Game Details Developer: 4A Games

Publisher: Deep Silver, Inc.

Platform: PC (reviewed), PS3, Xbox 360

Release Date: May 14, 2013

Price: $59.99

Links: Official website | Steam | Amazon 4A Games: Deep Silver, Inc.: PC (reviewed), PS3, Xbox 360May 14, 2013: $59.99

“The metro is a living, breathing thing with a heartbeat—a soul and a brain,” the helpful character Khan says while walking through one of Metro: Last Light's many underground passages. This stretch of sewer packs enough revelations to earn the haughty quote, but Metro's designers are also attempting a cheeky declaration with the line.

It's one thing for Metro: Last Light to come out swinging as a nearly-next-gen first-person shooter. If you crank it up on a high-end quad-core PC, a DirectX 11 wonderland of light-and-shadows tricks, high-poly landscapes, and gruesome beasts will stretch before you. Watch a gameplay trailer or two and you'll assume that the game is just a silly man-versus-beast romp. At its best, maybe it's a video-card pack-in.

But that would ignore the word Metro—as in, the sequel to Metro 2033, a 2010 game that prioritized plot and atmosphere over raw gameplay to earn a cult following in the process. Luckily for the team at Ukrainian studio 4A Games, bankruptcy limbo didn't prevent this follow-up from reaching store shelves—and neither, apparently, did 4A's continued adherence to plot and atmosphere over gameplay. Yet where the prior Metro could be written off as a wonky curio, Metro: Last Light delivers a Hollywood-caliber story, a convincing world, and some must-play moments. It all comes within a game that, while painfully uneven, is certainly playable and absolutely the right step for the first-person shooter genre.

Welcome to dystopian Moscow, where the last game's protagonist Artyom (who also stars in the Russian book series of the same name) still dwells in the metro system's tunnels among the other survivors of a nuclear holocaust. This time, his fallout is a little more personal. Namely, Artyom wiped out a seemingly evil race of “dark ones” who—oops—actually wanted peace. A single dark one remains, sending Artyom on a city-spanning chase while contending with Nazis and communists underground—plus frightening beasts above it.

No magic or super-powers here; just gritty, cold-war firepower like bolt-action rifles, shotguns, and AKs. Every weapon can be upgraded when you spend the game's higher-powered rounds as currency (or, consequently, loading them into your guns for more power when needed—at a cost). MLL's weapons combine chunky sound effects, potent firepower, and appropriate recoil to deliver mighty fine combat (particularly when aimed at the radiation-afflicted above-ground baddies). The game doesn't sport the finest AI, but the enemies' ability to circle, swoop, and coordinate makes even the most open fighting areas feel claustrophobic.

The same can't be said for the game's most common “combat” scenarios: sneaking through human outposts. Artyom wears a wristwatch that lights up when you step into lit areas, at which point human foes will shout and alert guards for all matters of annoyance. The game thus encourages players to duck into the shadows for an easier time, and boy is it easy. Expect to pretty much walk up to guards without incident on normal difficulty, so long as you're in “the dark.” And you will tire of these long and unsatisfying sequences. Anybody who enjoyed the tension of Dishonored's stealthy gameplay will wonder what 4A was doing for the past three years.

Thankfully, past annoyances like slow weapon reloads, slow running speeds, and insta-kill frustrations have been wiped from this Metro. This all makes its odd world that much easier to appreciate. MLL makes no bones about letting a lot of time pass between major conflict scenes, and this works thanks to pacing tricks like boisterous town sequences and tension-loaded caverns. Frequent game companion Pavel is a nice addition—he's a more enjoyable and relatable Russian NPC than even Grand Theft Auto 4's Roman Bellic—and the rest of the game's voice acting holds up in spite of its thick Russian accents at all times.

At its worst, the game dumps too much substance on players at once. Walk through a settlement and separate bands of dialogue will fall over each other like a badly choreographed Three Stooges segment. Even at its best, the dialogue is often humorless, morose stuff. This makes sense for the dystopian setting, but the few brief snippets of glee or oddity make the rest of the material sound outright tiresome.

For all the spit and sparkle applied to the game's beasts and remarkably varied scenery—holy cow, is MLL a looker—its characters suffer from robotic faces and gestures. Considering how much weight the game puts on plot and character development, that's no minor oversight. In addition, the game relegates its few female characters to a heap of objectification, made worse by a gelatin-breasts visual effect that makes Dead or Alive 2 look realistic by comparison.

Yet after calling the game out for its missteps, I still walk away from it pretty delighted by the entire ride. I loved the wild beast battles and the game's constant visual trickery. I endured the slow first third and a few ho-hum plot clichés to get to some serious plot-and-action meat, particularly in a few sequences that borrow both shamelessly and tastefully from Half-Life (you'll see). I rarely threw my keyboard and mouse at anything in frustration, but then I didn't pony up $5 to unlock the game's hardest difficulty as DLC (gross).

Ultimately, I was pretty surprised by this 12-hour military shooter with (sure) a soul and brains. MLL's risks, pacing, and emphasis on plot should be studied by other FPS game makers from here on out. Hopefully, 4A Games' new post-THQ benefactors think there's a little light left after this installment.

The good:

Smart pacing means that action sequences serve the plot rather than other way around

Rev up that DX11 PC for next-gen graphics now

The bad:

Lackluster AI and xenomorph choreography

Stealth sequences disappoint in their own right, let alone compared to Dishonored

Graphics devs could have spent more time rendering decent face animations

The ugly:

$5 to unlock the hardest difficulty? Way to punish your biggest fans

Female characters deserve better than what MLL has to offer

Verdict: Must-buy during the next Steam sale. Perfect if you're the kind of shooter fan who doesn't mind stopping and smelling the roses time and time again.

