Based on a dystopian Russian SF novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 offers gamers yet another variant on the post-apocalyptic quest scenario, following on from the STALKER games and Fallout 3. It shares more with the former than the latter – no surprise, perhaps, when you realise that some of STALKER’s developers worked on it – including a similarly gritty ex-Soviet Union setting and an equally dark, unsettling tone. There, the similarities end; whereas STALKER was a wide-open, free-roaming sandbox of a game, Metro 2033 is a tightly linear, heavily-scripted shooter; such linearity is appropriate, perhaps, when much of the game sees you travelling through the crumbling, mutant-infested tunnels of the old Moscow underground system, a journey from station to station that makes the hellish daily comm­ute to Fortean Towers look like a picnic.