It was being pitched as something closer to an adventure game than a straight shooter, but that’s not how it works in practise.ĭespite the rhetoric, this is definitely an FPS. The Xbox 360 version also running was, as you’d expect, less impressive, but it remains one of the more technically impressive games running on the seven-year-old system.īefore we got stuck into the game we were told by its developers that Metro: Last Light shrugs off a lot of the conventions of the first person shooter in favour of exploration. It’s a world that couldn’t help but be painted in greys and browns, so it doesn’t pop like a Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider, but it is immensely detailed in a similar way. Running on a high end PC, the game was stunning – most noticeably in the fluid animations of the mutant creatures that stalk you. My time with the game starts roughly a quarter of the way through the story and above ground as Artyom and a comrade venture through the wreckage of a plane that dropped from the sky on the day the world began to burn. Set against a backdrop of looming civil war in the network of subterranean tunnels under Moscow, forces are seeking the remaining Dark One in the hope of utilising its powers to swing the tide of battle in their favour. Only he was only largely successful – one survived.
Artyom is living with his decision to eliminate the Dark Ones, a new race of mutated and telepathic former-humans. Last Light picks up Artyom’s story after the original, picking the darker of the game’s two endings. Sadness clings to every surface and is in the face of every occupant because there’s little else down here, and nothing else up there.
In the original game the history of this world, and the nuclear horror that forced humanity underground, is absorbed rather than dished out in lumps of exposition. It’s dark, grimy and bathes in its own mythology. For one this isn’t the easiest game to sell. The decision to make a sequel isn’t out of fan-desire, although there will be many looking forward to Last Light, but out of its developers’ need to take flawed gem, and make it something great.Ī number of hurdles are obvious, even on the game’s surface. It was a decent way to spend a few hours. Gamers carry three customizable guns at a time, and while the action is linear, players can often choose to engage in direct assaults or use stealth to sneak past trouble zones.Metro 2033 wasn’t a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.
Light and shadow are also key to the action, with players using a hand-crank flashlight, a lighter, and torches to illuminate dark corridors and keep mutants at bay, while a special wristwatch lets them know how much oxygen they have and if enemies can see them. Supplies are rare and valuable in Metro: Last Light, with gas masks being absolutely essential, most weapons cobbled together from various parts, and ammo scarce enough to actually become the currency of the subways. His trek takes gamers from the twisted subway ruins, where different factions vie for control of each metro station, to mutant-infested transition zones, and to the violently toxic surface. Set one year after Metro 2033, and picking up from that game's "bad" ending, players join survivor Artyom as he searches for a mysterious prisoner who is said to be the key to humanity's survival. Gamers return to the post-apocalyptic subways and catacombs beneath Moscow to scavenge for resources, battle twisted mutants, and contend with the territorial nature of man in Metro: Last Light.