Even in the book, Khan was an awesome character Also, I really love that in Metro 2033, silencers are not actually silent, just like irl, and even reloading right next to an enemy spooks them and breaks your stealth Also, I played both games on the hardest difficulty right off the bat (like in pretty much every game that doesn't turn enemies into unrealistic sponges. Because I'm a madman), so I felt immersed the whole time, and all the emotions that came with it. I really love how when you're alone on the hardest difficulty, every slight noise or anything that sounds like a growl can spook you. And sometimes I even panic-fired when nothing was there.
John Peacekeeper the one reason I don't want to play 2033 on the hardest difficulty is because of the goddamn librarian level. It's already fucking horrifying and long as shit, I don't want it to be as hard as possible too.
Magic Bagel Well... I had the OG version... ...which meant I had the railgun... .......and even then I was fucking terrified to the point of panic shooting every large silhouette
Exactly. In Metro 2033 they're realistic in the sense that the bad guys still hear it, but it reduces it from "He's over there!!" to "Where the hell did that come from?!"
I think Metro’s strength is how it’s tried to differentiate from other FPS by incorporating ‘walking-sim’ elements. I absolutely loved the mission “Ghosts” where for the most part you simply follow Kahn through the mysterious tunnels and listen to him talk. It’s so eery.
you dont want to know how pissed i was when i found out you had to shoot the chandelier...... i wasted a good hour making sure i hadnet missed ANY path....... back tracking..... but nope.... destructible shit yo
how is that counter intuitive man? it's your log, you log stuff in it you keep track of all the stuff going on on that thing, it makes sense ammo is also being tracked there, although I admit, thinking artyom scratching out a number and writing how many he got from some random body seems kind of silly
Unless if you generally play at 2 or 3 am, then those pointers start to look pretty much like with each other, and with the filter's pointer too, took me some time to understand it.
Survival ranger (hardcore or not) definitely feels amazing to play, played it on my first playthrough. It's not that hard if you're somewhat experienced with shooters :)
In most of early society where survival was the most important goal, women being in combat positions was incredibly rare. They were the ones who kept the population up, raised the children, and tended to the homes. That aspect of Metro 2033 is realistic and not a "flimsy excuse" at all.
Well, he assumes exactly that. What is flimsy is how the information given to the player regarding women is near non-existent. We are not shown where all of them are and we are not told either. We can only guess. However if I recall correctly Last Light was way better in this regard. And that's even taking into consideration that I didn't like Anya's presence
dlakodlak While that may be true, we can still assume that they were trying to take a more realistic approach in that department. If they had explained it I would expect backlash from the media. I wouldn't do it if I were the Devs, but i definitely would've liked to see the difference explained.
I think it's also worth mentioning that the developers are from the same guys who made the tunnels of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. Anybody who recognizes that title knows how immersive _that_ game is.
@@LethalKicks Anomaly is excellent, but comparing a modpack like that to a base game like Exodus just isn't fair. S.T.A.L.K.E.R still wins though lmao.
@@bengercak8391 yup, I mean even Artyom is a total miscast considering his age. A lot of NPCs are also mediocre at best, as if they were simply reading the text
A Russian native here. Regarding sexism, it's very much deliberate and realistic. Russia is a sexist place, where gender roles are stuck in the 60s. There are emerging progressive opinions, mostly in young adults, but overall traditional gender roles are very much in order, both in subtle opinions people drop and in the open discrimination that the legal system supports. I imagine that in a scenario of Metro 2033, where an apocalypse has made fighting, shooting, working with machinery definitive qualities for survival, people who don't just have an ability for those things, but people with an existing education and experience with them would get most chances for survival and opportunities to run things and go out in the field. Metro is heavily militarized, and the Russian military doesn't typically enroll women - on the contrary, there is a mandatory draft for males. So, a person who has experience with that system and knows how to exist within it would naturally be a more productive and successful unit. All of that would most certainly lead to a heavily segregated society where sexism is a norm, and a rarely contested one.
Personally, I actually really enjoyed firefights in Metro. I'm not especially good at stealth games, so while I certainly tried to be as stealthy as possible I'd often find myself clearing the first half or so of an encounter with stealth, then going guns blazing when I was discovered or backed myself into a corner. This actually felt really good to me, yeah the gunplay in and of itself isn't great but that actually made the firefights MORE immersive for me. I didn't want to get in to them, but when I did they became these frantic back and forths where I was outnumbered and outgunned and had to use the level geometry I'd learned while stealthing to my advantage. Those points where I had to switch to guns loud actually stick out in my experience more than the stealth, which I recall mostly as a tense calm-before-the-storm, as oxymoronical as that sounds. The moment where I decide to pull out a shotgun and start blasting, or a guy sees me and I have to quickly think "okay, he's in front of me, I saw that other one patrolling the cat walk to my left, and there were those two having a conversation on the other side of the room, how do I not die here?" are my most vivid and enjoyable memories of my playtime in both games. I think that approaching Metro as a stealth game is actually doing it a disservice. It turns detection into a failure and the resulting firefight into a chore, when in my experience that turned out to very much not be the case. Detection wasn't a failure, it was just a change in how I had to resolve the situation I was in, firefights were objectively not as fun as other shooters I've played but carried a lot more wait because I was way more invested in trying to survive after things went to shit. I treated the first third or so of 2033 as a stealth game, and it was actually my least favorite part of the experience, but once I committed to a more fluid playstyle between stealth and combat I was hooked, went from playing an hour or so here or there to borderline double digit play sessions, something I rarely have the drive to do these days. I went in to Last Light with the same mentality I finished 2033 with and it improved my experience drastically from the get go. I don't know if Last Light is actually better than 2033, but by being willing to approach the game on its own terms right from the get-go I know I definitely have fonder memories of the experience.
Nofixd'ahdress the fire fights are great once you realize that you aren't a god and keep your distance. I recall the AI being abit smarter on the xbox 360 release (their patrols were random and when in a group and outnumber you they were more aggressive in their tactics) but i remember reading something about people bitching about this and the developers patching the game to dumb down the human enemies
I really sucked at stealth so I ended up in a lot of gunfights. Honestly I liked the combat, I played on ranger hardcore my first playthrough cause I like playing the hardest difficulties, and it felt horrifying because I was commonly pretty low on supplies. It was also cool that many of the guns sounded powerful and I think thats the biggest key to making them feel good to use, the only guns that sounded weak other than the air guns are the AKs but I put a suppressor on em so it never really mattered. A lot of the improvised guns were also really cool, some of them were a bit silly ((like the bastard)) but none of them were really wacky and unrealistic enough to be weird
Yeah, Chris Davis and Joseph Anderson have decided that, because they couldn't follow what is going on in Souls games, it means those games don't have stories. I kinda get it, I too think Souls games get a little too much praise for their way of storytelling and would also prefer a more traditional way of storytelling, but the way Joseph and Chris dismiss the stories in Souls games just because they don't like the style seems incredibly reductive to me.
Chris doesn’t dismiss it, he explained in his Nioh video the problems with doing story that way, and gave me a further explanation in his The Evil Within review. Joseph is a bit more dismissive I will say, though. But the lore fanbase can be insanely hyperbolic when it comes to praising the stories in the series. None of them have great stories when various other games have lore, but don’t receive the same ridiculous amounts of praise for.
gilgamesh310 In Joe's defense, the overall story in Dark Souls is rather inconsequential. I don't think a player should be required to know or acknowledge the lore of a game, especially in Dark Souls where gameplay is king. It's why he is more fond of Dark Soul 2 than most people, since people have problems with the story in that game
Yeah, I'm always kinda surprised about how much people latched on to the stories in those games. For me they're only a very small part of the appeal. I would definitely be open to more of a traditionally told story in whatever Miyazaki is working on next. NPC quest lines in Dark Souls 1 show me that he could definitely tell a good story if he wanted to.
Ora saikatsu, I just would have preferred if he expanded more on why it was inconsequential, considering the detail he went into on the other facets of the game.
Shannon Flynn The different endings for 2033 were better than Last Light’s but overall the story and music and mission design and pretty much everything about last light was better. It did feel a bit more blockbuster-y but it still maintained its immersion and great pacing. I feel like last light basically did everything better than 2033 despite the fact that I adored both games almost equally. Honestly if you play each game back to back without taking any big break between them they feel like just one long awesome experience and it stays interesting and fun consistently. Only parts that ever really annoyed me were some of the end game sections in each game where I just needed up rushing towards the end as fast as I could.
20:47 I have far to many hours in both the origional games and the redux versions and I'm pretty confident in saying that you can not move the bodies.... sadly.
I never noticed the "morality system" when I played through metro either but judging by the way it's triggered I don't actually think it's a morality system at all. It's based on player perception and is triggered by the players ability to pay attention to their surroundings witch makes perfect sense as the major focus of the game is survival/stealth along with the trophy being titled Enlightened. I.E., you've gained all the information necessary to become enlightened. Not trying to be a dick or anything, just a small nitpick on a long and detailed video that makes a multitude of well thought out points.
strykerGraphics I hate it Certain point make sense like giving begger 1 ammo or save a family But then there are something ridiculous : You don't look at this spot or you doesn't pick up ammo from this hidden body then Violent ending for you. ..wtf
I'm not saying it was implemented well or anything I'm just pointing out the fact that it has more to do with information gathering then morality. I highly suspect it was implemented in the way it was to be a reward for people who actively looked for the environmental clues the developers laid out. Just because you played it the way you did dosen't mean the developers intended you to do so. It was clearly not meant to be easy or even likely. The bad ending is the equivalent of a participation trophy and the good ending is a reward for the obsessively observant so honestly it dosen't mater if you like it or not, it wasn't meant for you.
