If you think about it, the Metro series is really just about inopportune timing. Nobody in any of the games asked to be around after a nuclear apocalypse, stuck fighting monsters with shoddy weapons, and dealing with greedy traitors. That's why it's no surprise that the newest game, Metro 2039, will continue the theme by releasing in the most crowded month next year.
Right alongside Fable, State of Decay 3, Persona 4 Revival, and probably Wo Long 2, Metro 2039 will arrive in February 2027.
The trailer developer 4A Games put together is unmistakably Metro-coded: Gas masks, fog, barbed wire, night vision goggles, and weapons with gauges on them take the spotlight like returning characters in a long-running series. And because it's a Metro game, you know that its ravaged world is full of monsters who screech and growl in the night and hold you at gunpoint.
Everything in Metro 2039 has that signature coat of rust you expect from these games even if there are quite a few new things hinted at in the footage, like new weapons and tools to survive the wasteland. As we see all the new gear, the narrator reveals the game's main antagonist will be Hunter, a returning character from Metro 2033 who was noticeably absent in Metro: Last Light.
While all of it looks like exactly what Metro fans have been waiting for, it's going to be fighting for their time amongst all the other big games dropping in the same month. Although that might also play to its strengths. Nobody makes shooters like 4A Games and I'm sure diehard Metro heads will gladly hold off on the fairytales in Fable to scavenge for bullets and unlikely alliances in an irradiated Moscow.
Metro 2039 takes on tunnel Nazis in a story shaped by the Ukraine war: "Sheltering from rocket attacks are interrupting but not stopping us"
