Metro Awakening Review – Niche Gamer

Metro Awakening is a VR Survival horror game on the PSVR2 and Meta Quest. Beneath the fallout of the motherland, deep in the metro underbelly, humanity continues to thrive in this post-nuclear setting. Dr. Serdar must travel through the radioactive depths in search of his wife. Facing mutated rats, spiders, crazy religious zealots, and large hulking angry beasts inhabiting this dark, he will navigate the labyrinth-like hellscape.

Ammo for your guns is the only currency that matters down here, and a cold beer to help you sleep at night. Unfortunately, these mutated beasts aren’t the only things out trying to put an end to Serdar’s journey, as is his mysterious destiny and the awful dark secret that will soon befall his close-knit community. Delve into this review below to learn about the darkness and craziness that follows.

Metro Awakening
Developer: Vertigo Games
Publisher: Deep Silver, Vertigo Games
Platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: November 7, 2024
Price: $39.99

While Metro Awakening comes off the trail of prior entries, it manages to feel like a complete story. There are still many callbacks to the main trilogy for Metro faithful to point at the screen in gleeful approval. Dialogue from NPC interactions is long, packed, and very well performed across the board, from start to finish.

After you finish a session you might even catch yourself emulating their Russian accents! Even as you pass random NPCs, they all have a large block of dialogue to tune in and listen to for the sake of the atmosphere.

Not a drop of effort was spared, ensuring players would feel immersed in the setting. It feels like they are hopelessly surviving in the remains of a makeshift town inside rubble and scraps, that were once working subway stations.

After roughly an hour of introducing the player through what might feel like an endless amount of expository dialogue. You are finally introduced to what will be the meat of the gameplay. Conserving ammo, recharging your flashlight every so often, shooting monsters, and powering on terminals.

Except for the occasional cutscene to keep the players up to date with the story, don’t expect much complexity around those activities. The game is roughly ten hours from start to finish which is pretty long for a survival horror.

Combat itself, however, can be a mixed bag. Since ammo is very precious, it’s wise to stay calm and make your shots count every chance you get. However, the usual mutated rat doesn’t always make that easy as they scurry all over the place, jump into tunnels, and jump out, waiting to coordinate attacks with other rats. Luckily even on harder difficulties, well-aimed shots to their face with a basic handgun can dispatch them with ease.

A very important thing to note when using firearms is to not needlessly pull back on the slide as it will certainly cause you to inexplicably permanently lose a bullet of ammo.

In one case during my experience during the game, I made the mistake of removing the clip and then losing it completely as a loading sequence transferred me into another room, deleting the clip from existence.

The visuals install a sense of unease, perfectly executing the feel of a true survival horror. This becomes even more heart-pounding halfway into the game as Dark Ones becomes more and more involved with the story. Hallucinations begin to essentially affect the area with shades that can effectively end your life if you linger near them too long.

The sound of violin “psycho” strings crawling and other powerful instrument techniques are used to their fullest.  During these scenes, it was kinda distracting from their almost cliche-like performance but still managed to fill me with trepidation.

The further Serdar travels, one issue that will become very noticeable is that the game becomes repetitive. There is some effort to break up the monotony of the flow by introducing new weapons every so often, but there are never any new tools to keep the exploration and puzzle-solving exciting.

Throughout my entire playthrough, there were only two puzzles that I can remember off the top of my head, and one of them straight out had the solution written on the wall. The electrician tool is the main thing you will use for most cases.

All items, including switching between your two-handed guns, require you to reach your VR control around your head, grab your bag, and visually select from it what tool or gun you wish to pull out. It’s a very immersive use of VR, but in the heat of battle, it serves no practicality and is kind of a hassle to grab what you need if under pressure.

Once human enemies become part of the game, stealth is an option to deal with their presence. This is almost mandatory in harder difficulties, as having to enter gun fights is very undesirable as you fight them completely on your own, and ammo is scarce.

It’s possible to instantly kill human enemies in a single blow with your hands if you manage to sneak up on them. The practice of getting near unaware human targets feels pretty generous. Just remember to keep your flashlight off and you can walk right up to them unawares and smash their head.

Radiation is a recurring obstacle Serdar must face during his travels, this is where the gas masks and filters come in. Green mushrooms are the only real visual indicator that will let you know that