Now playing: Metro Redux

Finally found a price I could agree with. Its not like these games weren't worth $50, but I'm stingy in this busy year full of many great releases and so I wanted a better bargain. $15 at Toys R Us? I'm sold! I already played through Last Light on PlayStation 3 and ranked it among one of the best games available in 2013, and I technically owned the very first game from a give-away on PC, but the package here was still a great deal. I hadn't grabbed any of the DLC, and my intel 3000 was running the original in a way that the experience felt drunk and muddy. No seriously, playing the original now on a machine that can actually handle it I'm finding so many "I don't remember that!" moments where it feels like I missed out on all the details my first time around. It feels like a brand new game. Meanwhile Last Light is just worth playing through again with better visuals, it was a great game. So... you wont here any "boooooo! old game port" hate from me, this is more than what I paid for and I'm enjoying things. That being said I'll admit this ain't so much about 1st impressions here, or current thoughts while playing. Playing the game pulls me into this super introvert mode where all I care about is very short term thoughts and what's in front of me, and between that and the fact that I'm already well acquainted by the sequel makes this hard to discuss impressions on. So lets just talk about why this game is so awesome!

So for those not familiar with Metro you're basically playing what I see as essentially another team's Half-life 2. The way I see it there are two modern day HL2 style masterpieces each going their own way with the formula. Wolfenstein is the one that decides to slide things back a little more into ludicrous fun territory while bottled up the same way HL2 is. Metro on the other hand is what happens if it accepted mainstream conventions on its own terms, and played up on the atmosphere and script quality of half-life. That sounds a little concerning on paper, but the real result is an incredible one-of-a-kind game that is well worth any hardcore shooter fan's time.

2 Hardcore 4 U!!!

For starters the set pieces are amazing and make full use of things. Its not like a military shooter where you're doing another mini-gun set piece off a helicopter for the 11th time in your FPS library for no apparent reason. Instead your turret section is a rusty car turret through a dark two way tunnel after you've been saved from two awesome rangers who snuck deep into neo-nazi turf. That's a pretty awesome scene that ends with a cart ride that goes wrong and sends you crashing back into the darkness all alone. Every script is offering something to the action, the world, or the story, and being an interesting section emphasizes the value of all those. Basically if you want me invested in a highly scripted game, you've got to give me both the freedom and the will to explore it, and Metro is very encouraging in that respect. Heck, that's why I'm into games with the half-life formula or feel in the first place. Doom maze games are fun but there's a beneficial balance to including a good amount of lore and story elements that games like this are great at.

Metro is also all about the smaller things and glorious atmosphere. This bleeds in from the survival aspects of gameplay. You need to stack up on ammo, filters, and maintain a mask, all while keeping your equipment charged. You can have masks break or get dirt on them you need to clean off, oxygen runs out making outdoor parts tense, your flash light runs off a chargeable battery with a short life, and some guns are functioning off of pressurized air you have to pump. Oh and you're objectives are on a clipboard you pull out and if its too dark to read you can use a lighter to help see it. That same lighter can be used as an up close light source, and burns thick spider webs as you walk into them. Would you also believe me if I told you Metro has a morality system that is actually subtle? I know, hardly heard of right? Between games like this and Okami I'm starting to wonder if we've actually got amazing moral choice games out there in plenty of places, but only the loud clunky ugly ones are being heard because they're that bad at subtly. With Metro you could actually beat the game and never know there was a system even in place. Sure poor beggars, and one or two obvious binary bits let you make a choice, but there's no clear idea or talk of a payoff. However secretly those alongside subtle bits like what creatures you attack, if you ghost your way through stealth sections, and more add up to separate endings. I've been told that if you're well informed you'll notice the moral choices coming and going with a strange flash and water dripping sound effect, and that's been happening to me constantly in my current playthrough and countless times I have no idea what I did right or wrong. Collect ammo off this guy? Drip! Accept a seemingly mundane task from a guy? Drip! Ignore an NPC to walk down a tunnel for a second? Drip! It happens quite a lot, and my only guess is that I think I'm doing the right thing because I'm playing it my way. That's just awesome. Heck I could go into great detail about how I simply love the fact that, despite fighting mutant monsters of the apocalypse, it turns out some just want to be left alone. Replaying Last Light long ago I discovered entire monster areas can be bypassed by just letting them be, or respecting their territory. This isn't another Skyrim where every single wolf attacks you because they're programmed to be enemies, this is instead a game where you can walk literally right in front of a monster dog thing's face and as long as you don't bother it, he wont hurt you. Of course the thing that makes this tense is that this isn't the norm, and you still don't know for sure if that monster thing you're tip-toeing by is the actively aggressive type or not. Its a great and realistic survival and moral situation, and its an active example of some of the game's story tone. Again this game is all about the smaller things, and its a great little experience.

wipe that mask off and shoot!

So a great shooter with a nice setting, great use of its scripted pieces, good attention to detail, what else is there to go over that makes this a fun ride so far? Well its just one of those games that in its essence capture what I love about my so-called "hardcore" shooter experience. The gunplay is amazing, there's value and lore to discover by exploring, the story gets a little weird in a lovable way at times, and the monsters are just plain awesome. It may have regenerating health and a tight inventory, but it makes the best of both things as the inventory and health are still established in a way that makes you think. They're still powered by resources, and you can really be on the edge of your seat on this game. Heck personally I think this game is tougher than quite a lot of old games I grew up with. I spent well over 30 minutes retrying one small stealth section today, and I still didn't come anywhere close to pulling off my ideal plan once I did make it.


Oh but how does this newer version turn out? Well actually not all that impressive. I mean don't get me wrong I'm still standing on that side of saying you wont get any hate here from me. I don't regret grabbing this game. Still I think its something about being used to the PS4 by now, or just remembering the game as looking so good to begin with, but either way the thing is the visuals feel relatively identical to what I thought it looked like. I'm sure if I did a comparison I'd find plenty of better tuned details, and I know its running better technically given the 60fps, but its just not a jawdropping thing. It just feels normal and it still looks great... just as I described Last Light on the PS3. Again I'm not complaining, previously I couldn't even play the original game right, and all the DLC will be new on Last Light's side. Also a new set of trophies and a share feature is nice. So despite not being mind blown by the graphical enhancements (and still being oblivious to 60fps as usual), its still worth a trip back into these two games. On a similar note of porting I don't know how Last Light stands for sure, but the original is actually full of hilarious little visual glitches I've never picked up before. A door going through a guy, an animation snag, and some minor detection issues. I also think I've managed to occasionally climb on stuff I'm not sure should have been possible. Nothing ever feels broken enough to complain, its actually kind of fitting to the general charm of the game being somehow deep and immersive one second and then silly and clumsy the next. Now I've gone on enough about this game, its time to return and enjoy it some more.