Metro Awakening Review (as a team child psychologist)
The game I waited for quite a while. Comparing the actual experience and the demo Vertigo showed, I didn't feel like their gameplay was a bunch of highlights in between of which boring tunnel-wandering is poured. It's just as dense in terms of action as it may seem once you come to play it yourself.
Gameplay: At first, I spent some time throwing stuff against walls and people, interacting with—I expect this'll become a famous part of this game—piano and trying to make it sound anything resembling some of the simplest melodies. Well, that zeal never left me since when it comes to throwing bottles or pouring its content down my throat or at NPCs. The interaction feels so flawlessly. And so are the weapons and gadgets: using those is a pleasure. The game is so intuitive that in most cases I needed no hints to apply its mechanics. And yeah, my experience may be specific to the standing mode I played it in.
Optimization: It's in-between. It'd surely take a whole RTX 4090 (or two, no less) to run it on Ultra, like many other PCVR titles, though an average RTX 30x or 40x can run it with some medium-to-high settings just as well and deliver ~90 fps.
Story: Well, ambiguously. The plot feels rather dull at first but becomes more captivating over time. For those yet unaware, do expect this to be totally unrelated to the main Metro plot (from other Metro PC titles). It's a tabula rasa project in this regard as well. But there was more to the plot for me which I'll elaborate on below.
Voice acting. This part was a serious challenge for me to struggle against and suppress the urge to remove the game entirely and never come back. I wonder how much to it makes the fact Russian is my first language and that I got used to play Metro in its original localization. Previously, I heard a little of what the English localization sounds like in other Metro titles; it never pleased my ear even though I stick to English localization in 95% other games myself. And the Metro Awakening happened to be the game there was no option to play in any other language but English. But it's a little, really subtle disappointment in comparison to what exactly English is that. I assume it was supposed to sound like Russian English but it does sound to me like I'm on a ship full of people from all over the world speaking English as their second language. Not that it's bad, it's just not any authentic. It doesn't sound any Russian. And in case you happen to be familiar with Soviet/Russian authenticity or are a connoisseur of it, you'll be severely disappointed from the feeling of hanging around Soviet subway tunnels listening to foreigners somehow landed there en masse. It'd make sense if the plot was based on the world population migrating to the Moscow tunnels after the Doomsday but it's not the case. Would really appreciate if there was an option to use some neutral Bri'ish or Amurican English.
Other than that, it is a great game I'll definitely continue to play and discover.