Metro: Last Light easily sets the standard for the future of the gaming industry. This is mostly due to the fact that while there have been a number of titles in the past that showed a nuclear-ravaged apocalyptic future, none have don as perfectly as Metro.
Dmitry Glukhovsky’s, the man who wrote the books the games are based on, vision of a hectic and a terrifying future, where humanity has been driven to stay safely underground from the creatures on the surface that have radically mutated into dangerous monsters, show just how much a literary piece can influence the gaming media. Unimpressively, it also points to the fact how few titles are influenced well by literature.
The idea of keeping the gamer in the game may sound like something that’s a routine thing to do in the industry, but how often do we see titles deviating from this? Not Metro: Last Light. If you’ve had the opportunity to play Metro 2033, you will know that the game starts off from the point where it left and even manages to surpass its predecessor. Basically, it’s just another example how a sequel can turn out to be perfect with a little bit of work.
Metro has kept up with its ever-growing fan base and delivered some much required tweaks and fixes to the game’s combat and stealth features, although never shying away from its gripping narrative. What’s more, the narrative offered by the game adds up to the replayabilty value of the game. And of course, there’s the fun quotient.
Video games are art and art sometimes makes you happy and helps you express your emotions (remember the days when you came back from school and played GTA running around Vice City with a chainsaw, reflecting the kind of day you had at school). But more than that fun factor is the fact that art should induce thought, fear, questions, and determine the length you are willing to go to get those answers, all things Last Light does well?
Moreover, we can’t really think of the last game that offered so much pressure on the player just to stay alive in the game, when you have strange visions on the wall that play tricks on your mind, mutated creatures that don’t need a second invitation to attack you, and of course, the underground factions that are always fighting with each other.
Imagine how you would feel running out of ammo in a dark, desolate underground sewage system teeming with unknown horrors. It’s as if the developers were in a same position when they built the game, and can read the average gamer’s mind.
Although the game has its own set of small problems (like console freezing), nothing can take away the fact that Last Light is actually a founding stone for the games that will arrive in the near future and hopefully build on what Metro has done.
Hey industry! Are you taking a note of this? Because making a game is not only about a acquiring a massive budget, it’s also about passion, vision and a set of good ideas. And Metro, as of now, is the only recent title to deliver all that.
A little footnote to Deep Silver and 4A Games: In the words of the reputed Mr. Andy Gray, “Take a bow.”