[REVIEW] Metro: Last Light

Mat Paget
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [REVIEWED], PC [REVIEWED])

Editor’s Note: If you plan on playing Metro: Last Light, I would suggest you play it without subtitles and a crosshair. It helps to further immerse you into the game and its world.

When people are getting tired of the ol’ first-person shooter grind, Metro: Last Light makes you really appreciate the genre for its potential to immerse you in a world that feels real. The gameplay itself might not be super unique, or special in any substantial way, but by the end of the game, I wanted to be a part of it. And although it is linear, it’s not your typical first-person shooter experience where you shoot guys, walk down a corridor, shoot more guys, then get into a vehicle for an on-rails shooting section. The game spends a lot of time letting you bask in the story, world, and characters, and delivers enough variety to keep things feeling fresh throughout the story’s duration.

Metro: Last Light follows Artyom, Metro 2033‘s protagonist, and is set one year after the events of said game. Artyom, now a newly-appointed Ranger, was thought to have wiped out The Dark Ones, but the existence of one prompts the Rangers to send him and Anna, a sniper, out to capture it. Khan pleads with the Rangers to refrain from killing it, as he believes that it’ll be much help to the survival of humankind, which is being threatened by warring ideologies, factions, and armies. The story’s multiple levels do a good job at keeping you interested, but the way the game ends is noticeably abrupt and might leave you asking, “Is that it?” It definitely isn’t its strongest when the game is coming to a close, but everything that precedes it does compensate for it exceptionally well — the ending itself isn’t poor, the way it ends is. Small, subtle choices will also affect the way the ending plays out; knocking out soldiers, instead of killing them, plays a role in this.

The world of Metro is one of the most encapsulating I’ve ever experienced. It’s telling when one of the best parts of the game is just being in it — listening to the citizens of the Metro talk and live their lives makes you feel like you’re in a living, breathing world. There are a lot of moments in these low-key sections, but one in particular gave me a great feeling upon hearing an old man tell a group of kids about the animals that inhabited the Earth before it was hit by a nuclear holocaust — although I see them every day, the way the scene played out made me feel like a child full of wonder and joy.

The conversations held throughout the world definitely add to the immersion, but the actual gameplay is where that best comes into play. I played with no subtitles or crosshair, and found myself getting really sucked into the world, story, and gameplay. I particularly admire the use of the gas masks, especially when you’re in the midst of combat, or splashing through a muddy area. Blood and dirt splash on to your mask, forcing you to wipe it off, leaving remnants of it on the right side of your mask — there’s even a great/awful part with a spider-like creature. In addition to this, the more you’re attacked while wearing a mask, the more it cracks — if it cracks too much, you’ll need to find a new one to avoid suffocating.

The immersion that the masks offer is fantastic, but the mechanic of needing one to breathe, although good in most cases, can become an annoyance at times. At one point, I had run out of filters for my mask just as a checkpoint was being saved. This forced me to have to find a filter rather quickly. It took me several tries to retrieve one, and if one of those tries wasn’t to experience a minor story moment, I would have missed it completely. The fact that there’s no save system, other than the checkpoints, prevented me from going to an earlier save to scour the area for more filters. I’m not sure if this can actually break the game or not, as I eventually did find a filter in most cases–or finished the chapter just in time–, but it does cause some unneeded stress.

The combat has been improved a lot since 2033. With the addition of stealth kill prompts and a watch that lets you know if you’re visible or not, playing the game stealthily is now a lot easier. As long as your watch’s blue light isn’t on, you won’t be spotted unless you get too close to an enemy, or are spotted by someone with a flashlight. You can even make it through large areas without killing anyone, as well as find areas to wander off into to find extra supplies — or you can take an alternate route and open fire on everything that moves. Regardless of how you play, you will definitely be shooting things, as you can’t sneak up on the mutated monsters. There are also a few bosses that you won’t be able to avoid and, like most bosses in videogames, aren’t the most fun experiences.

Speaking of shooting, guns can be customized in many ways. You can attach silencers, extended barrels, several different types of scopes, and laser sights to almost any weapon you find. Being able to carry three weapons at a time also gives you a lot of room to have a good variety of tactics in your weaponry — I always had a silenced pistol in order to shoot out lights, as well as a rifle to take out monsters and any group of enemies that detected me. Throwing knives and grenades also make a return, and although throwing grenades was never a huge pleasure of mine, killing an enemy with a throwing knife is incredibly satisfying.

Following in Metro 2033′s footsteps, Last Light looks gorgeous. The game’s true beauty is exposed when you get to the surface areas of the game; the beauty of a dead, radioactive wasteland is incredibly understated. And though the game definitely doesn’t look quite as good on the Xbox 360, especially when you get close to some of the textures, you’ll still be able to appreciate the game’s visuals regardless of the platform you play it on. Accompanying the visuals is a beautifully chilling soundtrack that fits the tone of each scene impeccably.

The game also has a few bugs here and there . There are a few minor graphical issues, as well as times where I had fallen through the floor and gotten stuck in the environment, but nothing game-breaking; however, I did experience one lock-up near the ending that forced me to restart my Xbox 360 — I didn’t experience any lock-ups on PC.

In a genre that doesn’t try to do anything quite as immersive or interesting, Metro: Last Light stands out not in one way, but many. First off, its story, world, and gameplay are incredibly immersive. Secondly, the game gives the player some choice when it comes to tackling combat situations. Lastly, there is no multiplayer and that’s a good thing, as it let 4A Games focus on developing the story — also, if there was some form of lacklustre multiplayer, it would sour my opinion of the game as a whole (see Tomb Raider or Far Cry 3). It’s easy to look past Metro: Last Light’s issues because of the way it stands out, pulls you in, and immerses you into a post-apocalyptic world that is easy to fall in love with. It’s also just a lot of fun to play — and, in the end, that’s what’s going to matter most.