Oh this is hidden gem of games

Definitly! I still have a few of the challenge modes to do but oh man its so sastisfying to finally be able to give them a whack after the main campaign xD
I had it recomended to me by another user who love the same kind of games I do. I have never come across it till that and I think the trailer and images doesnt do it justice at all. There are too many games too easy to miss but then sometimes you come across something that makes you breathe again and this was one of them for me:)

-Edit
Attempted the In Darkness challenge tonight and I swear my tits have shrunk to half their size, holy shit that was terrifying,!
Only Alien Isolation beat that lvl of fear for me so far O.o

Metro 2033 Redux

Khan is leading Artyom through some abandonned and very mysterious tunnels, that man is a mystic and what he tells Artyom is making him seeing the Metro from another angle.
Khan knows things that no man can know, who is really this man ? Artyom thought.

Lost souls that can't find a way to an afterlife and stand vigil , living shadows of the past, anomalies from beyond , everything is stranger than anything Artyom saw before , it was there he understood that there's more to reality than what he knew.

Even the horde of Nosalis that attacked them felt nearly normal, desesperate situation but not unexpected.
And when an anomaly saved them by burning down the horde , Artyom felt all of this was not a coincidence.

Khan guided Artyom into a motorized rail car so they could leave those otherworldy tunnels.
But their destination, the "Cursed Station" wasn't really making Artyom more comfortable

So, the story opens up considerably once one gets far into it. When I played a couple of hours of Metro 2033, it was the definition of linear game play.

It's inspired by a book (though it takes some liberty with what happens) , so there's some level of linearity as you progress from stations to stations (as you can't decide yourself where you want to go, it's not open world at all), but some of the level are big enough to get some exploration too so it does not feel you're locked in a rail.

While the game story is good with some interesting twists and surprise, the book is -a lot- better than the game , very recommended reading.

too bad the books sequels Metro 2034 and 2035 are nowhere as good as 2033 was.
Interestingly, the game sequels of Metro 2033 (Last Light and Exodus) have nearly nothing to do with the books anymore and are basically closer to a what if or alternate universe.

So, it's like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series that was inspired by a short story I think. And wasn't Metro the game made by some of the team that made S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?

Yes, some of the Metro 2033 developers worked on Stalker too before going to create their own studio.

Metro 2033 Redux

The cursed station is mostly called like that because it's under constant raid from creatures , everytime when things seems to get back to normal, more attacks happens with so many lives lost.

But it's a station Artyom must cross on his path to reach Polis

With some guidance from Khan , Artyom joins and help the remaining defenders fighting hordes of Nosalis.
A plan is put in motion while Khan stay and help the defense.

Artyom must find and gather explosives (from the guys that were sent before him and got killed) then make the 2 main entrances ( from which the Nosalis arrive ) to crumble in the explosions.
One was relatively easy as the demolition team had managed to setup some dynamite just before dying and Artyom just had to trigger it, the other was more involved as Artyom had to find the explosive lost in another side of the tunnel.

After everything went successfully despite the close calls , Khan mystical prayers opened the path to the next tunnel that was guarded by those strange shadows , it seems those shade of the past finally saw that they were avenged thanks to Artyom actions and let him free to move out.

Khan said his goodbye to Artyom as he had to stay in the cursed station, things wouldn't get easier now he was alone.

Metro 2033 Redux

Artyom finally managed to reach the Armory station

It was a free station , but as one of the entrance defender warned Artyom, since then the communists from the Red Line faction had invaded it .
So walking into such station is now a danger in itself as such dictatorship is always a threat in those cases as when you are an outsider you'll always be suspected of being a spy and with no approved papers on yourself, that's a sure way to an underground gulag.

And unfortunately it's exactly what happened, while Artyom was trying to reach the other end of the station, he was arrested by a patrol, he wasn't the only one as the Red Line police is very arrest-happy .
Ending into a Red Line gulag is a death sentence, so escaping is the only solution.

