Before the first minute was up, I knew Metro Awakening was going to be good. The dark tunnels and rooms of the post-apocalyptic Moscow Metro system make for the perfect setting for a VR game, with developer Vertigo Games able to add so much interactivity to the ideas and mechanics from previous Metro games, while retaining all of the charm, and indeed horror, from its non-VR brothers.
Set mostly in 2028 you play as a Doctor called Serdar, a survivor of the nuclear holocaust and resident of the Metro systems in Moscow. His wife seems to be hearing the voice if their long dead son and you are soon on a quest to work out exactly is happening, exploring themes of grief and mental health as you do so.
The prologue does a great job of setting the scene for newcomers or reminding Metro fans just what was great about the games. You wander through one of the station camps which is packed full of details and this, combined with lots of NPCs chattering away and some superb lighting and graphics, really brings the experience to life. Within a few minutes of playing you forget that you’re in VR and really feel like you are there – something many games fail to achieve.
The controls are well thought out with realistic weapon loading mechanics and the usual holsters on your hips and over your shoulder to store guns – it’s basically the same set up as Arizona Sunshine 2 and Vertigo Games’ other recent titles.
Metro has always had some retro and survivalist tech, but now the mechanics of winding up hand held generator to create electricity for your head lamp has been made fully interactive. In fact, all the mechanics from the Metro games have been reworked for VR, from putting on your gas mask and changing filters to simple touches such as turning your headlamp on and off by raising your controller above your head to click a button. These could have been simplified or even automated, but by making them all interactive it adds a whole new layer to the game. Frantically trying to attach a new filter as you slowly choke to the death is a terrifying experience.
There’s also been a lot of thought put in for how you move about, VR games often have trouble with ledges and jumps and you spend ages positing the character. In Awakening you just need to move forward you will automatically perform the action, while the climbing ladders – which was a bit of a chore in Arizona Sunshine 2 and Remake – has also been made easier.
Apart from one frantic set piece at the start of the game, you are slowly eased in to combat. There’s little-to-no aim assist and with the very limited ammo you’re going to have get good at shooting straight and fast. There’s not many guns in the game but they all play like rusty old Soviet weapons that have been in use for years. They all kick like a mule, so getting those headshots is a must.
There are large battles with multiple enemies, literal on-the-rails sections as you zoom down train tunnels firing massive guns, quieter horror-tinged moments as you creep about and enemies spring from the dark, and stealth sections. I’m not usually fond of stealth, but Awakening confounded expectations and made stealth a heart racing game of cat and mouse, hiding in the dark corners and craning your neck out just far enough to see where the enemies are.
The Metro games have always had great scripts and Awakening is no different with original novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky writing the story. As you play you are accompanied by various characters on your radio and these propel the narrative forward in a very natural way, especially when Max and Serdar are chatting away like the old friends that they are. Peppered throughout the story are short cutscenes, many of which play like an out of body experience and feature an unexpected “celebrity” special guest.
The voice work and animation is spot on and, one again, adds to the immersion. Characters really feel like they are talking to you, with naturalistic “uhms” and “ahs” punctuating their dialogue, rather than the precise chat you get in many games. Another nice touch is that NPC’s eyes and head will, within reason, try and be focussed on you while they are talking. It’s just a small thing that’s fairly common in flat screen games and you probably wouldn’t pay attention to, but it’s another detail that keeps you immersed in the game.
The game also makes full use of PS5 and PSVR 2’s haptic feedback and spatial audio. As you might expect, the weapons provide jolts to the controllers but there plenty of other touches, most notably when you attacked by giant face hugging spiders. After jumping right in to your face they scuttle round the back of your head and the haptic feedback in the PSVR 2 headset revs up so that it honestly feels like there’s a massive spider crawling round the back of your skull. It is horrible! I loved it!
The audio is a key component to the game, you have to listen for the directions of footsteps when playing stealth sections and there are plenty of growls to warn you if you are entering an area full of mutant creatures. There is also a very annoying audio puzzle which requires you to listen to faint singing and follow its direction. Audio puzzles are never great and this one is hampered by loud and similar sounding incidental effects firing off in the background. Outside of the populated stations the graphics do become a little more basic, but low light level throughout most of the game allow these fairly simple images look much better than they actually are. By the way, the provided screenshots for this review are most likely taken from the PC version with all sorts of fancy lighting and shadows, playing on PSVR 2 does not look as good as they do, and Meta Quest will also drop quality down further.
Metro Awakening takes somewhere between ten to twelve hours to complete, but does feel slightly padded towards the end – fighting the dog-like enemies stops becoming scary after a while, though it’s still fun. I would have liked a little more variation in locations as well, as you never really get to go above ground which was a big part of the previous games. There was also a small amount of occasional texture pop in on PS5, something that didn’t really annoy me but was one of the few things that ever broke my immersion.
