I finished Metro: Last Light a couple days ago, and I’ve had some time to digest the game. It was certainly a great game; I played through it in only three sittings, which might be a record for any game I’ve played. I’ve been hankering to put down my thoughts on the game, so here they are, in the form of long, meandering blog posts. In this one, I’m going to talk a little bit a lot about what I liked and didn’t like about the game in general; specifics will come in future posts. There’ll be spoilers for the game, so if you don’t like those, don’t read.
A bit of background first, then, to serve as a lead-in. Metro: Last Light is the successor to Metro: 2033, both based on books by Dmitry Glukhovsky. In the classic “after the apocalypse” style, the game takes place on post-nuclear-war Earth. The remnants of Russian civilization huddle in the Metro, waiting for the world above to become inhabitable again for those without gas masks. You play Artyom, a hero who just blew up a bunch of mutants who may or may not have been threatening to destroy the metro and all who lived in it. Last Light takes place a year after this event, after Artyom has been inducted into “The Order,” or “The Rangers,” a bunch of soldiers who try to protect the innocent and generally end up failing.
Much of the game is spent underground, in the Metro. However, don’t think it’s just a rail shooter. A lot of my time was spent outside of the main quest areas, just scavenging and looking around at the environments. Every area will have some nice rewards, and not only tangible ones; while more military-grade bullets are nice, the best rewards are often the small stories and dramas that take place off the beaten track. Now, by no means did I explore every single nook and cranny of the game, but even then, I still experienced several of these.
One such small story takes place in the railcar level.
I’m in “Regina” the railcar. Behind me, a while back along the rail, is a group of survivors who have been fleeing from their homes. They have told me that bandits are infesting the tunnels up ahead. Those survivors sent out men to try to find a way past, but they never returned. Their leader asks for my aid. He asks very nicely, but you can hear the desperation in his voice. Or, perhaps, it is the desperation in the voices of the people around him, talking about how they might not ever get out of this mess.
Oh… hey guys. Sorry about your barricade.
Driving along in the railcar, I suddenly hear the horrified cries of a woman on the tracks ahead: “Let me go! Please!” and more bestial sounds of men: “Hah, alright, you take her first, I’ll keep watch.” That’s right, they’re bandits, and they’re about to rape the woman. I quickly slow down, my thoughts racing. Have they heard me? What if they did? Will they simply kill the woman? I get off and listen for a moment.
The men are still bantering, the woman still crying. I remain undetected.
I start sneaking around the corner, but wait! I stop to pick up some ammo and supplies laying on a crate out in the hallway. I hear the woman’s cries intensify, though, so I finish up my scavenging and start toward them again, more quickly this time. Now… There! A light! But I can’t see the men for a clear shot. The woman’s pleas are getting louder and louder, and the man holding her gives a thunderous “Shut UP!” and hits the woman. These men don’t deserve to live; finally in range, I throw a knife at the one standing guard. The one kneeling on the woman gives a confused grunt and begins to turn around, but it is too late. I am already on him with my knife. He goes down easily.
I feel like an action star. I look down. The woman is dead.
Suddenly, behind me comes a laughing call: “Hey! You two done in there? We’ve got to go!” He is the man who allowed these two thugs to kill a defenseless woman. I sneak up the corner, and when the man reaches it, I kill him. Behind me, the woman is still dead though. Nothing to do but continue on.
I get interrogated by Mike Thorton.
Moments like this comprise the strongest parts of Last Light. The atmosphere is dark, but not hopeless. If I had come earlier, not stopped to pick up those ammo and supplies back in the tunnels, could I have saved her? It turns out the answer is yes, but due to the game’s lack of manual saves, you cannot make this choice yourself. The sections of walking through populated areas, in particular, are of special note; in these sections, you just walk around, picking up bits of people’s lives. Those sections make the metro feel absolutely alive, a real place where real people with terrible problems live.
Switching gears, let’s talk about the environment a little bit. They have kept the claustrophobic interiors of the metro intact from the first game; often, they are even more so. The visual contrast has been upped, now, too; the grass is greener, the sky, bluer. While I have no idea whether it is accurate or not for a nuclear winter, it makes the game look absolutely gorgeous. All of the screenshots you see in this post were taken by me straight from the game, without any editing. Just look at this:
Beautiful.
Nothing gets in the way of you enjoying the setting. There’s very minimal HUD; the only time your HUD comes up is when you change weapons, reload, or pick things up. There are no quest markers; you’re free to wander around, explore wherever you want, without the game intruding every five seconds and shouting, “Hey! You’re actually supposed to go here, you idiot!” There_ _is the watch, which is perpetually visible as long as you have a gun out, but it’s extremely helpful and never got in my way. While in sections that require a gas mask, it’ll display the time until you (1) need to change a gas mask filter, or (2) die a horrible, choking death. In times where you don’t need it for those things, i.e. you’re safe underground, it displays the time in the real world. Some might say this is immersion breaking, but I found it very helpful. Maybe I’m just getting old.
