normal controller (or with a mouse and keyboard) is not possible, but it would also be cumbersome because many game elements are aimed at direct interaction. See Sedar's backpack. To view the number of bullets, grenades and healing shots remaining, you must unbuckle the backpack. This not only brings a realistic touch, but also an element of tension that would be just annoying in a typical shooter with a gamepad.

As befits a proper VR game, almost every action has to be carried out manually. Changing magazine clips, injecting healing tinctures, and even recharging the battery for the head-mounted flashlight without which you'd be running blind like a stockfish through tunnels that have never seen a ray of sunlight.

You also have to generate the electricity yourself – with a hand crank. Not just for your flashlight, but for old control systems that keep doors locked and power equipment. A sometimes strenuous affair, but also one that maintains the tension, because when you have to crank while mutants want to get to you, the combination of physical movement and adrenaline rushes gets your heart racing.

One can argue about whether it was really necessary to equip almost every door with a crank mechanism. In any case, the stylistic device never fails to have its effect. You literally sweat blood and water sometimes.

Radioactive

The sauce not only runs on you when cranking, but also when shooting. You have to hoard every single bullet like it's the holy grail. Even with a Kalashnikov, you have to count lead, because every cartridge fired pointlessly can dig your grave. You literally pick up supplies in pieces and are forced to clean out every cupboard, every shelf, every little corner in the hope of finding two or three cartridges. Missing a location is almost a death sentence unless you have a few grenades left to at least roughly clear the waters if things get hectic.

This design decision is guaranteed to divide opinions. Exciting? Oh yes, it's nerve-wracking not knowing whether the ammunition supply is enough. But it's definitely annoying for some people because every failed attempt results in a restart at the last checkpoint. Reset points have been placed logically so that you never end up in hopeless situations, but the time interval between them certainly strains your patience.

Especially since the obligation to follow the programmers' plans down to the smallest detail extends into the exploration sections, because you can only get through contaminated areas if you screw on radiation filters for your gas mask. They last a maximum of three minutes, which also creates an oppressive tension because you're all staring at the digital watch on your wrist, but at the same time significantly limits your curiosity. Not that the linear, albeit sometimes confusingly branching, paths offer much material for free research.