Just a few hours into my preview of Metro 2039, I was running out of filters for my gas mask and the materials necessary to craft more, putting me on the brink of suffocation—but I had to keep exploring. I knew the route I would need to take to advance the story further and, ultimately, be safe from the toxic air on the post-nuclear surface, but I didn’t want to take it. All I wanted was to keep poking around for more crafting and survival materials, more puzzles to solve, more weapon blueprints, and more “frozen stories” (as the series has long called its take on environmental storytelling), because if there is one thing I’ve learned as a longtime Metro fan, it’s that patience and exhaustiveness pay off. Because of that philosophy, I knew beforehand that I would stubbornly push myself to the very edge in Metro 2039, until I had absolutely no choice but to move on.
But eventually, I did move on, and Metro 2039 took me deeper into its return to the supernatural elements that defined the original games. At one point, I wasn’t sure whether I was playing Metro 2039 or a straight-up horror game, as the environment started shifting before my eyes, and the path ahead was so dark that I couldn’t see 10 feet in front of me. This was every bit the Metro I remembered, and yet somehow darker, more compelling, more immersive, and far more interested in making me feel vulnerable than I expected it to be. More than anything, my time with Metro 2039 felt like the series returning to its roots while finding new ways to make exploring and surviving its world feel dangerous again.
Metro 2039 Makes Exploration Feel Like a Survival Puzzle
My preview of Metro 2039 began with me in the inhabited Sevastopolskaya Metro station, where I was tasked with heading to the surface to deal with Kaban’s gang, the primary threat to Sevastopolskaya. Before heading to the surface, though, I spent a few minutes taking in the deeply immersive world around me, and I was instantly taken back to Metro‘s glory days, where the surviving world underground felt alive, reactive, and very much real. My introduction to the series began back in 2010 with the first entry, Metro 2033, and one thing that so effortlessly won me over was how NPCs naturally reacted to my presence in a way I hadn’t experienced in many other games. Now, after playing Metro 2039, I can confidently say that is still very much the case in the series’ modern days, and, if anything, it has been taken to another level with improved visuals and animations.
However, as much as all of that made me want to stick around, I knew I had a job to do, so I made my way over to the gunsmith, who supplied me with a weapon, and I was finally ready to head to the surface and experience one of my favorite elements of the Metro series: exploration. And let me just say that 4A Games has outdone itself with Metro 2039‘s exploration, as it managed to strike a delicate balance between the openness of Metro Exodus and the environmental density of its predecessors.
If I haven’t made it clear already, there was enough to explore here that I was eventually running out of filters. However, it’s not square mileage I’m talking about. Rather, it’s the amount of patience Metro 2039 asks of you, as nearly every environment feels dense enough with small details, hidden resources, and potential discoveries that rushing through any of it almost feels like playing the game incorrectly. Just as it has been in every Metro game leading up to this point, if you want to survive what’s ahead, you need to painstakingly explore what’s around you—but that also means subjecting yourself to the horrors of its post-apocalyptic wasteland.
4A Games has outdone itself with Metro 2039‘s exploration, as it managed to strike a delicate balance between the openness of Metro Exodus and the environmental density of its predecessors.
As soon as I reached the surface, I wasted no time at all outright ignoring the main mission and just going wherever curiosity led me. Wandering away from that critical path, I was spending something to do it, whether that was precious seconds on my gas mask filter, ammunition I might need later, or simply the risk of wandering into an area with radiation levels so high that the visual and audio feedback would send me into an overstimulated spiral within seconds. At the same time, those detours were often where I found the very things keeping me alive, including crafting materials for more filters and medkits, ammunition, and other supplies. So, even when I knew exploring one more abandoned building could put me in a worse position than I was already in, there was always the possibility that what I found inside would make the risk worth taking.
