I’ve spent about 3-4 hours with Metro 2039 so far, and it’s already healing me even as the in-game version of me, dubbed The Stranger in this sequel, struggles to breathe through a gas mask whose filters don’t last long, thus requiring me to craft new ones from items scrounged by scouring every last inch of its post-apocalyptic world as the countdown timer on my wristwatch constantly ticks down, threatening to choke me to death if it hits 0:00. In a real world where AI is being shoved down our throats at every corner, from our emails to the customer service reps we interact with, one of my biggest takeaways from Metro 2039 is that even though it’s an apocalypse-ravaged hellscape, every inch of it is very obviously and very painstakingly handcrafted. This franchise always was, of course; this is nothing new.

But still, there’s just something about the way 2039 is hitting for me at this exact moment in time that I needed. It is a game that neither offers nor tolerates any bullsh*t, and I love it for that because said bullsh*t surrounds us in the real world. Metro does not hold your hand. It regularly keeps your blood pressure somewhere between slightly elevated and spiked, and it makes no apologies for it. Its irradiated world is Hell, and it very convincingly conveys that at all times. And in an age where single-player first-person shooters are slowly going extinct because they only make money for their publisher once while multiplayer live-service shooters vie for our time and attention on a daily basis (and often contain lots of bullsh*t, like microtransactions and/or drawn-out gameplay loops), Metro’s single-player-only craftsmanship and attention to detail after my first few hours with it have me already prepared to call it my favorite first-person shooter in a long time.

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