My Hentai Girl Finding hidden things in the environment is a direct gameplay reflection of inquisitiveness, which would naturally reflect in the character's attitude being curious enough to figure the truth about the dark ones.
Morality Points are about Empathy. When you stop to listen to a conversation you can hear that some soldiers don't want to be in the frontlines and want to return to their families. Empathy is exactly what's missing the way humans approach the Dark Ones. Thats why, with high empathy, you can save them in the end.
Wow, i mean - WOW. What a rational and fair critique. I'm from Russia and this game series have some really deep triggers for russian-speaking gamers. Russian translation is way differnet than English. English has more variety in voices and better acting overall, in Russian - there are more aphorisms and voices that picked - very nostalgic (most actors from STALKER).I love to call this game is "perfection of grotesque" - red, nazi, polis (NATO, lol) all their ideas were shown with such contast with each others, so small amount of people left alive yet they continue to fight with everything and everyone. Thank you for the video, Chris. Love, Ivan
On a related note, how did you and Chris D. play the game language-wise? For reference, I've only played Last Light but I'm set up to play through 2033 sometime later this year. When it came to LL, I felt like playing with Russian audio and English subtitles would be the best way to play through the game (on Ranger HC). But less than an hour in, I realized I was missing pretty much all the side conversations from the NPCs in the safe hub and other places with multiple NPCs. I ended up swapping to English audio and felt a whole layer of world-building that I was missing prior. As someone who is fluent in Russian, did you in particular play through the whole game in Russian first? I wonder how other non-Russian speakers like Chris went about this. When I do eventually get to playing 2033, I'd like to have a solid plan in mind in regards to this language issue. (They could've just added English subtitles for everything though...it doesn't seem like it'd be a huge issue, UI-wise.)
I agree that Ganza definitely NATO represents NATO in the game. None of the factions are painted in particularly good light in the books though. Even Polis is messed up in its own way, to the point where Artyom couldn't return there after the library, as they would have killed him for failing at his task and not keeping their boy alive. Polis is a caste-based military/scientist dictatorship. Artyom's VDNKh station is probably the most positive, fairest faction in the Metro universe. Everyone has to pitch in and do their part as much as they can and in return, they get protection, food and housing. It actually functions as a true Commune, which is basically original Communism, before it was corrupted and perverted into something nasty. On such a small scale, Communism may actually work.
Hansa is a post apoc version of _The Hanseatic League_ who were one of the worlds earliest all-money power groups (not Kings/Emperors etc or Religious) made up of many trades, they were BIG in Europe through the middle ages.
Philosophical ramblings are the bread and butter of the books, though. I see them as one of those "big ideas fed to the masses through fiction" deals, and while I did skip quite a few paragraphs myself, removing them entirely would be a huge mistake. Can't wait for your next video, much love.
Di, k having read and done a lit analysis on the original i must say that it has a ton of problems with monologues, inner and outer ones, 2 dimensional characters, being about twice or more the size it was originally planned out to be(in the original version artyom gets killed by a stray bullet when they are trying to stealthily traverse through a dark tunnel (but the reaction to that ending of an online novel was met with tons of requests to change it, and Dmitry complied), and the amount of technical inconsistencies is through the roof. That said, the descriptions of the stations were nicely written for a first readthrough, and at least one good game came of the so-so book.
By the way, the original original ending would actually have been better in my opinion, for it would have kept the "chosen one" status of artyom as more of a mystery between him going mad, having suffered trauma, him being brainwashed, and actually being the chosen one.
it has the problem that a lot of russian literature has. Much like war and peace, glukovsky uses his book to philosophise about life and everything else and while it is very interesting, it doesn't serve as a gripping read. I love the book, metro 2033, but chekov, tolstoy and even modern novels like metro or roadside picnic fall into this russian literature trap of using it to push their philosophy.
Jacob M - Yeah, this is why I don't do literary analyses of the things I read for pleasure. It's reductive to experience them that way, and it leaves you no better able to absorb the actual meaning critically. The problems you list are problems endemic to Shakespeare, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov... Even Dostoevsky has characters you might call two-dimensional, and in the Metro books there are a lot of characters over time - we don't get to know them all. The whole journey is like a Picaresque bop from station to station, and insofar as each station is characterized by its politics, you could start calling people two-dimensional just by reflecting that... except that even passing, minor characters are given personal, often conflicting motivations, sometimes subtly and without calling direct attention to it, purely in little bits of detail - it doesn't always say a tunnel guard was married, it just mentions his ring, and etc. I'm sure you have examples in mind of who the 2-D characters are, but none stick in my mind - none struck me that way while reading. I'm quite sure you could make your case very well, indeed it sounds like you already have at least once, but my point is this: not having that approach in mind when I read the Metro books, I experienced all of those things you mention, monologues and run-ons, but I experienced none of them as problems. Anyway, I've always had a minor beef with that sort of critique, since to me "too much" seems to be arbitrarily determined by the degree of the reader's interest. There's no concrete way of determining what "too long" or "too much" is. Anyway, if this is too much for you, I wouldn't recommend you try any Thomas Pynchon haha.. All that said, I'd be interested to hear your take, and also if you've read Metro 2035? Also, agreed about the original ending... though we both know that would have been wayyy too ambiguous for many gamers haha. Or just people in general. Remember how pissed people got when they never got to see the top stop spinning at the end of Inception?
It's not a morality system, it's a perspective/respect system. Mostly perspective, but respect in the sense that it'll give one for viewing someone's final moments or finding someone's grave. So basically, they're perception points. And only by having a good perception of the world will you see the Dark Ones for what they actually are. It makes much more sense if you just remove the lazy label of, 'morality system.' Yes, it works the same as one, but it's got little to do with morals in a lot of ways.
_Ah, I know exactly what you're talking about with the level where Bourbon is captured. In my first playthrough I went in guns blazing and immediately and as you'd expect, never noticed Khan helping at all. I had no idea that it was a feature of the level until my second playthrough where I tried attempted the "no killing" route. I was quite shocked to have enemies that were a stone's throw from spotting me dropping with a knife in their back._
Fans of immersion should give Far Cry 2 on infamous difficulty a look. I’d also say the original Dead Space is likewise drenched in immersion. Two of my all-time favs.
Nathan I agree in principle but found that after the first couple missions you’re really not backtracking with enough frequency for it to be a big deal. Most missions are separated by miles and miles and usually involve a safehouse or two. You can grab that lost immersion right back simply by noting it’s been a few days (or sometimes even a week or more) since you were there. I also read that it wasn’t a design decision per se but some kind of memory/console hardware limitation. Ideally they should’ve respawned after a couple in-game weeks.
Missing Women... ooooo boy, wait for Last Light XD Also the reason it's the dark ones that gets blamed is cuz.... every single contact with them has resulted badly. People cannot handle the psychic touch of them. Artyom can handle it because he was touched by them as a kid.
26:00 The King Kong game from 2005 had a feature which would make the player character tell you (or just remind himself, I guess) roughly how much ammo he has left. You press a button and he tells you. th-cam.com/video/r4iOcLSHoIo/w-d-xo.htmlh14m45s
In Metro 3035 Arytom mentions that both men and women would take up arms if VDNKH was assualted due to their status as an independent station/alliance from Hanza, Reich, and the Reds leaving them unable to retreat or, frankly, likely to survive the assault. I can’t recall anything that implied such a schewed ratio in any of the novels either: everyone rotates between kitchen duty, cultivating mushrooms, pig husbany, guard posts, and so on due to their population needs/limitations. It might just be a result of the developers’ priorities during game development.
Metro last light was like the even better version of this game to me! i hated those damn parts in this game where u have to shoot the chair or the chandelier. like wtf kind of puzzle is that? im dyin of no oxygen here!!
@@ddm_gamer Hole in the door where all you could see was wood blocking the door - seemed obvious to shoot it. The chandalier was making a loud screeching sound constantly, when I investigated the noise I saw it was loose and moving while making the sound, seemed obvious to shoot it. I get that it could take some people a few minutes but taking hours to figure that out? Really?
@@RichardVSmall I was looking everywhere except through that door, that was my problem lol i only briefly looked through the door and didnt notice anything so i spent a good time looking at everything else.
Metro 2033 is original knife throwing amazingly immersive. In the original unabated version your character holds the spare knives in his off hand and he holds them up on the screen a little bit to the left of center. This gives a reference point for you to aim and judge bullet-drop off spare knives that are in his hand.
The issue with "no HUD" modes is that, while it adds to visual immersion, it totally breaks any immersion you might have getting into your character's skin. Yes, you don't have things like ammo counters IRL, that's true... but you can easily look down at your carrier and see what you have left, or look at your hip and see a grenade there, then reach for it as opposed to the incendiary grenade or whatever. Stripping away the HUD and not offering an alternative is essentially the game lobotomizing you and telling you to go into the world, but now you don't know what the fuck is going on 90% of the time.
The running out of gas masks is a serious issue in the game, i ended up getting stuck at the start of an above-ground level with barely any air left and desperately searching for filters or a mask thinking that surely they wouldn’t let the player accidentally get stuck into an unwinnable state but couldn’t find anything
2033 is better than 2033 Redux. I got stuck on a bug in 2033 Redux and while perusing to find the answer I found some old 2033 footage only to realize this version is far more atmospheric and in most cases looks better. While I'm sure the graphically fidelity is better in Redux, the original had darker and more interesting lighting combined with a dirtier looking people. The guy who I was supposed to talk to in Redux looked like any old random wastelander while the guy in the original looked like a haggard old man.
