Metro Redux: review on Nintendo Switch

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

Year of construction: February 28, 2020
Genre: FPS
developer: 4A Games
Publisher: THQ/Deep Silver

A collection of two games based on the cult novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro Redux is now on Nintendo Switch! An atmospheric first-person shooter, Metro 2033, set in the ruined subway of post-apocalyptic Moscow, is a harrowing tale of brutal survival where the fate of humanity lies in your hands. You are Artem, an ordinary Muscovite, born before the world apocalypse, but raised underground. Never before had he left the confines of his already dear Metro station, but fate decided in its own way.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Metro: Last Light Redux and Metro: 2033 Redux have program version 1.0. When purchasing a game in a store Nintendo downloads it to a MicroSD card or internal memory.

The total size of the downloaded game Metro: Last Light Redux is about 8 gigabytes, and Metro: 2033 Redux is 6 gigabytes.

GAME ENGINE

Metro 2033 Redux was developed on a modified version of the 4A Engine, which was used in Metro Last Light and Metro2033. Among the improvements, more advanced AI and optimization of the graphics engine should be noted. The engine was developed in Ukraine by a group of people who were fired (according to another version, they voluntarily left) from the GSC Game World company a year before the release of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.

 

First of all, these are Oles Shishkovtsov and Alexander Maksimchuk, who worked as programmers on the development of the X-Ray engine used in the STALKER series of computer games. The engine was originally designed to run on personal computers, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, the PlayStation 2033 version of Metro 3 was not released. Shishkovtsov and his colleagues left during the development of STALKER due to the fact that X-Ray was “incapable of supporting multi-threading, had a weak and poorly functioning network model and simply terrible resource and memory management, which does not allow any type of data streaming and just level its capabilities are not suitable for 'next-gen' consoles" and also had "terrible text scripting", which, according to Oles himself, led to delays in the original game.

  

The Metro 2033 game demonstrated a pretty good implementation of volumetric fog, double precision in PhysX calculations, object blur, subsurface breaking for coverage shaders, parallax mapping for all surfaces and high geometric detail with not too resource-intensive LOD objects. Thanks to the use of PhysX, the engine received many features, for example, destructible environments, simulation of bends on clothing, waves on water and other elements that are completely influenced by the environment. The sound part of the engine has support for 3D positioning, creating the impression of space and the location of the sound source.

CONTROL

The control settings are standard, as for other consoles.

We have the ability to set sight controls for the gyroscope, which makes the gameplay much easier.

SETTINGS

There are practically no graphics settings in the game; only basic game settings are available.

Well, then let’s see how the game differs from the PC version.

MODES COMPARISON between Nintendo Switch and PC

Now let's compare it with the PC version of the project. Various settings of the PC version and console were taken as a basis. 

As we see the graphics for the Nintendo Switch are lower than the minimum quality settings on the PC, apparently for porting we had to sacrifice a little more quality...

COMPARISON OF TV AND PORTABLE MODE

In this review, we presented comparisons of the rendering quality of stationary and portable modes:

As we can see, when we switch to portable mode we lose a little in resolution.

OVERALL GAMING IMPRESSION

The Metro series is quite an interesting product and it was only a matter of time before it came to Nintendo Switch. The game is most interesting in portable mode, which can give a rather fresh gaming experience.

The game runs quite smoothly and there are no drawdowns even in portable mode.

GAME PROCESS

Well, below are 30 minutes of play on the console itself directly in Metro: Last Light Redux and Metro: 2033 Redux:

Disadvantages:

- price, but for the price of one game, we get two full ones

Advantages:

- Metro series in a portable version!

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 69% [15 vote(s)]