Metro Awakening launched 7 November, and has gotten some heat for the lackluster and Questified PCVR version. That said, the game has gotten some great realtime lighting, fog effects, dynamic shadows and more.
For those thinking how bad can the Questification be - take a look at these dials:
I'm using Ultra textures here, lol - textures are so low-res you cannot see any details - and the polygon levels are extremely low too.
I could easily find many similar screenshots showing how awful Metro Awakening can be - but why not try to focus on the beauty instead?
Let me try to show, why awesome lighting and shadows can make all the difference for the atmosphere. I'm using maxed graphics setting here for the PCVR version - let's have some light! 🙂
Here the realtime lighting really makes the game shine and sets a moody and sinister atmosphere
Two close-ups of a realtime light sources - almost blindly intensive
A less intensive light source
Here the light reveals some PCVR enhanced textures - the PCVR version is 28GB installed compared to 18GB for the Quest version
Here the intensive realtime light makes the ground textures shine and look real
Another example of devs letting a light source show the high-res ground textures, which otherwise may go unnoticed
Here is a collection of shots showing the Metro tunnels in different lights, also notice the fog effects:
Some bigger room:
Having shown some very low-res textures (see the first screenshot in this post), which there are tons of in the game, there also are some very high-res textures like this (see the label on the bottle and the gun):
All in all I do like the game, but mostly after starting to use the Rift CV1 instead of the Index. Metro Awakening is a very dark game, and the Rift CV1 oled panels really shine.
Check out these examples of extremely low-res Quest textures, which unfortunately made it into the PCVR version:
The last image is a big leaf on a plant - looks like textures made 25 years ago. All these bad textures are very easy to see using a high-res lcd hmd, but here the great Rift CV1 SDE is your beloved friend and comes to the rescue. Sure, you can still see that the textures aren't high-res, but the low-end textures look so much better with the Rift CV1.
The game supports TAA, which could insinuate that the game has been in development for many year. TAA looks very blurry with lcd hmds, no one in their right mind would use TAA today. But TAA is perfect for the Rift CV1, because TAA thanks to the CV1 SDE looks very sharp and not blurry at all.
The game is so dark I constantly need to use a head lamp when using lcd panels (like the Index), but I just played 2 hours with the Rift CV1 and never turned on the head lamp. You get so much better night vision when using oled - it's a total game changer and night vs. day difference.
I'd rate the game 7/10 with the Index, and 8.5/10 with the Rift CV1.
To sum up - the Rift CV1 makes low res textures look a lot more high-res, CV1 lets you see in the dark, and CV1 looks very sharp with TAA enabled. If you do not like the graphics, you are most likely using the wrong hmd 🙂
The game also got easier with the CV1, because I can now see in the dark with no need for any light - but my enemies cannot see me moving in the dark, giving me a great advantage to sneak in on them.
Two scene showing dynamic shadows and lighting
Find the game here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2669410/Metro_Awakening/
Btw, there's also some extreme mutilations in the game, so it's not for kids, even if the npcs do look low-poly and cartoony:
Half-eaten faces
Half-eaten body
Spiked woman
Gruesome art
The big rat-thing is kinda cool - especially when dead 😎
It did have some hair as a nice touch:
I'll give another point for the spiders - having a 1-2 feet big spider crawling on your face is special, lol - and they can move to your neck and are venomous, so you have to grab them quickly:
Devs are working on a spider-free mode. Might be a good idea, many gave up on Alyx having to fight the big hairy spider-like monsters.
Using Rift CV1, I have no problems seeing the big spiders in the dark - not sure I'd like to play using lcd panels.
In many ways, Metro Awakening may have fallen between two chairs. Many Quest users aren't happy about only getting 50% fps of the refresh rate causing reprojections, and also do not appreciate the blurry and reduced image res - while PCVR owners do not like the ultra-low-end Quest graphics.
Today the Quest 2/Pro and 3/3s version only has 638 ratings, while the PSVR2 has 839 ratings and PCVR comes in with 1178 ratings - that's 3 times more ratings for the high-end versions than the low-end Quest version - I do believe the devs greatly missed their main target audience when designing this game primarily for the Quest 2.