Great video! If i remember correctly in the book there was one outpost, where The Dark Ones try to enter the metro, so from there you start thinking they are threat.
Last Light has a good morality system so I'm looking forward to you playing around with that. Also if you haven't, try out Condemed: Criminal Origins. It's my fav horror game and reminded me a lot of Metro 2033 in terms of gameplay. Instead of scrounging for ammo you're breaking lead pipes off the wall or equipping loose rebar to defend against what I can only describe as psychotics. The AI moves around every level and tries to ambush you, so you've always got to be on your toes. Especially on hardest difficulty. The atmosphere is especially oppressive and, should you get far enough in the game, you'll bear witness to the cheapest, dumbest, lamest jumpscare of all time but you'll jump outta your chair guaranteed. And instead of kicking yourself, you'll marvel at just how little they had to do to get you to completely freak out. It's infamous and as a horror fan, it's worth the price of admission. Wait, that's the second one. Oh well. Play both maybe.
Good morality system? Doesn't it punish you for killing literally any humans, even if they're horrible people who are oppressing or killing good innocent people?
@@legion999 you are free to kill the bandits in the bandits section, and the reds in the outbreak level and the final level, but you also have to avoid killing any beasts in the bridge level and save the mother bear
Your brightness was way too high. You're supposed to not be able to see, that's where like 70% of the atmosphere comes from. The feeling of struggling to locate the source of some menacing growl in a pitch black tunnel with a weak flashlight while simultaneously stressing about how little ammo you have creates a cocktail of extreme tension, fear, and dread. With the brightness as high as you have it, you don't even need your flashlight at all to be able to see. Trust me. When it says "adjust your brightness until the left-most image is barely visible", DO AS IT SAYS lol. Other than that, great video.
Immersion is based on your own mind only. You can get immersed in a world simply through characters that feel realistic enough. If your socialy inept it might actually help you get more immersed in said game through dialogue. Same with physics immersion and survival immersion.
BOTH 2033 & Last Light REDUX Versions are equally fantastically amazing. The quality of life changes implemented into both games breathes new life into an already amazing experience & makes it even more gritty & claustrophobic!! The only negatives concerning Metro is that it comes to an end!!!! Then there’s always Metro: Exodus, which is another phenomenal experience that plays like no other game of its kind. It’s like the 1st 2 Metros mixed w/elements of STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl.
Dinging the game because you weren't good enough to preserve your filter supply on the hardest difficulty. News flash, you knew what you were getting into by playing the mode specifically designed to put you into that position. That isn't the games fault, that's your fault. Get better at the game and you'll have plenty of filters to spare.
Anthony Barone I finished with 23 spare filters on ranger mode, mostly from doing the stealth sections well and using the crossbow and throwing knives a lot, stealth suit is also a tremendous help.
Nice Video and interesting Review, i think the fact that you played on Ps4 had an impact on your experience with the "Gunplay" , i played Metro 2033 on Pc and thought it had great Gunplay and Feedback on a hit. In the end as you said yourself thats a personal thing though.
Who would go to extreme lengths jut to get a trophy? oOf, this just gave me a flashback of playing dark souls 3 non stop to get the Dark Soul achievement
I don't know about all this immersive talk, but you can't beat the Thief trilogy in terms of sound, lighting, environment, characters, enemies, lore. I wasn't scared of a single enemy in Metro, they all just felt like hairless monkeys. Thief will scare you with the best sound design in all of video games.
In terms of changing grenade types and such, it's important to remember this game was originally a PC exclusive and was made with Keyboard and Mouse in mind. We have keyboard shortcuts instead of radial menus, so Ranger Hardcore first time playthroughs (like I did) are completely possible. Also, you can check how much ammo you have in the journal on Ranger.
36:25 I wanted to mention this the first time I saw the video but I forgot. You're not being commended for resisting the dark ones but for resisting the effects of the anomaly. This is also why Bourbon enlists your aid. Admittedly this makes a lot more sense in the book. In it they weren't attacked by nosalis (who don't exist) but all start to hallucinate because of... something (probably a gas leak in the tunnel) and Artyom is the only one that isn't affected by it and manages to save the others by getting them to leave rather than stay there and die. Later Khan theorizes that the gas pipes contain the spirits of all the people that died in the metro and they whisper to the living... which is the kind of thing he'd say. Towards the end of the novel Artyom hears that Hansa actually covered the pipes that were leaking and now the tunnel is safe. So was it a supernatural event or just gas? Also about the dark one vision in that tunnel: I believe what the games is trying to tell you vaguely is that the dark ones are the ones that saved you there by waking you up. They later save you again along with Bourbon in the "Big Doors" section. Also small correction :3 Only one person died, not two.
The bit about stealth and the enemies' sight at around 16:30 was a bummer for me in Last Light and why I never picked up the 2033 redux, along with the outdoor environments being too bright and throwables being a press X to throw rather than an equip-able so you can see what you were throwing before. In the original 2033, your watch had 3 light indicators for stealth: red, yellow and green. That yellow added some uncertainty to how well you were hidden. I wish I remembered more about it but it's been years since I played it.
The Dark Ones are shown to be helpers early in the game while you’re still near VDNKh. You can see a few of them watching you from a distance a couple times if you’re attentive enough. They are the reason you see that park in it’s pre-war state (you also get good karma for removing your gas mask at that point). The one that wakes you up on the handcart is actually in the middle of fighting Hunter. You distract it long enough for it to lose interest in Hunter, who kills it. Another one helps you and Bourbon from getting trapped and killed in that sewer pit. And while they’re pretty powerful, they do have weaknesses that other mutated creatures can exploit. That’s why they don’t tend to venture further than Botanical Garden station. Book lore states there’s a Demon(bitch) nest just above the entrance to VDNKh. They’re interest in getting into the Metro is not only to help the humans, but to hopefully find a safer place to stay away from predators above ground.
"I also consider bloodborne to be an immersive game despite the lack of a story or interesting characters" you make me sad. theres so much story going on
I've been quietly enjoying your content to sleep to for atleast a year. Maybe 3. Time flies. Only now I feel compelled to comment that i approve of your "I liked got b4 it was cool" I never do this irl, even though I want to regularly
I'm so glad you touched on the problem with the rooms leading to the library. My playthrough almost got irreparably fucked because I spent so much time trying to find out what the hell I needed to do
With the air filter issue, one reason, aside from not putting it in for NPC's, is that those in the library are Rangers, who have a huge supply open to them, so air filters likely arent something they worry about, they just bring alot.
The Morality Points are about Empathy, not being good or evil. Being a more empathic person would mean understanding the Dark Ones better. Not killing anyone during Frontline and giving a random person a bullet give you points because in both instances you show empathy to the soldiers that most likely didn't want to be there and to the person in need.
I'm amazed that your average youtuber can sleep through the apocalypse but will never fail to rise to the defense of facism by saying "whudabout the commies?" in 50 different ways.
You just sound like you're trying to defend Nazis. I ain't a communist but logical people would have to agree that aspects of communism such egalitarianism/equality are positive, even though communism failed in many states in many aspects. Nazism is straight up killing anything deemed 'racially' inferior.
Of course many died during communist regimes. The original argument by the original commenter was that communism is either just as as bad as Nazism or more evil. Let's be objective here- you have one ideology here where everyone is treated as equals regardless of background (communism) vs an ideology where your background determines whether you live or you die (Nazism). You can easily have a white, black or Asian communist countries but you can ONLY have white countries that are Nazi. With the implementation of communism, everyone seemed to suffer. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, hiding in an attic was a means of survival. Under both communism and Nazism, millions suffered. Today, let's see to which people which ideology is more appealing. Some people who see themselves as communists get drawn to the ideology due to the appeal of equality. Racists are drawn to Nazism as they see their 'race' as superior and that everyone else should die or be quarantined out of the West.
If you pull up your notebook and then hit right trigger on ranger hardcore you can see the amount of ammo you have. It’s the only way you can at all bring up any HUD or UI outside of a vendor. It maintains the immersion without forcing you to walk blind. I fucking love it.
20:18 actually, I blew the stealth almost right away in that mission and did have to lob grenades and go in all guns blazing and you're completely right, when the next level loaded and Artyom narrates something like "I thought I felt someone helping me from the shadows" I had no idea what he was talking about. lol
Wonderful critique. I like most of your points, especially how the canon ending of the game doesn't quite match up to the ending of the book. However, there's a few things later in the video I couldn't agree with. You mentioned that the nosalis take a seemingly random number of bullets to kill, but this has not been my experience. In fact, having played both 2033 and Last Light I find that to be just the opposite. I found the hit detection to be solid and have never experienced nosalises surviving what I assumed to be a headshot, since Ranger mode difficulty hides the cross hair. I also found that it wasn't too difficult to discern an injured/flinching nosalis from a dead ragdolling nosalis, given that you can see - for the most part - where your shot landed on them. I also think this lack of clarity adds a bit more realism to the game, and is a meaningful way to keep you on your toes to make sure the enemies on the ground are actually dead and thus, can ignore.
It would really be beneficial, if not here in an annotation but in your written review, to mention you CAN see your ammo supplies when you bring up your clipboard as it was the one main deterrent you had for recommending new players to play Ranger mode. This is one of these titles that really warrants Normal Ranger Mode to get the full experience.
