DON’T MAKE ME PLAY! METRO REDUX
Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game
Playing a like slow-burning Russian novel, one of those hefty ones people pretend to read in coffee shops, and featuring a cast of characters who revel in their post-apocalyptic suffering, Metro Last Light was a hard sell when I could have been playing BioShock. This FPS enjoyed depressing me. So I stopped playing.
As time passed I always wondered what I was missing out on. Metro Redux is the perfect opportunity to answer any lingering questions. Remade for PS4, enhanced for PS4 Pro, and offering the original 2033 for the first time on PlayStation, it’s time I stopped moaning and embraced the dark descent into the series’ ice cold heart.
While it’s still oppressive, and crawls along at a pace that would give The Last Of Us a shock, at least now the load times are improved. Also, playing 2033 and Last Light together, back to back, helps make some sense of the complex lore plucked from the books it’s based on – a mix of urban fantasy and tense horror set inside Moscow’s crumbling underground metro tunnels.
In hindsight, developer 4A Games is a master of FPS mechanics – the simple act of needing to pump a portable battery to maintain light and power weapons ensures the cat-and-mouse gunfights have an edge few shooters have managed to match. Ultimately it’s the little things that stick, like being able to wipe blood from your visor to see what’s causing the red stuff to splatter.
Maybe I’ve grown patient, happy to lift my finger from the trigger as the game’s cotton-mouthed characters drone through their sombre exposition. Or maybe I’ve come to appreciate the tense encounters, bleak believable world, and innovative gunplay. It turns out I was missing out on a great game all along. Now that’s depressing.
2033 AND LAST LIGHT BACK TO BACK HELPS MAKE SENSE OF THE LORE.