Here it's easy to see that Quest 2 was the main version - deciding all geometry and number of opponents etc:
Devs then tried to please the PCVR users by adding Index finger tracking, but it may be too little and too late.
Right now Metro Awakening is a mere shadow of what the game could have been if made ground-up for PCVR. We got very small and limited locations - no trips to the outside - and the game constantly re-uses same assets.
There still are some nice scenes - like the added dynamic shadows here:
If you do not get too close, you don't notice the low-res textures much 🙂
Btw, I think devs did copy some parts of Alyx - I just found this scene in Metro Awakening:
- and this is from Alyx:
It does look like Metro devs copied some scenery from Alyx, also Metro Awakening only uses hands like in Alyx (no arms or body for the character you play).
Here I'm petting some rat monster - but devs cut the dynamic shadows:
Some dream-like locations do look great, but are very small in size - I would really love to go to the surface - maybe next time 🙂
Being close to completing the game, the last half of the game is a big disappointment - it's a constant repetition of levels and assets you've seen before. Kinda feels like the devs ran out of money.
So do go slow on this game - playing no more than 30 - 60 minutes a day will keep the game fresh, while doing many levels in a run will expose how repetitive and limited the game really is.
Constantly being in small rooms, tunnels and very limited locations do show that the game was designed to fit the ultra-slow Adreno 650 phone gpu inside the Quest 2. Thus you'll never visit the surface in this game, sadly.
There's also much depicted violence and mutilations - but always dead and inanimate bodies - much easier to plant dead bodies everywhere without devs having to animate anything:
Some dead bodies - but nothing is moving, and the use of somewhat detailed and animated npcs is mostly limited to the start of the game
The light is still fine - but the second half of the game is very repetitive - you've seen it all before - several of earlier levels are repeated
Found one place where textures look high-res - those moments are scarce in this game
My rating of the game is getting closer to 6/10. I still need to finish chapter 12, but chapters 7 to 11 felt like way too stretched - like too little butter scraped over way too much bread 🙂
I completed Metro Awakening yesterday - and I might increase my rating of the game from 6/10 to 7/10 - but not higher. As said, the game feels very repetitive, and the ending is somewhat anti-climatic - you'll never visit the surface - and there is no big fight at the end.
Compared to Resident Evil 4 Remake VR on the PS5/PSVR2, Metro Awakening is very far behind - Resident Evil 4 Remake VR has tons of awesome big bosses, and much better environments. Then again Resident Evil 4 Remake VR being true AAA at close to $100 million in development cost may have costed 10-20 times more to develop than Metro Awakening.
My favorite moments in Metro Awakening were the big spiders:
Big spiders will jump on you and quickly crawl to your back or neck - and bite
Note how the big spider looks kinda fake here - like made of plastic - using the Rift CV1 with some SDE made the game look much better and more real than using a lcd hmd. Testing the Index just after using the Rift CV1 for hours, the Index looked much more blurry due to TAA. Using Rift CV1 ss 2.5, the game looked much better and more coherent as the CV1 SDE hid many low-res Quest textures.
Let's get back to the spiders - the small spiders you can squish in your hand:
One dead small spider
At the end, at least the ceiling looked great/nice:
This is the closest you'll get to the surface:
An invisible wall keeps me from going any further.
This is you:
Devs did try to make your wife look not too Questified:
Note how devs made a nice face, but left ultra-low-res Quest textures for her clothes - sticks out like a sore thumb
The weapon I used the most was:
Weapons are great in Metro Awakening - you'll get a cross-bow, shotgun, pistol, machine gun, grenades and more
Looking back, was the game really worth $40? I guess not really, $25 felt more appropriate. This game is a far cry from high-end PCVR games, but still was a nice experience - even if games like Stormland still are miles ahead - I'd even say Robo Recall was much more advanced than Metro Awakening. Still Metro Awakening has some spiders that probably will get you jumping in fear - and overall the game was an enjoyable experience.