The threat of the dark ones is established in the opening with the hospitalised soldiers who lost their minds to them and then further when they attack Artyoms Station and you run to the front line, which leads into Hunter leaving on his mission
That and according to Metro the nuclear radiation further progressed evolution or something which led into the dark ones. They are reminiscent of people but less inclined to engage in violence. They remain together as they nest. Essentially it's the same as we do in cities.
This is one of my favourite games. This is a VERY rational and fair critique. I know the flaws are there and yes the revolver looks pretty funny and you've hit the point of the flaws on the head. Well done on covering a damned good game!
I like Last Light more, bigger and better for the most part. Also the best thing you can do for immersion/atmosphere in this game is turn the gamma low so it's really dark unless there's a light source.
okay quick correction: Nosalises are the mole like enemies found in caves and populate swaths of underground tunnels. Watchmen are doglike predators that roam in packs or large colonies. I know in 2033 its easy to not get that there is a difference, but one is on two legs and snarling and the other is on four legs and growls (and has fur)
7:00 to explain this a bit more the station which artyom’s mum was located on the edge of a huge rat hive which was in a system of service corridors after the station was overrun a group of soldiers with a motorised carriage car managed to get away at the next station it took a full tank of napalm from a flame thrower to stop the rats So yeah not just ye average nightmare (plus these rats are the size of dogs)
In ranger hardcore you can tell how much ammo in total you have if you hold you jornal and look at it, it will also appear the hud to throwables, it's not a known feature but it exists
Probably been mentioned before, but weapons aren't antiquated. They are made post-war from materials lying around. Like pipe guns from Fallout 4 only with much more thought put into them.
this game was so immersive and amazing, i think i got 27 heart attacks by falling debris and lamps this game is the most immersive game to date... prove me wrong
I'm not sure if anyone has brought this up but, in ranger hardcore if you bring up your clip board and lighter and lift up your clip board for a better view it will show you how many bullets and money you have as well as most of your resources. It doesn't say anywhere that it does this but it is, really just a slight on the devs part
@@dewittbourchier7169 And what? During post-apocalypse, the lives of women and children should be protected as much as possible. 50,000 people remain in the subway, and their number is constantly decreasing due to mutants, radiation, hunger, diseases and bandits, do you think anyone will allow a woman to kill and die in these tunnels at such a time? I believe that no, a woman can give birth, but a man can not. And cloning in their universe has not yet been invented. But I liked this review.
@@Newdiletant The dangers of the world, and the men being the merchants, stalkers, and soldiers means women should dominate the populations of the safe stations. Because a lot of men would be dead or away. Metro is clearly a story written by and about the Male perspective. Which is totally fine, but it completely ignores the interior lives of women within the game's universe. A good example of a game from and about the male perspective would be Red Dead 2. The game is about a man in a male dominated world, but the game still acknowledges that women exist and have thoughts and feelings as complex as the men. Tilly, Ms Grimshaw, Abigail, etc. generally stay in camp doing domestic chores but the game still shows that they have their own lives and perspectives.
@@jasonfenton8250You're half right. Firstly, yes, there should be more civilian women, and the developers messed up a little with logic. Secondly - Well, Red Dead 2 is a totally Western, American game. About the American Wild West. The situation with the Metro is different. The Slavs have different views on gender relations. And I think that Americans have a bad habit of promoting their values wherever they can, and teaching everyone else from a position of moral superiority, which is not very true.
man i dont even know how you ran out of air filters, i was good on all of my resources throughout the game and i played it in ranger mode. anyways, nice review! i enjoy your content! keep up the great work!
I remember playing survival ranger hardcore and there's a sound that plays when you get close to tripwires similar to pulling out a knife. It's a small but noticable hint 4A left for you to know you can snip it and that level of detail makes it where I can't help but love the game.
Two of the fellows on the hand car survive - only the one that's technically hitching a ride and not part of the caravan bites the dust. Boris [the one who toasts you in the bar] is the other one that didn't wake up after Artyom's vision.
Two misinformations that I noticed: 1) You can't move bodies as claimed in 20:45 2) You absolutely can check your ammo supply, even in Ranger Hardcore difficulty. Bring up the notepad with your objectives and hold down the button that lets you take a closer look (dunno which one that would be for the PS4, but it's the right mouse button on PC) which brings up a HUD with all your ammo information. Not implying that it's an ideal solution by any means, but the option is definitely there.
You can check how much ammo you have left by pulling up the journal (pull up compass then press the shoot button). It pulls up that menu where it shows everything you have.
Major game/book spoilers below. Wait, they really explained people got killed by The Dark Ones with Nosalisks? WHAT!? If I recall correctly it was explained that people just got super mad when TDO where nearby and either lost their minds, or lost their minds and started killing their fellow guards in this tunnel. And it was because TDO weren't able to contact with humans correctly and Artem(/Artyom) was the only one who didn't go crazy, but still they couldn't communicate with him well, so instead of sending a message of peace and friendship, they scared him.
you can check your ammo carried in ranger hardcore by bringing up the clip board / map. which also makes sense, that in your downtime you would keep stock of each ammo type you are carrying and write it down.
You can keep track of your ammo count with no HUD. You bring up the notepad/journal and press one of the triggers (on console) and you a summary of all your ammo, filters, medkits etc.
Around the 14 minute mark, I completely agree with the filter situation. Through half of 2033 and all of last light, I'd adopted a strategy of "10 seconds on, 20 seconds off" when it came to the outdoor sections. Sure, it's less stealthy when you're breathing hard, but when you're fighting a horde of noisaleses or just strolling around, it helps to be using 1/3 of the filters you normally would. At the end of my first playthrough of 2033 though, I had no filters at the last checkpoint, so I basically had to speedrun to the top of the tower with only seconds until I suffocated. It took a good 5 tries lol.
Even in the book, Khan was an awesome character
Also, I really love that in Metro 2033, silencers are not actually silent, just like irl, and even reloading right next to an enemy spooks them and breaks your stealth
Also, I played both games on the hardest difficulty right off the bat (like in pretty much every game that doesn't turn enemies into unrealistic sponges. Because I'm a madman), so I felt immersed the whole time, and all the emotions that came with it.
I really love how when you're alone on the hardest difficulty, every slight noise or anything that sounds like a growl can spook you. And sometimes I even panic-fired when nothing was there.
John Peacekeeper the one reason I don't want to play 2033 on the hardest difficulty is because of the goddamn librarian level. It's already fucking horrifying and long as shit, I don't want it to be as hard as possible too.
Magic Bagel Well... I had the OG version...
...which meant I had the railgun...
.......and even then I was fucking terrified to the point of panic shooting every large silhouette
John Peacekeeper you're not supposed to shoot them lmao
And the railgun is in the redux too
Suppressors aren't that quite tho. They restrict the amount of sound sure but they are still kinda loud
Exactly. In Metro 2033 they're realistic in the sense that the bad guys still hear it, but it reduces it from "He's over there!!" to "Where the hell did that come from?!"
I think Metro’s strength is how it’s tried to differentiate from other FPS by incorporating ‘walking-sim’ elements. I absolutely loved the mission “Ghosts” where for the most part you simply follow Kahn through the mysterious tunnels and listen to him talk. It’s so eery.
26:25
You can actually check your ammo by looking at your journal in Ranger Hardcore. Or at least on PC you can.
That seems... counter-intuitive.
It's kinda like if...
I wonder how many health kits I have left, better check my lighter!
Well? How else do you see what's in your bag in the dark?
you dont want to know how pissed i was when i found out you had to shoot the chandelier......
i wasted a good hour making sure i hadnet missed ANY path....... back tracking.....
but nope.... destructible shit yo
I fucking love no hud, also when you switch to different grenades/equipment there's unique sound queues so you can determine from that
how is that counter intuitive man?
it's your log, you log stuff in it
you keep track of all the stuff going on on that thing, it makes sense ammo is also being tracked there, although I admit, thinking artyom scratching out a number and writing how many he got from some random body seems kind of silly
Inside the metro system your clock shows your actual IRL time which helps with immersion
U_r_stupid
There are stations with still functioning clock, not sure about the percentage of them
Unless if you generally play at 2 or 3 am, then those pointers start to look pretty much like with each other, and with the filter's pointer too, took me some time to understand it.
@@MurriciTerceiro on spartan mode you have a digital clock instead of a pointer clock
@@jalk12 ik, it helps a little when you are begining
Survival ranger (hardcore or not) definitely feels amazing to play, played it on my first playthrough. It's not that hard if you're somewhat experienced with shooters :)
instablaster...
In most of early society where survival was the most important goal, women being in combat positions was incredibly rare. They were the ones who kept the population up, raised the children, and tended to the homes. That aspect of Metro 2033 is realistic and not a "flimsy excuse" at all.
Hans S yeah and kinda needed
They'd be called sexist had they not allowed woman.
Well, he assumes exactly that. What is flimsy is how the information given to the player regarding women is near non-existent. We are not shown where all of them are and we are not told either. We can only guess. However if I recall correctly Last Light was way better in this regard. And that's even taking into consideration that I didn't like Anya's presence
dlakodlak While that may be true, we can still assume that they were trying to take a more realistic approach in that department. If they had explained it I would expect backlash from the media. I wouldn't do it if I were the Devs, but i definitely would've liked to see the difference explained.
Yeah, and they were also most of the people who teached
I think it's also worth mentioning that the developers are from the same guys who made the tunnels of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. Anybody who recognizes that title knows how immersive _that_ game is.
