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HawkEye is a Sunday feature from Chris Hawke, who analyses his favourite news topic of the week.

Metro 2033 was a brilliant, yet fatally flawed game; quite apt considering 4A Games is a Ukrainian video game developer. The studio was founded by former GSC Game World staff, the most famed of the former satellite-state’s developers, who are known by PC players for the brilliant, yet flawed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.  Both series are similar in style; harsh aggressive Soviet settings, a hint of sci-fi horror, a dash of heart-racing survival gameplay and a general love of dark tunnels illuminated by dim flashlights.

But while S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat can terrify you into a mumbling, childlike state with one hand and depress you with blocky textures of an outdated engine on the other, Metro 2033 had something special – the backing of THQ. The 8th largest video game publisher pumped some much needed cash into the project. Combine the unique source material of Dmitry Glukhovsky, the financial support of THQ, and a bit of Ukrainian elbow grease (watch out, it’s radioactive), and you should have an Eastern European recipe for an incredible game. So, what went wrong?

In terms of the actual game – not much. Sure, mutants took far too many bullets to kill, the stealth was only slightly broken, and whoever made the Amoeba Spores in D6 should be taken outside and shot (too soon?), but with stunning lighting, a compelling story and some of the best atmosphere of 2010, 4A Games did an amicable job. Unfortunately, the game was pretty much dead on arrival, thanks to the negligence shown by THQ. The bare minimum of advertising and lack of post-release support gave the impression THQ were somehow cutting their losses, or trying to sweep a poor product under the carpet. But a Megacritic of 81 and a lot of satisfied gamers begged to differ.

Luckily, that won’t be the case with Metro 2034. According to Danny Bilson, 4A Games is pushing the title to see it compete with the larger first-person shooter franchises around, and THQ will contribute just the same with marketing. So, expect more of that wonderful artwork, tantalising videos, and just maybe, some proper DLC.
There are ways to make the game better, of course. Fix the stealth so that all those neo-Nazi’s hundreds of metres away don’t instantly know where you are simply because you sniffed. Make sure that it doesn’t take a clip of those oh-so precious bullets (which double up as your money in a superb bit of innovation) to kill a weird mutant rat-thing. And for the love of God, no Amoeba Spores. But with THQ now playing the role of the kind, interested father, rather than the embarrassed and careless uncle, Metro 2034 has a much better chance of surviving out in the wild, so long as 4A Games sticks with what Ukrainian developers do best; scare the shit out of you.

 

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