Metro: Last Light | a Review
originally published on 21/08/2020;
Hello everyone, I am the stricken by political opponents G.E.M.Simov, a dweller of the metro’s tunnels who’s caught in the war between communists and fascists! In what little free time I have, when not fleeing, I will tell you about Metro: Last Light.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
Metro: Last Light is a First Person Shooter, much like Metro 2033, with survival and stealth elements. The gameplay is almost identical to what Metro 2033 had to offer, so I will regurgitate the same information over here as well.
The game’s survival elements come in a few mechanics.
First, there are two types of ammo - military grade bullets and normal ammunition. Military grade bullets are used as currency, but can also be utilized as actual ammunition in the event that the player is either up against a strong enemy or has run out of normal bullets.
Second, there are many items that have a one-time use, behaving like consumables, or other items that have a certain lifetime, meaning that they can be used for a while but then are lost. These consumable items can either be purchased from shops, with military grade rounds, or found out in the world. The same can be done with weapons and normal ammunition - they can either be purchased from shops or found in the world. Military grade bullets can be obtained by selling items in shops or finding it out in the world.
Third, there is a mechanic that limits the amount of time the player can spend in certain areas. That mechanic involves filters for gas masks, which need to be worn at all times when the player is in these areas, otherwise the player dies after a certain amount of time, less than a minute, if I recall correctly. This limits the player’s ability to scavenge for goods as they need to focus on getting out of the area, or they risk dying. If the player has found a lot of filters, or if the player has invested in filters the last time they went to a store, they can spend a longer time scavenging, thus finding more things.
The game’s survival elements are quite well implemented, and I think they are as good as they were in the last game - which is pretty good.
The game’s stealth elements, however, are still as atrocious as in Metro 2033, although I do believe steps were made in the right direction. There are more sneaking sections, but they are not as impossible to do sneakily as before, although the player does still get detected quite often, as the only way to stealthily get rid of someone is to either kill them with a throwing knife, which sometimes does not instantly kill them and thus triggers the alarm, or get rid of them via a stealth takedown, which can be lethal and non-lethal, but that requires that the player is right behind the goon they want to kill without having been detected, which is pretty difficult in most cases, as the levels are not designed with stealth in mind, even if stealth can be utilized.
The presence of non-lethal takedowns means exactly that. There are, actually, different endings for Metro: Last Light. The endings for Metro: Last Light are two, and the ending the player gets is determined by their karma, which is, in turn, determined by how the player has behaved.
Has the player been generous, giving to the poor? Has the player been merciful, sparing enemies? Has the player forgiven past grievances? These all determine what kind of ending the player gets, although getting one of the endings is a lot harder than getting the other.
The issue of the game being strangely slow has been somewhat affected, and almost fixed, in this one. There are sections where everything is smooth and the game feels good to play, but there are also sections where the slowness returns and it is quite unrelentingly dour, even worse than in Metro 2033, due to the fact that the player, in Metro: Last Light, has already tasted the sweetness of smooth gameplay, and when it is wrenched away from them, well… It hurts.
Overall, Metro: Last Light is an improvement over Metro 2033 when it comes to gameplay. There are still some issues, and those issues keep me from throwing all my money at this game, but it is what it is. 2/3
Presentation
Metro: Last Light has the same presentation as Metro 2033, even though there were three years between the release of the former and the latter. The game retains its wonderful presentation, with less music and more sounds, with the dead world looming above the player and its dangers as real as before.
The models look a bit better than before, for human characters, that is, but it is nothing too special. The art direction is on point, as it was in Metro 2033. The sound effects are, much like in the previous game, somewhat passable. The guns still sound less like guns and more like… Something else, but the clanging of bullets after the gun has been fired is still superb. The music, as mentioned, is absent for the most part, but what little soundtrack material there is, it is neither bad nor good.
The voice acting retains the weird direction of: “everyone must have a russian accent even though they are, in cannon, speaking Russian, and so they don’t need to have a Russian accent because none of them have an actual accent when speaking Russian”, which is just a grand annoyance and makes me crave for the voices of people not trying to sound as if they were Russian.
There are some instances of IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE THROUGH darkness, which makes the game incredibly annoying to deal with. This is an issue that has carried over from the last game, with some areas being way too dark, so dark that, even though the player is supposed to be sneaking through them, they literally can’t see the enemies, and bump into them. It’s insane.
However, there are boob physics, which makes this game an instant classic. 3/3
Story
The story in Metro: Last Light picks up around a year after the events of Metro 2033. Artyom has officially joined the Spartans, who are working to keep peace in the metro through the great power of the military installation of D6. They also deal in getting rid of mutants.
Then, one day, Artyom is sent on a mission. And he finds something. And he gets captured by the Nazis. And from that point onwards interesting stuff happens, and, all in all, things look good.
The story in Metro: Last Light is, as is to be expected, inspired by and closely follows, Dmitry Glukhovski’s novel, Metro 2034, which is a book I will review after I review Metro 2033. As such, the story does not stray too far from the novel, but due to the existence of two endings, one of them is cannon, the other is not, meaning that when Exodus came out it was confirmed which ending had actually happened. It was the ending that was harder to reach.
The story, as in Metro 2033, is great. It’s really, really good. It’s even better, because the endings are both pretty nice. Although there are some things which make little to no sense - such as how in the name of the dead God did these communists and fascists get so many men to throw at each other, how do they have so much firepower - all in all, it’s very weird for me, because, as you may know, I expect a post-apocalyptic setting to not feature thousands upon thousands of people, going to fully fledged, blown out wars.
Kinda breaks the idea of “we don’t really have many sources of food so we can’t be many”. What do these people eat? Pigs and mushrooms? Cool… And in such great quantities you can grow mushrooms on the concrete of the metro’s tunnels and raise pigs, who also need to eat something, in such massive quantities so as to feed actual armies? Interesting.
The fact that this game focused on politics was a bit of a turn off for me. Politics is an interesting subject to tackle in art, and the types of politics being addressed in Metro: Last Light was a good type of politics, which represented the clash of ideologies which both have a certain right and a certain wrong to them. However, I do not want to play a game about tunnel-dwelling people, living down in the metro so as to survive, going to WAR with one another over who’s dictator is cooler.
I do not want this clash of ideologies, although it is bound to actually happen, when you think about it, I do not want these expansionist mindsets going: “ah we need to control the whole metro!”, because I find it hard to believe that none of the people would say: “well, maybe they’ve adopted that ideology because it was working for them - the circumstances on each station are different so us forcing our way of life on them might not work out for them”.
I enjoyed the story, but some things were just too stupid for me. Such as every single leader of every single faction. Those guys - complete morons. Why can’t we just get along was all I wondered when playing through this. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game, that has a very wonderful setting, which I greatly desire, end up getting itself the legendary point? Does this game, that throws away the setting’s merits and introduces politics based on old ideologies that have almost been buried in the dirt of 1945, merit the gift of the legendary point? Alas, no. 0/1
Conclusion
7/10. Metro: Last Light is a good game, even if I have my gripes with it. I’d recommend it to fans of First Person Shooters and fans of the Post-Apocalypse, as it is a relatively splendid experience.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display. I knew it could have been better, but it is what it is.