izigame.me

This game stinks so badly you can smell it through a gas mask...
Pure disappointment
As a fan of the franchise who even worked in quality control for Metro Exodus years ago, I am deeply disappointed with this game’s release state and quality. It feels like it’s exploiting a well-known brand, yet it’s hard to call it a part of the universe. The game was rushed with minimal attention to detail, resulting in numerous technical and design issues
Graphics
(I’m playing this on the following setup: 4070Ti + 7800x3D, Meta Q3, AV1 codec)
- Metro Redux, which released 10 years ago, was significantly superior in texture quality and overall visuals
- The game uses Unreal Engine 5 but looks like it’s built on Unreal Engine 3—it literally has PS4 VR graphics in a PCVR title released at the end of 2024
- Brightness settings do nothing
- The rendering scale setting is broken, causing FPS drops with any adjustment, higher or lower
- The official site even suggests this as a troubleshooting method: “If you continue to experience issues, we recommend lowering the rendering scale or texture quality to free up additional memory”
You can’t decrease something that’s already at the lowest level :(
Terrible Combat System and UX in General
- Combat tutorial doesn’t match the experience of the first encounter
- Game lacks a weapon attachment system, and the only throwable item is dynamite
- So called “revolutionary AI” is laughable: when you kill one enemy, the others panic and run in circles, like it was in old-school shooters from the early 2000s. in ~90 seconds they go back to patrolling as if nothing happened
- There are multiple tedious encounters where you simply have to endure waves of enemies
- There are several sequences where you’re “riding a train, shooting waves of Nosalises,” reused repeatedly with no variation. It’s dull even the first time, and nothing changes. The last ride even drags on for around 2 minutes. Simply boring
- Inventory and weapon controls are awkward: you have to “twist your arms” to manage gadgets and guns
- The world feels static. You can pick up and throw bottles or gunpowder cans (both of which can be used for enemies distraction), Other props are attached to the surface with superglue. You can't even pick plush teddy bears but plush Nosalis - can be picked tho, not sure what's the logic behind that
- There are scripted events while camera shakes like you're in epicenter of an earthquake, "amazing" feeling in VR sarcasm
- The save/load system is broken; dying in certain areas can sometimes teleport you forward in the story
- Stealth is theoretically possible but frequently fails—often due to glitches, especially during takedowns that don’t execute properly
- On several missions involving spiders, you’ll be disappointed to know they’re unavoidable. However, the developers recently confirmed on their Twitter that they’ll release a patch for people with arachnophobia
- The final chapter has a few very annoying encounters and as a bonus "run w/o equipment" segment, while you don't have flashlight & need to do find the way in almost pitch dark areas
Ultimately Boring Plot & Poor Level Art & Design
- I’ve finished the game --- and honestly, the story is weak... It's barely worth time invested
- It’s definitely not interesting.
- Storyline about one of the franchise’s most intriguing side characters is completely empty
- The beginning is repetitive --- you’re going on a mission to find medicine for your wife. No new ideas, just reusing Artyom’s and Anna’s arc from Exodus
- Game is completely linear, with no good/bad karma system
- Throughout the entire journey, we’ll only be walking, shooting, and collecting ammo/medkits, as there are almost no “interesting stories” to overhear or learn from NPCs
- As for story challenges besides combat - there are few puzzles, but those are pretty much simple and could be solved by a person with a room-temperature IQ
- If you’ve seen and completed the first few levels, you’ve essentially seen everything the game has to offer --- all maps are identical, with thousands of reused props/art
Only the first chapter has some "cool" looking areas, which vanish from memory quickly
And imagine that game from Metro franchise has zero “surface” visits. Fact.
For entire 12 chapters of game - we'll be lurking in a dark tunnels and technical rooms—nothing about Dead Moscow
- You can’t buy or sell anything—there are no vendors, and almost no “peaceful stations”
- Only a few missions meet the overall narrative standards of the Metro 2033 series—specifically, the pipes maze & tea party
However, even in the first of these two missions above, the developers managed to mess up, forcing you to go through part of it again (with a bit different ending this time), but it’s not interesting for second time
- Oh, and last but not least – there’s only one finale, which I’d describe as a ‘tragic happy end.’ No alternatives available
Sum Up
- I pre-ordered the game, hoping it would be a worthwhile project—but unfortunately, that was a mistake.
- At this point, I can’t recommend paying full price, even for the standard edition. The game currently lacks polish. Wait for patches, wait for a sale—but don’t buy it now, or you’ll be disappointed.
- Right now, it feels like the publisher decided to quickly and cheaply parasite off the brand, releasing a VR game built on downgraded assets from over 10 years ago.
P.S. I know that Vertigo developed this, sadly not 4A
Apparently, it seems like Vertigo knows how to make fun zombie shooters in VR --- I have nothing against Arizona Sunshine, but they are not yet ready to deliver proper Metro franchise game.