PixlBit

Survival Horror that was a horror trying to survive

I try not to write out of a place of frustration, but it's hard when I encounter a game that seems to go out of it's way to get me to that place.

Metro: Last Light is the sequel to the well-received Metro 2033 from 2010. You find yourself playing the role of Artyom, a young survivor of the nuclear holocaust that has driven the remnants of Russian society into the subway systems. The aftermath of the previous game resulted in Artyom killing off the mutants that have taken over the surface, no doubt scarring him mentally.

A psychological horror game that consisted of Artyom dealing with the results of his actions would have been great. Instead, we get a standard "there's one surviving mutant and it becomes important to make an alliance with humans and mutants" story.

Okay, maybe it's not too standard, but it's not unique.

I could have forgiven the game this if it hadn't decided to go the campy route 2/3rds of the way through, when Artyom and a colleague have a shared hallucination after visiting a radioactively poisoned sewer. I threw my hands in the air at that point and swore I'd finish the game as fast as possible.

About that same time, it felt as though the game was giving up too. The game did have some technical issues previously, with some uneven graphic displays and some stuttering animations, but with the last bit of the game, these issues became worse. I wish I had my Elgato up to record the moment when a guard's legs stretched out and floated behind him as he walked away from me, or the tense combat sequence when the mutants living in a cave system made fearsome growls and attack noises, and never move an inch. The guys were frozen in place, like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who. Other times, I'd be either caught or thrown around the geometry of the game with little control.

Visually, Metro is a very pretty game. Textures have a lot of detail to them. There are lots of great pieces of atmospheric detail as well, but once the game itself begins to unravel, those positives mean nothing.

The gameplay itself wasn't too impressive. I played on Normal, thinking it would give me enough of a challenge for a game I've never had experience with. But aside from some wonky combats, it was cakewalk. This isn't meant to be me harping about my talents, really. The game was EASY. I was playing stealthily, knowing that there was an trophy involved. I thought that would mean I would have to play fairly sneaky. I was wrong. I could be face to face with some of humans and they wouldn't even notice me. The animalistic mutants were just as bad--I got walk up behind them and they would go on munching on corpses. To make the stealthing (?) worse, the prompt for the knockout blow was terribly inconsistent. Sometimes I could be a 2-3 feet away from someone (even if I was in front of them) in order to get the prompt. Other times I'd have to practically shove my face up their ass in order to knock them out.

Oh, and the combat! The humans were stupid, and the mutants weren't much better. There was one type of mutant that would just hop up and slap me. It would hurt, yes, but the animation looked like I had just said something uncouth about it's mother.

Ugh, I could go on about other problems I had (maybe I'll upload the capture I DID get of the boss fight that consisted of a staring contest between me and the monster. I lost, I used my guns.), but I don't want to think about this game anymore. I had originally been thinking of doing another playthrough in guns blazing fashion, but fuck it. I'm gonna go toss this game into a pile of horse shit, where it obviously came from.