Although it’s beautiful, there are problems with the environment. The first is that many times the levels serve the gameplay, rather than the other way around. In Metro 2033, while complete stealth was possible, I found it very frustrating. There was no way to tell whether enemies would spot you or not, no real way to do a silent takedown. Some might call this true stealth gameplay, but I ended up gunning people down more often than not just because I couldn’t figure out a way to get past them sneakily. Last Light, however, does not have this problem, but it begins to feels too easy; there are many conveniently placed vents and sewer grates that you can crawl under without fear of detection.
The second problem with the environments has to do with their non-linear nature. I think the developers felt like there had to be__ some impetus for exploring the sections of the game not part of the main path. Therefore, there are loads and loads of ammo, money-ammo, throwables, and consumables everywhere. I was nearly always full up on two types of ammo and three types of consumables. This might change in Ranger Mode, but since they made that into a DLC (“It’s he right way to play the game! Except you have to pay more to play the right way”) I will never know.
One last thing, less of a problem than simply… something lacking, are the supernatural events. In 2033, these parts were the highlight of the game. Walking along with Khan in the ghost-infested tunnel, nearly missing being hit by a “train”; wandering around with Bourbon in the sewers, suddenly feeling hopeless and terrified as it slowly turns into your graveyard; these were the highlights of 2033. There are some similar moments in Last Light, but they feel less intense, somehow. Edit: I talk a little more about this in Part 3 of the series.
Those things said, let’s talk about something nice. In the vein of Half-Life, the level-designers cleverly used many tricks to conceal the borders of the outdoor levels, making them feel very open. I never felt like I was in a pre-constructed level when outdoors. In most levels, I couldn’t see the border if I wasn’t looking for it. In addition, the subtle, unconscious guidance present in the levels is amazing; with the exception of the swamp level, which required red flags to guide the player along the right paths, I never got lost. Often, I’d stumble around, convinced that I was lost, and suddenly come upon a plot-point. I’d easily put these level designers in the league of those who worked on Half-Life 2.
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Did I really manage to navigate this fog successfully?
The indoor levels, on the other hand, can sometimes be frustrating. The occasion I remember most keenly was the level where you defend the boat crossing against the Nosalises.
it starts out as very tense moment. It all starts in a dark tunnel in the metro full of scaffolding. I walk up to the boat dock, intending to attain passage over the water. A single Nosalis peeks out at you from some scaffolding, and hides into a hole in the wall, foreshadowing what is to come. To call the boatman, you must pull a rope, ringing a series of bells until the rope shakes the last bell, signaling the boatman. You can see where this is going.
I pull the rope. The boatman signals back, but - disaster! - the feral roars of the Nosalises assail me from every direction, and they start coming out of the woodwork. I take the high ground, on top of the boat dock, and prepare for battle. One jumps along the pillars, and jumps onto the platform. I take it out with a single shot. Another one comes up the stairs, and I shoot it, and - damn! There’s one right next to me! Where did it come from!? I try to shoot it off me, but it takes me down in three swipes.
Ok, no biggie, next try. I try this tactic twice more, with the same results. Ok, maybe I should defend a nice little corner, where they can only come at me in one direction. This almost succeeds, but I go down as the boatman says he’s just around the corner. Alright, let me try something else…
As I do this, the failings of the autosave system become horribly apparent. Each time, I see the Nosalis peek out at me from the scaffolding. I start shooting at it out of spite, but apparently it’s invincible. Each time I need to call the boatman, and each time I’ve got to wait as he answers back, only to be killed again. Not only does this ruin the tense atmosphere of the first approach, but it’s also freaking annoying. There’s no good place to hide, no good place to go except to huddle in a corner, aiming out in one direction and shooting the monsters as they come while hoping you don’t miss a single time or reload at the wrong instant._ _
ohgodohgodohgodohgod
Of course, this might have had something to do with me playing on hardcore difficulty. Maybe it was perfectly doable and still perfectly tense on normal. But then again, I was not having much trouble with things up to that point. I eventually got past this boat dock, after discovering the quadruple-chambered shotgun and loading from the autosav__e yet another few times.
I’m going to wrap up here for now. Next time I’ll hopefully get to the gameplay, as well as some specifics such as the characters and the storyline. In addition, I’ll get to the game’s checkered past, how it nearly didn’t come out, and how it suffered because of it.