And we recognise your profile picture too...🙂
Which you enjoyed the most:Stalker or Metro?
Metro was never going to be better than Stalker.
@@willgraves9310 I would say Exodus surpassed S.T.A.L.K.E.R
@@viewaskew7741 Lol nope. Ever played Anomaly?
@@LethalKicks Anomaly is excellent, but comparing a modpack like that to a base game like Exodus just isn't fair. S.T.A.L.K.E.R still wins though lmao.
"with all the accuracy of dick cheney after a few drinks" is one of my favorite lines in a video ever holy shit thank you for that one
Personally I played through the game in Russian with English subtitles. It added to the experience for me.
Same my da thought me a bit of Russian so i didnt need the subtitles much
I'm fluent in russian and I must tell you that quality of actor's work is way better in English version
@@monto4944 Really? I always assumed that the Russian voice actors were going to be better than the English voice actors.
@@bengercak8391 yup, I mean even Artyom is a total miscast considering his age. A lot of NPCs are also mediocre at best, as if they were simply reading the text
A Russian native here. Regarding sexism, it's very much deliberate and realistic. Russia is a sexist place, where gender roles are stuck in the 60s. There are emerging progressive opinions, mostly in young adults, but overall traditional gender roles are very much in order, both in subtle opinions people drop and in the open discrimination that the legal system supports. I imagine that in a scenario of Metro 2033, where an apocalypse has made fighting, shooting, working with machinery definitive qualities for survival, people who don't just have an ability for those things, but people with an existing education and experience with them would get most chances for survival and opportunities to run things and go out in the field. Metro is heavily militarized, and the Russian military doesn't typically enroll women - on the contrary, there is a mandatory draft for males. So, a person who has experience with that system and knows how to exist within it would naturally be a more productive and successful unit. All of that would most certainly lead to a heavily segregated society where sexism is a norm, and a rarely contested one.
Personally, I actually really enjoyed firefights in Metro. I'm not especially good at stealth games, so while I certainly tried to be as stealthy as possible I'd often find myself clearing the first half or so of an encounter with stealth, then going guns blazing when I was discovered or backed myself into a corner. This actually felt really good to me, yeah the gunplay in and of itself isn't great but that actually made the firefights MORE immersive for me. I didn't want to get in to them, but when I did they became these frantic back and forths where I was outnumbered and outgunned and had to use the level geometry I'd learned while stealthing to my advantage. Those points where I had to switch to guns loud actually stick out in my experience more than the stealth, which I recall mostly as a tense calm-before-the-storm, as oxymoronical as that sounds. The moment where I decide to pull out a shotgun and start blasting, or a guy sees me and I have to quickly think "okay, he's in front of me, I saw that other one patrolling the cat walk to my left, and there were those two having a conversation on the other side of the room, how do I not die here?" are my most vivid and enjoyable memories of my playtime in both games.
I think that approaching Metro as a stealth game is actually doing it a disservice. It turns detection into a failure and the resulting firefight into a chore, when in my experience that turned out to very much not be the case. Detection wasn't a failure, it was just a change in how I had to resolve the situation I was in, firefights were objectively not as fun as other shooters I've played but carried a lot more wait because I was way more invested in trying to survive after things went to shit. I treated the first third or so of 2033 as a stealth game, and it was actually my least favorite part of the experience, but once I committed to a more fluid playstyle between stealth and combat I was hooked, went from playing an hour or so here or there to borderline double digit play sessions, something I rarely have the drive to do these days. I went in to Last Light with the same mentality I finished 2033 with and it improved my experience drastically from the get go. I don't know if Last Light is actually better than 2033, but by being willing to approach the game on its own terms right from the get-go I know I definitely have fonder memories of the experience.
Nofixd'ahdress the fire fights are great once you realize that you aren't a god and keep your distance. I recall the AI being abit smarter on the xbox 360 release (their patrols were random and when in a group and outnumber you they were more aggressive in their tactics) but i remember reading something about people bitching about this and the developers patching the game to dumb down the human enemies
I also adored the gunplay I actually found the kinda slow clunky feel of everything added to it and made it more fun and weighty to me.
This is so true.
I really sucked at stealth so I ended up in a lot of gunfights. Honestly I liked the combat, I played on ranger hardcore my first playthrough cause I like playing the hardest difficulties, and it felt horrifying because I was commonly pretty low on supplies. It was also cool that many of the guns sounded powerful and I think thats the biggest key to making them feel good to use, the only guns that sounded weak other than the air guns are the AKs but I put a suppressor on em so it never really mattered.
A lot of the improvised guns were also really cool, some of them were a bit silly ((like the bastard)) but none of them were really wacky and unrealistic enough to be weird
2:41
>Bloodborne
>Lack of story and interesting characters
Incredibly triggering
Yeah, Chris Davis and Joseph Anderson have decided that, because they couldn't follow what is going on in Souls games, it means those games don't have stories.
I kinda get it, I too think Souls games get a little too much praise for their way of storytelling and would also prefer a more traditional way of storytelling, but the way Joseph and Chris dismiss the stories in Souls games just because they don't like the style seems incredibly reductive to me.
Chris doesn’t dismiss it, he explained in his Nioh video the problems with doing story that way, and gave me a further explanation in his The Evil Within review. Joseph is a bit more dismissive I will say, though. But the lore fanbase can be insanely hyperbolic when it comes to praising the stories in the series. None of them have great stories when various other games have lore, but don’t receive the same ridiculous amounts of praise for.
gilgamesh310 In Joe's defense, the overall story in Dark Souls is rather inconsequential. I don't think a player should be required to know or acknowledge the lore of a game, especially in Dark Souls where gameplay is king. It's why he is more fond of Dark Soul 2 than most people, since people have problems with the story in that game
Yeah, I'm always kinda surprised about how much people latched on to the stories in those games. For me they're only a very small part of the appeal.
I would definitely be open to more of a traditionally told story in whatever Miyazaki is working on next. NPC quest lines in Dark Souls 1 show me that he could definitely tell a good story if he wanted to.
Ora saikatsu, I just would have preferred if he expanded more on why it was inconsequential, considering the detail he went into on the other facets of the game.
You're in for a treat with Last Light.
I loved Last Light, felt way longer and they played a lot more with the ghost stuff.
U_r_stupid last light is better in every single way.
@@xeagaort I thought 2033 had the better endings
Shannon Flynn
The different endings for 2033 were better than Last Light’s but overall the story and music and mission design and pretty much everything about last light was better. It did feel a bit more blockbuster-y but it still maintained its immersion and great pacing. I feel like last light basically did everything better than 2033 despite the fact that I adored both games almost equally.
Honestly if you play each game back to back without taking any big break between them they feel like just one long awesome experience and it stays interesting and fun consistently. Only parts that ever really annoyed me were some of the end game sections in each game where I just needed up rushing towards the end as fast as I could.
@@shiftyjim4138 when it comes to the books. 2033 is better. When it comes to the games last light is more fun.
D6 was not a missile silo, but a control center. The thing Artyom carried up the top of the TV tower was a laser designator, not a transmitter.
20:47 I have far to many hours in both the origional games and the redux versions and I'm pretty confident in saying that you can not move the bodies.... sadly.
EnRandomSten Well, iirc they move a little bit when you loot them. xd
well I guess we have vastly diffrent definitions on "moving" the bodies xD
EnRandomSten Well... Technically you move them. xD
"WhElL TeChNiCaLlY"
EnRandomSten WHEIL AKUTLY ACCORDING TO THE MANGA
All you have to do is bring up your clipboard to see your inventory… this is a godsend on ranger hardcore! It’s not for the faint of heart!
I never noticed the "morality system" when I played through metro either but judging by the way it's triggered I don't actually think it's a morality system at all. It's based on player perception and is triggered by the players ability to pay attention to their surroundings witch makes perfect sense as the major focus of the game is survival/stealth along with the trophy being titled Enlightened. I.E., you've gained all the information necessary to become enlightened. Not trying to be a dick or anything, just a small nitpick on a long and detailed video that makes a multitude of well thought out points.
strykerGraphics I hate it
Certain point make sense like giving begger 1 ammo or save a family
But then there are something ridiculous :
You don't look at this spot or you doesn't pick up ammo from this hidden body then Violent ending for you.
..wtf
strykerGraphics Even when through out the entire game i just knock enemy down, i still got violent ending just because i didn't discover enough
I'm not saying it was implemented well or anything I'm just pointing out the fact that it has more to do with information gathering then morality. I highly suspect it was implemented in the way it was to be a reward for people who actively looked for the environmental clues the developers laid out. Just because you played it the way you did dosen't mean the developers intended you to do so. It was clearly not meant to be easy or even likely. The bad ending is the equivalent of a participation trophy and the good ending is a reward for the obsessively observant so honestly it dosen't mater if you like it or not, it wasn't meant for you.
My Hentai Girl Finding hidden things in the environment is a direct gameplay reflection of inquisitiveness, which would naturally reflect in the character's attitude being curious enough to figure the truth about the dark ones.
Morality Points are about Empathy. When you stop to listen to a conversation you can hear that some soldiers don't want to be in the frontlines and want to return to their families.
Empathy is exactly what's missing the way humans approach the Dark Ones. Thats why, with high empathy, you can save them in the end.
Wow, i mean - WOW. What a rational and fair critique. I'm from Russia and this game series have some really deep triggers for russian-speaking gamers. Russian translation is way differnet than English. English has more variety in voices and better acting overall, in Russian - there are more aphorisms and voices that picked - very nostalgic (most actors from STALKER).I love to call this game is "perfection of grotesque" - red, nazi, polis (NATO, lol) all their ideas were shown with such contast with each others, so small amount of people left alive yet they continue to fight with everything and everyone. Thank you for the video, Chris.
