"Metro: Last Light" first impressions.

Sorry I've not been posting, but this "video project" I keep mentioning is essentially a 15-20 documentary/comedy gaming show that I'm narrating in character, and as such has become the most difficult project I've ever tackled. I've been baring down on it every day, as much as I can, to the detriment of my blog and "social media presence." But whatever. I'm really proud of what's coming together, even if it completely sucks, and I hope people can at least get a chuckle out of it. NOW! Here's what I think of Metro: Last Light. My first impressions, anyway. I'll be back tomorrow, maybe a couple of more times this week. Now that I'm just editing video/audio, it's actually a welcome break to sit down and write a blog.

Metro: Last Light is a truly amazing game that I’ve been greedily devouring for a better part of the last two days. Every moment I wasn’t playing, I was thinking about it... I’m pretty sure my girlfriend thinks I’m cheating on her with a video game. A thought made no less painful by the presence of the “nudity” warning on the ESRB badge.

Can you blame me? Dat ASS...

The gameplay is well put together, the graphics are good, blah blah blah. Not what I really feel like tackling in a blog post. I’m just going to throw atmosphere up as a target and hurl thought-darts at it for a minute.

Thick, scary, eerily beautiful, profoundly well designed. The abandoned tunnels and sewers or the dilapidated surface world of Moscow in 2034 are some of the most engrossing I’ve experienced in years. If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know I’m a environment freak. They are so principally important to what I find to be a quality gameplay experience that I’ll play through horrible games that have good environments just because I like where I am. They’re the reason I can’t play through good games like Skyrim, but can play through trash like Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

Unfortunately for my journalistic integrity, a lot of what I qualify as a good environment has little to do with anything the game designers do, and lots to do with what appeals to me aesthetically. I grew up in the middle of the woods - was a teenager in the middle of the woods. Therefor, the concrete and steel of an urban game hold favor over the woodland landscapes that dominate “medieval” rpgs and period shooters.

Can't it be both?

In the case of Metro: Last Light, I’m a lucky boy, and I get both a well designed environment, and one that appeals to my aesthetic sense. They also appear in the perfect context, lending an important but often neglected air of necessity to the tunnels and collapsed buildings. Appearing on a surface world long ravaged by post-nuclear environmental crises, a gust of wind picks up, hinting at the destructive and unpredictable nature of the weather. A button press wipes off your ever-present gas mask, just sprayed with debris. A distant howl of an beast not yet known to you. The sun obscured by a cloud, chases the horizon at a pace too swift to leave you comfortable as a player.

No matter the rest of my experience (my time with the single player campaign is nearly over) or the inevitable and obnoxious complaints that will come up as I come to better know this game, that particular moment I just described has stored itself in a rarely used drawer of my brain. It’s sharing that space with the first time I played Resident Evil 1 and the dogs burst through the window, or the final battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7, or my first leap from atop a church steeple in Assassin’s Creed. Metro: Last Light, for what may come, has given me a permanent gaming memory, and that’s a rare thing indeed.

Oh, and there’s a fucking revolver-shotgun that you use to shoot Wererats. And titties. Glorious Russian titties. Buy this game.