Metro 2039 preview – hands-on with gaming’s grimmest post-apocalypse

The Metro 2033 series continues, as Ukrainian developer 4A Games brave the horrors of actual war in order to tell a very serious story of human greed and folly.

There’s a characteristically Slavic sense of gloom that runs through Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro books. Even by the standards of post-apocalyptic fiction, which naturally gravitates towards a certain grimness, it stands out for its bleak humour and sense that humanity’s self-destructive foibles will always accompany us, wherever we happen to be. In Metro’s case, that was Moscow’s underground train tunnels, where survivors seek shelter after World War 3 turns the surface into a mutant infested, irradiated wasteland.

Underground, things are only slightly better, with Musovites’ last stand blighted by power struggles and personal ambition. Since Glukhovsky also writes the stories for the video games, they slot seamlessly into this canon. An outspoken critic of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he’s persona non grata in Russia, which has given him plenty of time to work with Ukrainian developer 4A Games on the latest instalment in the series.

Released in 2010, the original Metro 2033 threw you into a world of inky dark tunnels full of lurking terrors and cosy underground stations, some of which suffered from their own brand of human monster. For most Western players it was the first time they’d heard of Metro and three years later its sequel, Metro: Last Light, offered an outlook that was perhaps a shade less desolate, albeit still replete with the franchise’s hallmark pessimism.

The third – and best – of the series, Metro Exodus arrived in 2019, mixing time spent in the claustrophobic confines of the Metro tunnels, with open world sections. It cemented the series’ tenets, which along with an atmosphere of dread are typified by expertly administered pacing, blending stealth with more kinetic first person shooting action, and the respite of snatched moments in stations, where human camaraderie briefly replaces constant impending danger.

Due February next year, Metro 2039 is the latest instalment. Developed in post-invasion Ukraine, along with support from teams working internationally, its themes have clearly been shaped by recent experience. In the game’s overground areas things are just as dangerously radioactive, even if the nuclear winter is now starting to thaw, but underground society is breaking down. Hunter, the chief spartan and former people’s hero has started a propaganda based war to recapture the surface from the ‘novo-Reich’ while brutally subjugating the people of the Metro.

The hands-on section we played occurs around halfway through the game and includes the station of Sevastopolskaya and two missions to the surface. Much of the station was walled off, and story beats deliberately omitted to prevent potential spoilers, but what remains is richly textured, with shadowy, wonderfully detailed environments, and the series’ trademark overheard conversations, as you walk though its snug but chaotic subterranean corridors.

Perhaps the most immediate difference from the original trilogy is the absence of its hero, Artyom. You now play The Stranger. He’s a darker hero for an even darker time, and unlike his predecessor is fully voiced in conversations, sounding like a growly Slavic Batman. He’s a serious man on a serious mission: to kill Führer Hunter. That means finding him first, and Hunter has an army of henchmen paid to keep you away.

Exploring the ruins of post-nuclear Moscow, you’ll still need to maintain a supply of spare filters for your gas mask, reaching up to wipe condensation from its glass visor from time to time. That immersive physicality extends to expressive hand gestures as the stranger talks, and the usual first gun fiddling when you’re standing still. Especially compared with the first two Metro games, its production values have received an obvious upgrade.

In buildings you rummage through, there are now further secrets to uncover. A UV light lets you find hidden messages, while your oxyacetylene torch and breaching charges let you open up previously blocked pathways. Weapons have also been updated, with blueprints you unearth offering upgrades and entirely new guns to assemble at crafting tables you find on your travels.

Sometimes they come at a price though. In a memorable early encounter, a blueprint on its own in a cellar looked too good to be true. We decided to take it anyway, triggering a fight with an enraged and very large mutant wielding a club, which in the tight dimensions of a single basement room made for a stressful way of expending every single one of our shotgun shells and Molotov cocktails.

Enemy AI feels as though it’s been given an overhaul. Some mutants may still run, snarling straight towards you, but human foes are not so suicidal. Spotting you, they’ll call for back-up and come and investigate, but shooting an enemy doesn’t cause his friends to line up at the same chokepoint. Instead, they’ll retreat and try and bait you into the open or use RPGs to blow you out of cover.

It makes for really varied firefights, with intentions of stealth regularly subverted into open warfare, enemies’ far greater numbers offset by your powerful and effective arsenal, and the ability to craft more than enough ammo to put it to good use. Checkpoints can be far apart, making every choice in those set piece battles feel consequential, when a couple of mistakes can mean restarting an entire floor of a building.

When people or mutants aren’t actively trying to kill you, its environmental richness includes scenes the developer calls ‘frozen stories’; tableaux of death, with skeletal remains reaching for a gun that’s just out of reach or a child’s drawing amongst the remnants of a family’s poignant final struggle. It fleshes out the broader tragedy of its world, co-opting the process of exploration into its storytelling.

With five months of development time left, the impression is of a mature, polished game that remains infused with Metro’s charismatic bleakness – albeit one that arrives with a faint glimmer of hope. You can already feel its different rhythms as you progress from Metro station to surface, and then into individual buildings, each one offering its own challenges and stories. And it’s even more impressive when you realise all that’s been achieved in a country at war.

Formats: PC (previewed via streaming), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S
Publisher: Deep Silver
Developer: 4A Games
Release Date: February 2027
Age Rating: 18

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