PC Gamer - October 2011

METRO: LAST LIGHT

There’re still plenty of mutants in the Moscow Metro.

FIRST LOOK Back in the USSR—with multiplayer?

There are three key principles behind Metro: Last Light. The first is not to mess with the spirit of the original, which THQ calls
its “flawed masterpiece.” Based on the best-
selling books by Dmitri Glukhovsky, Metro
2033 was set in Moscow after a nuclear
apocalypse, where the few humans who
survived are living in the bomb-proof
tunnels of the underground rail network.
Isolated from the rest of the world, the
stations survive as city-states, where most
people never travel more than 500 yards
from home and die young from respiratory
diseases. In between the stations (and on
the surface) are mutated monstrosities,
radiation, and poison gases. In the first
Metro you played Artyom, a Ranger who
faced off against a mysterious threat called
the Dark Ones. You’ll play him again here.
The second principle is
to fix the problems that
made the masterpiece
flawed, particularly the
AI and stealth. The third
is to push the tech so it’s
still the benchmark for
graphics cards. The demo
READ ME
PUBLISHER
THQ
DEVELOPER
4A Studios
LINK
www.metro
2033game.com

we are shown isn’t, for that reason, a real mission but “something designed to survive in the madness of E3,” cobbled together from all over the game.

We’re introduced to Last Light with a daytime sweep of the future Moscow from the surface. Mutants crawl amid the post-apocalyptic wreckage; bat-winged

A similar game to 2033, though more cinematic and polished, and with a lot more ammo.

horrors flap in the sky. Hidden in a corner, t wo gas-masked Rangers are prying up a manhole cover.

Beneath the cover lies a Nazi base that
the Rangers are infiltrating. Initially,
Artyom sneaks in alone, using his lighter
to burn away cobwebs and unscrewing
bulbs to provide cover of darkness. Then
he creeps up behind two sentries and
quietly kills them both. At this point, he
stops creeping and starts fighting,
shooting his way through a well-guarded
checkpoint. Inside, he finds a ridiculous
chain gun and uses it against the rushing
reinforcements. You can, of course, also
play through the section without firing a
shot, as in the first game. So far, little has
changed from 2033.