Fortunately one of the guy arrested managed to knock out one of the officers , opening a way for escape, though it was going to be very hard for Artyom as he was still handcuffed, but at least his legs were free to run the hell out of the communists hands

Unfortunately his companion in misfortune got shot by one of the many Red Line troopers , while Artyom managed to find a side way and lose the guards after jumping into some opening, but he was stuck and it was only a matter of minutes the guards would find him.

Fortunately one of Khan old friend , Andrew the Blacksmith, managed to rescue Artyom first and remove his handcuffs.
Sympathising with Artyom , he came with a plan to help him escape the Armory Station, but that wouldn't be a very safe one ... as expected

Metro 2033 Redux

Thanks to Andrew the Blacksmith and his friends, Artyom got a hiding place in one of the Red Line trains to both escape the political police and leave the station to continue his journey.

But the difficulty is that this train was just bringing new recruits to the frontline of a metro war between the communists of the Red Line and the nazis of the 4th Reich as both oppressive dictatorship factions have their zone of influence very close to each other.

Things would get difficult then for Artyom to sneak around as enemies would be on every side, but fortunately both armies were busy focusing on each other, and with his sneaking skills Artyom may be able to get through undetected.

Once reaching the massive contested tunnels, Artyom thought the best choice wasn't really sneaking as there were too many troops, so he decided to play smart and set an ambush : raise an alarm and attract soldiers in a side tunnel to get rid of them from the shadows.

The big advantage is that Artyom would then have access to a lot of looted ammo and some better weapons than he was carrying.

After clearing a path for himself, he then moved into another heavy war zone, but this time he noticed there were some under rail structures that he could use with a bit of acrobatics to sneak through.

It allowed him to the reach the 4th Reich side undetected and even managed to free a ranger squad that came from Polis in order to spy on the status of the war going on.
This would earn Artyom some goodwill for when he'll reach the Polis station.

But inside the 4th Reich territory the situation was extremely dangerous, he would need to be vert cautious.

Metro 2033 Redux

Crossing the 4th Reich side of the frontline after escaping from the Red Line side wasn't going to be a piece of cake.
Lots of sneaking, hiding and moving in the shadows would be involved.

.. or just ambush everyone in places that allows you lot of good cover and shoot all the nazis, after all if there is none left alive, you can't be detected anymore, the basics of ninja teachings :D

Artyom had lots of ammo, some good guns , so guess what he decided to do ?
There seemed to be more well armored troopers in this side, fortunately his quadruple barreled upgrade on his shotgun was welcomed.

After progressing more in the enemy territory, in the hope to escape that whole warzone filled with 4th Reich troops, Artyom saw what the nazis were doing to their prisonners, removing any kind of remorse he could have after killing so much of the 4th Reich folks.

Unfortunately, after the place was cleared, it made Artyom too confident and he got stupidly captured , would he share the fate of the other executed prisonners ?

Metro 2033 Redux

In Artyom's mind this was the end , there was no way for him to escape death.
But in a corner of his eyes he saw them : a squad of rangers from Polis !

The 2 nazis were quickly killed and Artyom couldn't believe his luck : he was alive.
The rangers noticed that Artyom had a message for their leader at Polis and decided to interrupt their mission and escort him through the very dangerous 4th Reich territory.

Luck was on their side, they "acquired" a small wagon with a machinegun turret from some nazis.
One of the rangers, Pavel, would drive the wagon with Artyom manning the machinegun turret.

The trip at full speed was dangerous, as the duo drove through a few nazis stations, the machinegun shot a very lot this day, destroying wagons pursuing them, destroying ambushers at the stations , all while the team spotted some wagon refitted as panzer tanks with cannon turrets !

In the end the wagon was severely broken from all the firefights and explosions.
Pavel and Artyom had to continue on foot and moving to side tunnels managed to "acquire" again a small transport, no turret on this one so it was Artyom own guns that would overwatch while Pavel was driving on the rails.