Metro 2039 then gives me even more reasons to take those risks by making exploration about much more than scavenging. One building might contain a weapon blueprint, while another could have a locked room with a four-digit code that I needed to piece together by searching the surrounding area. The new UV flashlight became especially useful here, as I could use it to reveal markings and hidden clues that weren’t visible otherwise, including information needed to solve some of those codes. Elsewhere, I could break padlocks, use a cutting torch to get through welded doors, or blow through weakened walls with a breaching charge, so I quickly learned that something appearing inaccessible didn’t necessarily mean I was supposed to leave it alone.
That made exploring feel almost like a survival puzzle in itself. I was constantly weighing how badly I wanted to know what was around the next corner against how many resources I had left to get there, all while keeping an eye on my filter timer and radiation exposure. More importantly, though, I was learning to actually read the world around me. A strange marking on a wall could be telling me to pull out my UV light, an otherwise unremarkable building might hide a route into somewhere else, and an abandoned scene could turn out to be one of Metro 2039‘s “frozen stories” if I slowed down long enough to notice what had happened there. It creates the kind of exploration loop where curiosity is constantly rewarded, even when indulging that curiosity might also be the thing that gets me killed.
Metro 2039 Gives Me Plenty of Ways to Stay Alive
Combat in Metro 2039 feels like another extension of the game’s emphasis on patience, because some of my favorite encounters began long before I actually pulled the trigger. Kaban’s Military Base was probably the best example of this during my preview, as I could scout the area from the outside, use the nearby Sniper Building to get an elevated view of the compound, look for a quieter way inside, or simply walk through the front door and start shooting. There were enough options that I rarely felt like the game was forcing me toward one specific solution, and taking a few extra minutes to study an area usually gave me a much better idea of what I was getting myself into.
Once a fight actually started, though, Metro 2039 gave me plenty of smaller decisions to make as well. Different ammunition types have different strengths, including incendiary revolver rounds, shotgun slugs, and armor-piercing rifle rounds, so what I loaded into a weapon could matter just as much as the weapon itself. I could lean from behind cover to expose less of myself, and when things got dark, night vision gave me a way to see without switching on my flashlight and practically announcing my location to every enemy nearby. All of that meant I was rarely just reacting once a fight broke out. Instead, I was constantly deciding how much noise I could afford to make, how exposed I wanted to be, and which resources were actually worth spending.
Throughout the preview, having experimented with multiple weapons, I was convinced that the most powerful of them all is none other than the Shatun. The Metro series has long favored stealth as the “correct” way to play, simply due to how much it benefits resource management, and the Shatun takes full advantage of that philosophy. It’s a new silent pump-powered pneumatic weapon that fires powerful, recoverable drill bits that tend to kill enemies in one shot if it’s well-placed, and as a massive fan of stealth (because it makes me feel so untouchable), I simply couldn’t get enough of the new weapon. And it knows just how powerful those unassuming drill bits are, too, because they’re incredibly expensive to craft, so I was intent on keeping track of every single one that left the barrel of my gun.
Combat in Metro 2039 feels like another extension of the game’s emphasis on patience, because some of my favorite encounters began long before I actually pulled the trigger.
The Shatun ended up becoming my weapon of choice, but Metro 2039 never made me feel like I had found one solution that suddenly invalidated everything else. Human enemies could still force me to change plans if I was spotted, while mutants presented completely different problems that weren’t always suited to patiently lining up a silent shot. There were plenty of moments in the sewers, for example, where the Shatun didn’t actually get the job done, and I had no choice but to pull out my shotgun and stay on my toes to avoid my demise. Between those encounters and the more open-ended fights against bandits, I was constantly swapping out weapons and ammunition, as well as stealth and outright aggression as playstyles, depending on what the situation demanded.
And that’s probably what impressed me most about Metro 2039‘s combat during the preview. It wasn’t necessarily that I had more ways to kill something, but that the game kept giving me reasons to think about how I wanted to do it. Scouting an area, finding a better entrance, choosing the right ammunition, deciding whether to stay hidden, and knowing when a plan had completely fallen apart all became part of the encounter itself. Much like exploration, the actual shooting was only one piece of a much larger survival puzzle.