Love,
Ivan
On a related note, how did you and Chris D. play the game language-wise? For reference, I've only played Last Light but I'm set up to play through 2033 sometime later this year. When it came to LL, I felt like playing with Russian audio and English subtitles would be the best way to play through the game (on Ranger HC). But less than an hour in, I realized I was missing pretty much all the side conversations from the NPCs in the safe hub and other places with multiple NPCs. I ended up swapping to English audio and felt a whole layer of world-building that I was missing prior. As someone who is fluent in Russian, did you in particular play through the whole game in Russian first? I wonder how other non-Russian speakers like Chris went about this. When I do eventually get to playing 2033, I'd like to have a solid plan in mind in regards to this language issue. (They could've just added English subtitles for everything though...it doesn't seem like it'd be a huge issue, UI-wise.)
Wait how many stalker games exist
Wait, Polis is NATO? I thought Hansa was the USA of the Metro, with their heavy emphasis on economy and all.
I agree that Ganza definitely NATO represents NATO in the game. None of the factions are painted in particularly good light in the books though. Even Polis is messed up in its own way, to the point where Artyom couldn't return there after the library, as they would have killed him for failing at his task and not keeping their boy alive. Polis is a caste-based military/scientist dictatorship. Artyom's VDNKh station is probably the most positive, fairest faction in the Metro universe. Everyone has to pitch in and do their part as much as they can and in return, they get protection, food and housing. It actually functions as a true Commune, which is basically original Communism, before it was corrupted and perverted into something nasty. On such a small scale, Communism may actually work.
Hansa is a post apoc version of _The Hanseatic League_
who were one of the worlds earliest all-money power groups (not Kings/Emperors etc or Religious)
made up of many trades, they were BIG in Europe through the middle ages.
Another fantastic video. One of the few youtubers that I immediately drop what im doing to watch. Looking forward to the next video
Picked up the entire metro saga including dlcs for like 6 bucks, best sale ive ever seen on steam
Philosophical ramblings are the bread and butter of the books, though. I see them as one of those "big ideas fed to the masses through fiction" deals, and while I did skip quite a few paragraphs myself, removing them entirely would be a huge mistake.
Can't wait for your next video, much love.
Di, k having read and done a lit analysis on the original i must say that it has a ton of problems with monologues, inner and outer ones, 2 dimensional characters, being about twice or more the size it was originally planned out to be(in the original version artyom gets killed by a stray bullet when they are trying to stealthily traverse through a dark tunnel (but the reaction to that ending of an online novel was met with tons of requests to change it, and Dmitry complied), and the amount of technical inconsistencies is through the roof. That said, the descriptions of the stations were nicely written for a first readthrough, and at least one good game came of the so-so book.
By the way, the original original ending would actually have been better in my opinion, for it would have kept the "chosen one" status of artyom as more of a mystery between him going mad, having suffered trauma, him being brainwashed, and actually being the chosen one.
it has the problem that a lot of russian literature has. Much like war and peace, glukovsky uses his book to philosophise about life and everything else and while it is very interesting, it doesn't serve as a gripping read. I love the book, metro 2033, but chekov, tolstoy and even modern novels like metro or roadside picnic fall into this russian literature trap of using it to push their philosophy.
Jacob M - Yeah, this is why I don't do literary analyses of the things I read for pleasure. It's reductive to experience them that way, and it leaves you no better able to absorb the actual meaning critically. The problems you list are problems endemic to Shakespeare, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov... Even Dostoevsky has characters you might call two-dimensional, and in the Metro books there are a lot of characters over time - we don't get to know them all. The whole journey is like a Picaresque bop from station to station, and insofar as each station is characterized by its politics, you could start calling people two-dimensional just by reflecting that... except that even passing, minor characters are given personal, often conflicting motivations, sometimes subtly and without calling direct attention to it, purely in little bits of detail - it doesn't always say a tunnel guard was married, it just mentions his ring, and etc. I'm sure you have examples in mind of who the 2-D characters are, but none stick in my mind - none struck me that way while reading.
I'm quite sure you could make your case very well, indeed it sounds like you already have at least once, but my point is this: not having that approach in mind when I read the Metro books, I experienced all of those things you mention, monologues and run-ons, but I experienced none of them as problems. Anyway, I've always had a minor beef with that sort of critique, since to me "too much" seems to be arbitrarily determined by the degree of the reader's interest. There's no concrete way of determining what "too long" or "too much" is. Anyway, if this is too much for you, I wouldn't recommend you try any Thomas Pynchon haha..
All that said, I'd be interested to hear your take, and also if you've read Metro 2035?
Also, agreed about the original ending... though we both know that would have been wayyy too ambiguous for many gamers haha. Or just people in general. Remember how pissed people got when they never got to see the top stop spinning at the end of Inception?
RogertheRoman - The idea of wanting to read these authors but having no interest in reading their philosophy is just totally foreign to me.
It's not a morality system, it's a perspective/respect system. Mostly perspective, but respect in the sense that it'll give one for viewing someone's final moments or finding someone's grave. So basically, they're perception points. And only by having a good perception of the world will you see the Dark Ones for what they actually are. It makes much more sense if you just remove the lazy label of, 'morality system.' Yes, it works the same as one, but it's got little to do with morals in a lot of ways.
I’ve beat the game twice on survival hardcore ranger and never needed to use currency and had max air filters 90 percent of the time
Edgar_Allen_Bae ur so gud
We can't tell if he's actually telling the truth about this.
Combine Elite i believe him, he has 1 subscriptions
_Ah, I know exactly what you're talking about with the level where Bourbon is captured. In my first playthrough I went in guns blazing and immediately and as you'd expect, never noticed Khan helping at all. I had no idea that it was a feature of the level until my second playthrough where I tried attempted the "no killing" route. I was quite shocked to have enemies that were a stone's throw from spotting me dropping with a knife in their back._
Fans of immersion should give Far Cry 2 on infamous difficulty a look. I’d also say the original Dead Space is likewise drenched in immersion. Two of my all-time favs.
FC2 is a great game... but the checkpoints respawn times ruin the immersion
Nathan I agree in principle but found that after the first couple missions you’re really not backtracking with enough frequency for it to be a big deal. Most missions are separated by miles and miles and usually involve a safehouse or two. You can grab that lost immersion right back simply by noting it’s been a few days (or sometimes even a week or more) since you were there.
I also read that it wasn’t a design decision per se but some kind of memory/console hardware limitation. Ideally they should’ve respawned after a couple in-game weeks.
Good call on Dead Space.
@@bogoid FC2 lost me when i had to go for medicine on mission, and when i finally get to the doctor for some reason he wasn't there.
Just plugged in my PS3 this week just to replay thru Far Cry 2. Marty and I have a lot of catching up to do
You dont know relief until you see people and a cutscene
Missing Women... ooooo boy, wait for Last Light XD
Also the reason it's the dark ones that gets blamed is cuz.... every single contact with them has resulted badly. People cannot handle the psychic touch of them. Artyom can handle it because he was touched by them as a kid.
26:00
The King Kong game from 2005 had a feature which would make the player character tell you (or just remind himself, I guess) roughly how much ammo he has left. You press a button and he tells you.
th-cam.com/video/r4iOcLSHoIo/w-d-xo.htmlh14m45s
metro 2033: The only game where its not bad to give a kid ammunition
In Metro 3035 Arytom mentions that both men and women would take up arms if VDNKH was assualted due to their status as an independent station/alliance from Hanza, Reich, and the Reds leaving them unable to retreat or, frankly, likely to survive the assault.
I can’t recall anything that implied such a schewed ratio in any of the novels either: everyone rotates between kitchen duty, cultivating mushrooms, pig husbany, guard posts, and so on due to their population needs/limitations.
It might just be a result of the developers’ priorities during game development.
The child mission was horrendous in the non-redux version. Your camera swung around like crazy.
Metro last light was like the even better version of this game to me!
i hated those damn parts in this game where u have to shoot the chair or the chandelier. like wtf kind of puzzle is that? im dyin of no oxygen here!!
Haha I never had that problem only because I play from software games
The chandelier had a weird glistering to it though so you would know to shoot it. The chair though.... yeah FU** the chair
@@ddm_gamer Hole in the door where all you could see was wood blocking the door - seemed obvious to shoot it. The chandalier was making a loud screeching sound constantly, when I investigated the noise I saw it was loose and moving while making the sound, seemed obvious to shoot it. I get that it could take some people a few minutes but taking hours to figure that out? Really?
@@RichardVSmall
I was looking everywhere except through that door, that was my problem lol i only briefly looked through the door and didnt notice anything so i spent a good time looking at everything else.
I love your channel Chris. Your videos always cause me to think and help develop the way I judge games in my own head. Keep them coming!
"going in with all guns blazing lobbing grenades in all directions"
that summarises my entire walkthrough
Metro 2033 is original knife throwing amazingly immersive. In the original unabated version your character holds the spare knives in his off hand and he holds them up on the screen a little bit to the left of center. This gives a reference point for you to aim and judge bullet-drop off spare knives that are in his hand.
The issue with "no HUD" modes is that, while it adds to visual immersion, it totally breaks any immersion you might have getting into your character's skin. Yes, you don't have things like ammo counters IRL, that's true... but you can easily look down at your carrier and see what you have left, or look at your hip and see a grenade there, then reach for it as opposed to the incendiary grenade or whatever. Stripping away the HUD and not offering an alternative is essentially the game lobotomizing you and telling you to go into the world, but now you don't know what the fuck is going on 90% of the time.