Out of the 4th Reich territory the trip took a strange turn , odd creepy tunnels filled with mysteries and an abandonned underground eery train station in the darkness.

It was then that a Nosalis horde attacked , but this time there were some strange variants of them that were emitting some sounds affecting Pavel and Artyom's mind and focus.
Fortunately some gunshots to the head helped silence those bastards.

But their number was too much and while Artyom and Pavel were fighting for their lives, Pavel fell from the wagon and disappeared in the dark, while Artyom was stuck in the vehicle that went full speed into some darker tunnel until it crashed...

Metro 2033 Redux


Artyom survived the crash, but had no real idea where he was, only that the nosalis horde was nowhere around so at least the positive was that they lost his track.

He missed Pavel , he knew those section of the Metro , but there was no more choice other than continue to move forward
Taking a detour to explore the ruins of a train and gather some ammo and filters left around, Artyom moved through some sewer type of corridor.

Until he ran into several humans, they were guarding the entrance of the Hole station.
Artyom join them in an attempt to stop a horde of nosalis coming in.
Those beasts are numerous and the "screaming" variants are amongst them too, could it be the same horde that attacked Pavel and Artyom before ? At least this time, many guns are tearing those monsters apart.

Unfortunately it seems there is more than monsters at play there, but some intense wave of weird energy wash over the defenses devastating the defenders as if draining them.

Artyom remains the last survivor of the defense when he comes back to his senses after another wave of energy knocked him down from unknown amount of time..

I've been playing several missions of Nexus - The Jupiter Incident as it was given away by gog recently, and it's a very good space strategy game.

Originally that game was developped as being Imperium Galactica 3 but unfortunate series of event let the project to be abandonned but the game basis (you can find the old IG3 demo of a battle between 2 fleets somewhere probably, it was rather awesome for its time) somehow survived and led into Nexus - The Jupiter Incident.

Unfortunately it was no more 4X , so no planet management, no fleet moving through a star map (you can see that the star map still exist from the original concept, except you can't move anything by yourself anymore) , it's now "only" a campaign a la Homeworld but without the ship buildings ,it's more similar in concept to something like good old Ground Control as you start missions with a fixed fleet (you can still tweak your ship equipment pre-mission).

The story so far is very good and what's happening is interesting.

I found funny in an early mission the tutorial suggest you to use the Artillery mode of your main ship to shoot long range missiles at a target, but if you actually do that, the shockwaves of the explosion of your missile will badly damage an allied warship that an optional objective is to save , leading you to fail that optional objective because the warship will be too damaged :D

Too bad there is no skirmish mode with the game with you setting up player and AI fleets, it would have increased the replay value

Metro 2033 Redux

After surviving the mysterious force assault, Artyom found that the commander of the defense post was still alive, badly wounded though.

Accepting to take a beacon to send a radio SOS to Polis, Artyom had to leave the guy alone and move fast into the Hole station : so many nosalis and lurkers managed to move through the now destroyed defense post that it must have been a disaster inside.

And indeed it had been : there were corpses of humans and monsters, and so many damned big rats-sized monsters that were doing hit&run on Artyom hiding in various holes in the ground and the walls .

Progressing through this station hell made Artyom notice that there weren't that much civilian corpses, mostly soldiers that were tasked to defend the zone were killed, so the majority of the people may have managed to escape the rampage.

He found a child near the corpse of his uncle that went down fighting to protect the kid.
Artyom quickly took him under his protection, bringing him back to the survivors and hopefully his mother was now his priority.

After crossing what was left of that very large now ruined station and taking out more of those big rats, Artyom finally reached the hideout of the civilians that fled the disaster, there were many of them alive and hiding in the tunnels, preparing to leave with a train to somewhere safer.

The mother of the child was still alive, and it's with a big smile that Artyom witnessed the reunion of the 2
Despite the grim darkness of the situation, there was still some hope left.