Metro Awakening review – faithful VR adaptation is atmospheric but suffers from clumsy controls

Players on PSVR 2 and Meta Quest get a AAA quality survival game to get immersed in, providing they're willing to handle its mechanical quirks.

Vertigo Games has crafted a more authentic way to immerse yourself in the Metro series with a VR translation that is faithful but frustrating in equal measure.

If there’s one thing that the Metro series has forever thrived on, it’s a bleak and oppressive atmosphere. Why anyone would want to torture themselves further by making the need to survive this dark, dilapidated version of the post-apocalyptic Russian underground even more immersive I’m not really sure, yet such sadists now have the perfect means to do so in Metro Awakening. A tight knit prequel story to 2010’s original Metro 2033, this is 4A Games’ universe faithfully translated to both the PSVR 2 and Meta Quest devices alright, albeit stripped back to its bare and basic essentials. Whereas Metro Exodus boldly made a point of taking players out of the darkness, the decision to plunge them back in again feels like an odd step back – both thematically and gameplay wise – even if there’s a lot here for existing series fans to enjoy.

Metro Awakening purposely goes out of its way to more closely adapt the mechanical approach and linear level design initially established by both Metro 2033 and its 2013 sequel, Metro: Last Light. For the most part this means you’ll be regularly travelling through the dark and dingy tunnels of the titular metro system, searching for scarce resources and surviving against all kinds of mutant nasties and rival human factions. So far, so standard. I get the decision to scale back in this way given that a smaller scope makes perfect sense for VR, but by doing so Metro Awakening bumps up against all kinds of annoying new obstacles of its own creation.

The biggest pitfall for me is unfortunately gunplay. Metro Awakening absolutely nails the look and actions of mutants as they’ve appeared in the series before, but their natural speed and ferociousness makes them an absolute pain to get a lock on in VR. The actual act of popping a clip from your gun, slotting in a new magazine, and sliding the top back feels absolutely awesome in the moment. The problem is these actions are a lot to ask of players during the heat of being pounced upon. It’s not usually just one or two mutants flittering in and out of your eyeline either, but a whole bunch, and so the pressure is always on to execute each move perfectly or risk receiving the dreaded ‘you died’ screen. Thankfully, battles against fellow stalkers fare a lot better since they’re less frantic to fight and their corpses can leave oh-so precious ammunition behind.

I think the lack of a proper melee weapon in Metro Awakening has ended up hurting the VR translation of this universe too. Oftentimes I'd unload a mag into enemies, only to find myself unable to kill stragglers since I was all out of ammo. The introduction of a crossbow later on goes someway to offset this scarcity issue due to its ability to deal big damage, but an ill-placed shot instantly put me back in the same annoying position. The only real form of melee combat here is stealth, which actually works pretty well when crouching with my torch switched off. Bopping unsuspecting fools over the head from behind feels satisfying and is almost always the correct approach during quieter moments.

Born from darkness

Fortunately, it’s when enemies are nowhere to be seen and you’re afforded the chance to explore that Metro Awakening truly hits its stride: reaching over my left shoulder to get my backpack, grabbing off the mask and then placing it on my face before entering a radiated area felt incredibly natural in VR outside of conflict. The franchise’s iconic lighter even makes its grand return here, perfect for burning away cobwebs and scaring off creepy crawlies that will otherwise scamper over your hands and face. Even something as simple as waving my hand in front of my Meta Quest 3 headset to remove the condensation from my mask kept me immersed in a way no other Metro game has been able to.

This being a prequel story does give new developer Vertigo Games some leeway to show a new side to this world – mainly through protagonist, Doctor Sedar, who begins a journey to help out his wife only to find himself quickly swept up in a plot much more ambitious. Vertigo Games has clearly gone out of its way to ensure that Metro Awakening slots neatly into the wider Metro narrative, paying tribute to one of its most mysterious figures, Khan, in what turns out to be a cool origin story unafraid to answer certain questions. Sedar’s nature to speak gives the character for more agency than Artyom from the main series, and I hope this is something 4A Games takes on board in future entries.

Sadly, in its current state on the Meta Quest 3, Metro Awakening didn’t do much to wow me in the visual department. Sure, environments themselves are finely detailed and do a lot of good work with light and shadow to bring the underground to life, but enemies clipping through doors and walls frequently, poor character lip-synching, and texture pop-in whenever I was loaded into a new section are things I found hard to ignore. Most settings also have an unnaturally claustrophobic feel due to the reliance on scattered clutter to guide you through each chapter's specific linear paths. Often, this works with Metro Awakening’s natural penchant for scares, yet the lack of an objective marker still meant I somehow lost my bearings with regards to where to go from time to time.

In the end, Metro Awakening gets a lot of things right when it comes to aping the look and atmosphere of those original two Metro games. The act of scavenging for resources and surviving using your light and gas mask feels great, but it’s mixed in with fast-paced combat that works fine on a flat screen but is overly cumbersome in a VR format. Taken alongside a handful of technical issues and muddy visuals on Meta Quest 3, it can be sometimes hard to stay immersed. That said, if you’re a long-time Metro fan craving further context for Artyom’s story, or a more authentic way to survive the underground, Metro Awakening is a sometimes clumsy but authentically faithful way to do so.