You can check if you have ammo if open your compass. They did offer an alternative.
@@andrefrancisco4308 Most people don't equip it for some reason
The running out of gas masks is a serious issue in the game, i ended up getting stuck at the start of an above-ground level with barely any air left and desperately searching for filters or a mask thinking that surely they wouldn’t let the player accidentally get stuck into an unwinnable state but couldn’t find anything
Search better. There is no unwinnable state
So glad you are covering my favorite game! :)
2033 is better than 2033 Redux. I got stuck on a bug in 2033 Redux and while perusing to find the answer I found some old 2033 footage only to realize this version is far more atmospheric and in most cases looks better. While I'm sure the graphically fidelity is better in Redux, the original had darker and more interesting lighting combined with a dirtier looking people. The guy who I was supposed to talk to in Redux looked like any old random wastelander while the guy in the original looked like a haggard old man.
Endless darkness isn't more beautiful
Great video! If i remember correctly in the book there was one outpost, where The Dark Ones try to enter the metro, so from there you start thinking they are threat.
The victory was meant to feel hallow I think...
Last Light has a good morality system so I'm looking forward to you playing around with that. Also if you haven't, try out Condemed: Criminal Origins. It's my fav horror game and reminded me a lot of Metro 2033 in terms of gameplay. Instead of scrounging for ammo you're breaking lead pipes off the wall or equipping loose rebar to defend against what I can only describe as psychotics. The AI moves around every level and tries to ambush you, so you've always got to be on your toes. Especially on hardest difficulty.
The atmosphere is especially oppressive and, should you get far enough in the game, you'll bear witness to the cheapest, dumbest, lamest jumpscare of all time but you'll jump outta your chair guaranteed. And instead of kicking yourself, you'll marvel at just how little they had to do to get you to completely freak out. It's infamous and as a horror fan, it's worth the price of admission.
Wait, that's the second one. Oh well. Play both maybe.
Good morality system? Doesn't it punish you for killing literally any humans, even if they're horrible people who are oppressing or killing good innocent people?
legion999 no, not in my play through at least.
@@legion999 you are free to kill the bandits in the bandits section, and the reds in the outbreak level and the final level, but you also have to avoid killing any beasts in the bridge level and save the mother bear
Your brightness was way too high. You're supposed to not be able to see, that's where like 70% of the atmosphere comes from. The feeling of struggling to locate the source of some menacing growl in a pitch black tunnel with a weak flashlight while simultaneously stressing about how little ammo you have creates a cocktail of extreme tension, fear, and dread. With the brightness as high as you have it, you don't even need your flashlight at all to be able to see. Trust me. When it says "adjust your brightness until the left-most image is barely visible", DO AS IT SAYS lol.
Other than that, great video.
Immersion is based on your own mind only. You can get immersed in a world simply through characters that feel realistic enough. If your socialy inept it might actually help you get more immersed in said game through dialogue. Same with physics immersion and survival immersion.
One of my favorite shooters of recent years. a true cult classic. beat on ranger mode.
@ 20:47- Wait a minute I don’t remember being able to move bodies during parts when using stealth mechanics....
No, it isn't a mechanic, he's probably mistaken by some other game
BOTH 2033 & Last Light REDUX Versions are equally fantastically amazing. The quality of life changes implemented into both games breathes new life into an already amazing experience & makes it even more gritty & claustrophobic!! The only negatives concerning Metro is that it comes to an end!!!! Then there’s always Metro: Exodus, which is another phenomenal experience that plays like no other game of its kind. It’s like the 1st 2 Metros mixed w/elements of STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl.
If Metro and STALKER had a baby I would jizz my pants forever
fingers crossed for STALKER 2
isnt immersion also based upon the player ?
How immersive a game it is at least
Dinging the game because you weren't good enough to preserve your filter supply on the hardest difficulty. News flash, you knew what you were getting into by playing the mode specifically designed to put you into that position. That isn't the games fault, that's your fault. Get better at the game and you'll have plenty of filters to spare.
Anthony Barone I finished with 23 spare filters on ranger mode, mostly from doing the stealth sections well and using the crossbow and throwing knives a lot, stealth suit is also a tremendous help.
Anthony Barone - lmao, calm down there edgelord. It's just a personal opinion 😂😂😂😂
Nice Video and interesting Review, i think the fact that you played on Ps4 had an impact on your experience with the "Gunplay" , i played Metro 2033 on Pc and thought it had great Gunplay and Feedback on a hit. In the end as you said yourself thats a personal thing though.
Who would go to extreme lengths jut to get a trophy?
oOf, this just gave me a flashback of playing dark souls 3 non stop to get the Dark Soul achievement
I don't know about all this immersive talk, but you can't beat the Thief trilogy in terms of sound, lighting, environment, characters, enemies, lore. I wasn't scared of a single enemy in Metro, they all just felt like hairless monkeys. Thief will scare you with the best sound design in all of video games.
Thief fell off.
In terms of changing grenade types and such, it's important to remember this game was originally a PC exclusive and was made with Keyboard and Mouse in mind. We have keyboard shortcuts instead of radial menus, so Ranger Hardcore first time playthroughs (like I did) are completely possible.
Also, you can check how much ammo you have in the journal on Ranger.
36:25
I wanted to mention this the first time I saw the video but I forgot. You're not being commended for resisting the dark ones but for resisting the effects of the anomaly. This is also why Bourbon enlists your aid.
Admittedly this makes a lot more sense in the book. In it they weren't attacked by nosalis (who don't exist) but all start to hallucinate because of... something (probably a gas leak in the tunnel) and Artyom is the only one that isn't affected by it and manages to save the others by getting them to leave rather than stay there and die. Later Khan theorizes that the gas pipes contain the spirits of all the people that died in the metro and they whisper to the living... which is the kind of thing he'd say. Towards the end of the novel Artyom hears that Hansa actually covered the pipes that were leaking and now the tunnel is safe. So was it a supernatural event or just gas?
Also about the dark one vision in that tunnel: I believe what the games is trying to tell you vaguely is that the dark ones are the ones that saved you there by waking you up. They later save you again along with Bourbon in the "Big Doors" section.
Also small correction :3 Only one person died, not two.
We will never find the disc, as our world sits in a glass globe on Rincewind's desk
The bit about stealth and the enemies' sight at around 16:30 was a bummer for me in Last Light and why I never picked up the 2033 redux, along with the outdoor environments being too bright and throwables being a press X to throw rather than an equip-able so you can see what you were throwing before.
In the original 2033, your watch had 3 light indicators for stealth: red, yellow and green. That yellow added some uncertainty to how well you were hidden. I wish I remembered more about it but it's been years since I played it.
The Dark Ones are shown to be helpers early in the game while you’re still near VDNKh. You can see a few of them watching you from a distance a couple times if you’re attentive enough. They are the reason you see that park in it’s pre-war state (you also get good karma for removing your gas mask at that point). The one that wakes you up on the handcart is actually in the middle of fighting Hunter. You distract it long enough for it to lose interest in Hunter, who kills it. Another one helps you and Bourbon from getting trapped and killed in that sewer pit. And while they’re pretty powerful, they do have weaknesses that other mutated creatures can exploit. That’s why they don’t tend to venture further than Botanical Garden station. Book lore states there’s a Demon(bitch) nest just above the entrance to VDNKh. They’re interest in getting into the Metro is not only to help the humans, but to hopefully find a safer place to stay away from predators above ground.
"I also consider bloodborne to be an immersive game despite the lack of a story or interesting characters" you make me sad. theres so much story going on
i like how you used a clip from metro Last Light in a video about 2033
I've been quietly enjoying your content to sleep to for atleast a year. Maybe 3. Time flies. Only now I feel compelled to comment that i approve of your "I liked got b4 it was cool" I never do this irl, even though I want to regularly
I'm so glad you touched on the problem with the rooms leading to the library. My playthrough almost got irreparably fucked because I spent so much time trying to find out what the hell I needed to do
Game : Takes place in Russia
Chris : Too many white males
Great video! Can't wait for the next one.
With the air filter issue, one reason, aside from not putting it in for NPC's, is that those in the library are Rangers, who have a huge supply open to them, so air filters likely arent something they worry about, they just bring alot.
2033 and Last Light are by far my favourite games
The Morality Points are about Empathy, not being good or evil. Being a more empathic person would mean understanding the Dark Ones better.
Not killing anyone during Frontline and giving a random person a bullet give you points because in both instances you show empathy to the soldiers that most likely didn't want to be there and to the person in need.
I'm amazed that to this day there are people who regard communism as better, or at least less evil than naziism
I'm amazed that your average youtuber can sleep through the apocalypse but will never fail to rise to the defense of facism by saying "whudabout the commies?" in 50 different ways.
defense? are you mad?
You just sound like you're trying to defend Nazis. I ain't a communist but logical people would have to agree that aspects of communism such egalitarianism/equality are positive, even though communism failed in many states in many aspects. Nazism is straight up killing anything deemed 'racially' inferior.
Of course many died during communist regimes. The original argument by the original commenter was that communism is either just as as bad as Nazism or more evil.
Let's be objective here- you have one ideology here where everyone is treated as equals regardless of background (communism) vs an ideology where your background determines whether you live or you die (Nazism). You can easily have a white, black or Asian communist countries but you can ONLY have white countries that are Nazi.
