Between Doom, Half-Life, Battlefield, and Counter-Strike, the FPS formula has been smoothed and perfected. Mechanically, the genre is straightforward. Aim your gun, shoot enemies, and don’t get shot yourself. But it’s the finer details that make one shooter different from the next. Doom Eternal, for example, has the ultra-fast movement and the meathook shotgun. Titanfall 2 has free-running and the set-piece mech sections. And in Metro, it’s all about the equipment. Weapons fall to pieces. Kinetic flashlights have to be recharged. Your gas mask gets covered with water and mud. These may seem superficial, but in practice, they make Metro 2033, Last Light, and Metro Exodus some of the tensest FPS games of the last 20 years – and now you can get them all for $7.
It seems a little crude or maybe tasteless to talk about the ‘best’ gun battles, but in Metro Exodus, and the rest of the series, what ‘best’ means is ‘most frightening.’ It’s rarely a glorification of shooting and killing. On the contrary, when you get pulled into combat, Metro makes you feel like you want to just get away, like it’s vicious, high-pressure, and bleak. It was towards the end of Metro 2033, and I was exploring the irradiated Muscovian surface when I was jumped by four guys from an opposing faction.
Their first shots put a hole through my gas mask. It was nighttime as well, so I could barely see them through my NVGs. I was low on ammo, choking to death, and firing blindly into the dark. The finale was absolutely brutal, when I shot the last guy and stole his gas mask off his face before he’d even expired. It’s an FPS, but the Metro series – in myriad ways – is also a horror game.
The VR-only Metro Awakening has just arrived on Steam, and to mark the occasion, the rest of the series is now available for just $6.96 / £6.21. You get Metro 2033 Redux, Metro Last Light Redux, Metro Exodus, and the Metro Exodus expansion pass, all for less than the price of a sandwich and a coffee.
Metro 2033 is my own favorite. It’s the simplest and the most grounded. But if you like open-world games, Exodus is a longer, more player-driven shooter with optional objectives and maps you can roam freely. In our own Metro Awakening review, Callum Self says it’s a “must-play,” so you may want to check that one out, too. You can get the whole Metro series bundle right here.
Otherwise, you might want to try some of the best survival games, or maybe the best story games on PC.
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