Metro Awakening review – a must-play VR survival FPS

The Metro games focus on cultivating atmosphere about all else. Carefully making your way along the hazard-filled train tracks of a post-apocalyptic metro station, or narrowly escaping mutated creatures while your broken gas mask impairs your vision, is what it’s all about. So, with VR’s immersive capabilities, Metro Awakening seems like a logical next step for the series. I’m happy to say that besides some bugs and performance hiccups on the Meta Quest 3, it’s a must-play survival horror concoction.

You play as Sedar, a doctor who leaves the relative safety of the local station in search of his missing wife. While there are some light-hearted moments, including rare sprinklings of humor, Metro Awakening is a dark, brooding adventure that seldom lets up. Whether it’s the risk of radiation poisoning, the mutants ready to eat your face, or other humans looking to take your gear, this world feels tangible and often horrific in VR, in the best way possible.

Awakening is surprisingly alive with minor details and sparks of life from before the bombs fell. It helps that the cast delivers believable and emotive performances, with Sedar serving up enjoyable stories and thoughts on his often dire situation, while even side characters like Max blossom into memorable, rounded people by the end. It feels undoubtedly human, even in its bleakest moments, and Vertigo Games has captured that ‘Metro’ atmosphere spectacularly well.

Much like the flatscreen FPS games, Metro Awakening is all about survival, managing resources, and deciding when or if even to attack. Some situations will inevitably end with action, but if you’re patient, careful, and stealthy, you should have more than enough ammunition, grenades, and health vials to stay alive.

You’ll regularly check your gear, ammo levels, and charge your essential flashlight. Metro Awakening’s immersive mechanics make for an anxiety-inducing experience, and while its linear nature leaves little room for emergent creativity, enemy encounters are undoubtedly intense. A strong whack with your pistol will knock out unsuspecting combatants, but a weak swing will result in an immediate firefight. Things go from zero to 100 fast, and at normal difficulty, it only takes a couple of shots before you’re down.

While the guns aren’t overly realistic in their handling, you can still check your magazine, manually reload, and even load bullets directly into the chamber. It’s all fairly familiar for FPS VR games. Still, everything comes together to deliver impactful, risky, and fun combat. I also love that Awakening rarely holds your hand. You’ll still see occasional tutorials, of course, but you’re left to work out puzzles for yourself without the game anxiously assuming you’re stuck.

Unfortunately, a few issues still need ironing out. First off, I encountered progress-halting bugs that took me out of the action multiple times. My charger once lost its jumper leads, meaning I was locked from progressing and had to restart from an earlier checkpoint, while on another occasion I got stuck behind a door I couldn’t open. It doesn’t require much more than a quick restart, but it’s nevertheless frustrating and immersion-breaking.

I also had some performance issues on Quest 3, and while they weren’t regular enough to become a dealbreaker, they can certainly cause undue stress during hectic encounters. Issues aside, Metro Awakening remains a must-play for fans of the series and VR gamers in general. Vertigo Games has passionately crafted a tight, engaging follow-up that nails the tone and atmosphere we’ve come to expect. Once the inevitable bug and performance fixes arrive, I’d go so far as to say that it’s the optimal way to experience this universe in videogame form.