With the implementation of communism, everyone seemed to suffer. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, hiding in an attic was a means of survival.
Under both communism and Nazism, millions suffered. Today, let's see to which people which ideology is more appealing. Some people who see themselves as communists get drawn to the ideology due to the appeal of equality. Racists are drawn to Nazism as they see their 'race' as superior and that everyone else should die or be quarantined out of the West.
Basically, communism seemed to have failed when implemented
If you pull up your notebook and then hit right trigger on ranger hardcore you can see the amount of ammo you have. It’s the only way you can at all bring up any HUD or UI outside of a vendor. It maintains the immersion without forcing you to walk blind. I fucking love it.
20:18 actually, I blew the stealth almost right away in that mission and did have to lob grenades and go in all guns blazing and you're completely right, when the next level loaded and Artyom narrates something like "I thought I felt someone helping me from the shadows" I had no idea what he was talking about. lol
Wonderful critique. I like most of your points, especially how the canon ending of the game doesn't quite match up to the ending of the book.
However, there's a few things later in the video I couldn't agree with. You mentioned that the nosalis take a seemingly random number of bullets to kill, but this has not been my experience. In fact, having played both 2033 and Last Light I find that to be just the opposite. I found the hit detection to be solid and have never experienced nosalises surviving what I assumed to be a headshot, since Ranger mode difficulty hides the cross hair.
I also found that it wasn't too difficult to discern an injured/flinching nosalis from a dead ragdolling nosalis, given that you can see - for the most part - where your shot landed on them. I also think this lack of clarity adds a bit more realism to the game, and is a meaningful way to keep you on your toes to make sure the enemies on the ground are actually dead and thus, can ignore.
It would really be beneficial, if not here in an annotation but in your written review, to mention you CAN see your ammo supplies when you bring up your clipboard as it was the one main deterrent you had for recommending new players to play Ranger mode. This is one of these titles that really warrants Normal Ranger Mode to get the full experience.
The threat of the dark ones is established in the opening with the hospitalised soldiers who lost their minds to them and then further when they attack Artyoms Station and you run to the front line, which leads into Hunter leaving on his mission
That and according to Metro the nuclear radiation further progressed evolution or something which led into the dark ones. They are reminiscent of people but less inclined to engage in violence. They remain together as they nest. Essentially it's the same as we do in cities.
This is one of my favourite games. This is a VERY rational and fair critique. I know the flaws are there and yes the revolver looks pretty funny and you've hit the point of the flaws on the head. Well done on covering a damned good game!
My two favorite games. I have bought these two games on Pc Ps3 and PS4 and finished them always in a different style.
I like Last Light more, bigger and better for the most part. Also the best thing you can do for immersion/atmosphere in this game is turn the gamma low so it's really dark unless there's a light source.
okay quick correction: Nosalises are the mole like enemies found in caves and populate swaths of underground tunnels. Watchmen are doglike predators that roam in packs or large colonies. I know in 2033 its easy to not get that there is a difference, but one is on two legs and snarling and the other is on four legs and growls (and has fur)
Great stuff, At last a Game that Doesn't assume you've forgotten the Button prompts 3 minutes later.
🙌 🙌
7:00 to explain this a bit more the station which artyom’s mum was located on the edge of a huge rat hive which was in a system of service corridors after the station was overrun a group of soldiers with a motorised carriage car managed to get away at the next station it took a full tank of napalm from a flame thrower to stop the rats So yeah not just ye average nightmare (plus these rats are the size of dogs)
7:18 it is said in one of the journals that you can find that she died in a rat attack.
In ranger hardcore you can tell how much ammo in total you have if you hold you jornal and look at it, it will also appear the hud to throwables, it's not a known feature but it exists
I just got to playing these metro games. I’m absolutely in love. Bought all three and the DLCs. Starting the third one when it finish downloading.
Probably been mentioned before, but weapons aren't antiquated. They are made post-war from materials lying around. Like pipe guns from Fallout 4 only with much more thought put into them.
this game was so immersive and amazing, i think i got 27 heart attacks by falling debris and lamps
this game is the most immersive game to date... prove me wrong
I'm not sure if anyone has brought this up but, in ranger hardcore if you bring up your clip board and lighter and lift up your clip board for a better view it will show you how many bullets and money you have as well as most of your resources. It doesn't say anywhere that it does this but it is, really just a slight on the devs part
Dude, stop dissing prey. There is no way you can consider Bioshock good but Prey bad.
Fez Mez ... lol what. Curb your fanboyism 😄
Fez Mez they’re completely different.
I can't say how much I enjoyed both. But Bioshock is almost in a league of it's own.
THIS GUY GETS IT
Prey was miles ahead of Bioshock for me, can't pinpoint why.
>Review of Metro
>Goes on a tangent on how post-apocalyptic Russia is not inclusive enough
Bruh
Come on. There should be more women. They are 50% of the population and Russian women are something else.
@@dewittbourchier7169 And what? During post-apocalypse, the lives of women and children should be protected as much as possible. 50,000 people remain in the subway, and their number is constantly decreasing due to mutants, radiation, hunger, diseases and bandits, do you think anyone will allow a woman to kill and die in these tunnels at such a time? I believe that no, a woman can give birth, but a man can not. And cloning in their universe has not yet been invented.
But I liked this review.
@@Newdiletant The dangers of the world, and the men being the merchants, stalkers, and soldiers means women should dominate the populations of the safe stations. Because a lot of men would be dead or away.
Metro is clearly a story written by and about the Male perspective. Which is totally fine, but it completely ignores the interior lives of women within the game's universe. A good example of a game from and about the male perspective would be Red Dead 2. The game is about a man in a male dominated world, but the game still acknowledges that women exist and have thoughts and feelings as complex as the men. Tilly, Ms Grimshaw, Abigail, etc. generally stay in camp doing domestic chores but the game still shows that they have their own lives and perspectives.
@@jasonfenton8250You're half right. Firstly, yes, there should be more civilian women, and the developers messed up a little with logic. Secondly - Well, Red Dead 2 is a totally Western, American game. About the American Wild West. The situation with the Metro is different. The Slavs have different views on gender relations. And I think that Americans have a bad habit of promoting their values wherever they can, and teaching everyone else from a position of moral superiority, which is not very true.
I’m not 100% sure on the redux but I know for a fact that you can go through the war zone between the nazis and the reds in the original game
man i dont even know how you ran out of air filters, i was good on all of my resources throughout the game and i played it in ranger mode.
anyways, nice review! i enjoy your content! keep up the great work!
30:27 how did you get that weapon? that's not kalash and the Aksu was added in last light
I remember playing survival ranger hardcore and there's a sound that plays when you get close to tripwires similar to pulling out a knife. It's a small but noticable hint 4A left for you to know you can snip it and that level of detail makes it where I can't help but love the game.
Two of the fellows on the hand car survive - only the one that's technically hitching a ride and not part of the caravan bites the dust. Boris [the one who toasts you in the bar] is the other one that didn't wake up after Artyom's vision.
Two misinformations that I noticed:
1) You can't move bodies as claimed in 20:45
2) You absolutely can check your ammo supply, even in Ranger Hardcore difficulty. Bring up the notepad with your objectives and hold down the button that lets you take a closer look (dunno which one that would be for the PS4, but it's the right mouse button on PC) which brings up a HUD with all your ammo information. Not implying that it's an ideal solution by any means, but the option is definitely there.
You can check how much ammo you have left by pulling up the journal (pull up compass then press the shoot button). It pulls up that menu where it shows everything you have.
Just a quick note, the nosalises are mutated rats, it specifies this in the book when going over Artyom's past.
>Eastern European Game, from Ukrainians
>EX-STALKER developers
>Console
Ugh *glares at Kalashnikov* you wacko westerners...
>Not playing accordion music in the background
I always play METRO with vodka and this music in the background:
th-cam.com/video/NyiEaSzpdMk/w-d-xo.html
Major game/book spoilers below.
Wait, they really explained people got killed by The Dark Ones with Nosalisks? WHAT!? If I recall correctly it was explained that people just got super mad when TDO where nearby and either lost their minds, or lost their minds and started killing their fellow guards in this tunnel. And it was because TDO weren't able to contact with humans correctly and Artem(/Artyom) was the only one who didn't go crazy, but still they couldn't communicate with him well, so instead of sending a message of peace and friendship, they scared him.
PatrykCXXVIII yeah...because they scare him
Launching missle at them is the cannon xD
I don't know why he said Nosalises killed the guards in the intro, or Hunter, that's clearly not what was going on in that vision.
This dude clearly didn't play the game and probably watch a first time lp and called it a day
you can check your ammo carried in ranger hardcore by bringing up the clip board / map. which also makes sense, that in your downtime you would keep stock of each ammo type you are carrying and write it down.
Just discovered your videos. Great reviews!
You can keep track of your ammo count with no HUD. You bring up the notepad/journal and press one of the triggers (on console) and you a summary of all your ammo, filters, medkits etc.
Around the 14 minute mark, I completely agree with the filter situation. Through half of 2033 and all of last light, I'd adopted a strategy of "10 seconds on, 20 seconds off" when it came to the outdoor sections. Sure, it's less stealthy when you're breathing hard, but when you're fighting a horde of noisaleses or just strolling around, it helps to be using 1/3 of the filters you normally would.
At the end of my first playthrough of 2033 though, I had no filters at the last checkpoint, so I basically had to speedrun to the top of the tower with only seconds until I suffocated. It took a good 5 tries lol.