Metro 2039 Turned My Curiosity Against Me
For as much as Metro 2039 impressed me with its exploration and combat, neither prepared me for how far it would eventually lean into the series’ supernatural side. My preview eventually led me to an old kindergarten playground, which is already about as creepy as it sounds in a post-apocalyptic game, especially when people at the station have warned that the place is best avoided and even the mutants seem to want nothing to do with it. Naturally, that only made me want to see what was inside even more, and once I ventured into the actual school building, it felt like I had suddenly been transported into a completely different game.
The closest comparison I can think of is a game like Layers of Fear, because the deeper I went into the Kindergarten, the less I could trust what I was seeing around me. The already cramped hallways and rooms started feeling even more claustrophobic, light constantly played tricks on my eyes, and the environment itself seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking. I would walk through a doorway, turn around, and suddenly find a wall where that doorway had been. Whispers followed me through the darkness, I could hear children laughing somewhere nearby, and the game even managed to catch me with a jumpscare at one point. Eventually, I became genuinely nervous every time I had to crawl through one of the building’s tight openings because I had no idea what might be waiting for me on the other side—or what might be standing behind me once I was halfway through.
What made the whole sequence even more effective was how it started stripping away some of the control Metro 2039 had spent the previous few hours teaching me to rely on. Electronics weren’t always dependable inside the Kindergarten, which meant my trusty lighter suddenly became one of the few things I could consistently count on. At one point, I even had to light a candle in the middle of a room, and there was something wonderfully unsettling about participating in what felt like some kind of ritual without fully understanding what I was getting myself into. By then, Metro 2039 had gone well beyond simply putting me in a dark building full of creepy noises. It had made the environment itself feel hostile and unpredictable.
The worst part was that the game had already spent hours teaching me to be curious. Up to that point, crawling through a hole in a wall, following a strange marking, or wandering somewhere I probably didn’t need to go could lead me to crafting materials, a weapon blueprint, a puzzle, or one of the little environmental stories that make Metro‘s world so compelling. The Kindergarten took that exact instinct and used it against me. I still wanted to know what was around the next corner and what had happened in this place, but for once, I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to see the answer.
For as much as Metro 2039 impressed me with its exploration and combat, neither prepared me for how far it would eventually lean into the series’ supernatural side.
Metro has always been at its best when its world feels like it existed long before I arrived and will continue hiding things from me long after I leave, and the Kindergarten told one of those stories without needing to stop and explain every detail. It gave me enough through the changing rooms, the voices, the abandoned school, and everything else happening around me to make me desperate to understand it, while still leaving plenty unexplained. As uncomfortable as I was inside that building, I couldn’t stop pushing forward, and those are exactly the kinds of moments that have kept me coming back to the Metro series since 2033.
Metro 2039 Hands-On Preview: Final Thoughts
Coming out of my preview, I think what excites me most about Metro 2039 is just how much it feels like Metro again, while still giving me plenty of reasons to believe 4A Games isn’t content with simply going back to what worked before. I was constantly running low on something because I couldn’t stop exploring, figuring out how to get into places that initially looked inaccessible, changing the way I approached fights depending on what I had available, and then eventually wandering into a Kindergarten that made me question whether I even wanted to keep exploring anymore. That’s a pretty ridiculous amount of ground for a few hours of a preview to cover, and somehow none of it ever felt out of place.
Of course, I’ve only seen a small portion of Metro 2039, so there is still plenty I don’t know about how all of this will come together in the full game. But if the rest of it can keep that same balance between the freedom and survival mechanics of Metro Exodus and the darker, stranger, more claustrophobic side of the original Metro games, I’m going to have a very hard time putting it down. I went into this preview already expecting to enjoy myself because I’ve loved this series since Metro 2033, but I didn’t expect to come away this desperate to get back underground and see what else Metro 2039 is hiding from me.
- Released
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February, 2027
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Intense Violence, Blood, Language
Metro 2039 is scheduled to release in February 2027 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. GameRant took part in a digital preview of Metro 2039 via Nvidia GeForce Now.
