E3 Stage demo
I didn’t get this until now, but the guy at the end is totally the son of the lady that was left outside!
A nice summary video of the game
This looks really nice and very atmospheric. Too atmospheric to be honest, I remember reading the book and playing the original game made very depressed back then.
Print reviews for Last Light are starting to appear on the internet. They’re all positive, but the one from Games TM expresses a few concerns about difficulty. Supposedly*, the reviewer claims that Metro 2033’s great resource management elements have been compromised by making ammo, weapons, and gas mask filters too easy to find in the environment, confirming fears of fans of the first game. I wonder if the Ranger Mode DLC aligns Last Light’s difficulty with that of the first game? Pre-order or pay $5 to find out.
*This info comes from a NeoGAF thread that links to some no-name blog, and it plays neatly into fears expressed by loud hardcore gamers, so take it with appropriate grains of salt.
I didn’t think the the resource management was anything that special in the first game. I never touched the “good” bullets until the last fight in the game. I only used them then because I ran out of regular ammo. Maybe it was more important on higher difficulties (I played on default) but that stuff was never a factor for me.
Yeah, that was my biggest disappointment with the original. I saved up and saved up and saved up those good bullets, but never used them. I wonder now if it would have made the game a little less tough if I had.
A few months after I finished the game, they introduced that Ranger mode though, where apparently bullets actually became rare (which they were definitely not when I played through it), so the resource management might actually have been a factor in that mode.
There are three difficulty levels in the game. The middle default difficulty definitely gives you a surfeit of ammo, filters, grenades, and medical syringes. I don’t remember the previous game being this generous.
That said, there’s at least one annoying boss fight that I can’t imagine doing on the harder difficulty level because it took pretty much every round of ammo I was carrying. Ugh.
-Tom
Wonder if I’ll manage to play this game without unlimited ammo, I am quite sure I gave up in the original and just went for “Turns out I had a John Woo style clip in my guns…”
The last one was on rails, is this one a bit more open world? Will this scratch my Stalker itch?
Read the book before you play the game :)
Good lord, no. Therse games aren’t set in subway tunnels for no reason, you know. :)
-Tom
Sure but I saw some videos with some above ground gameplay and you could also create an open world with subway tunnels, leading to different locations. But I guess no, huh? Still looks interesting.
If it’s anything like the first game then there are some fairly broad corridors but it is never what anyone would describe as “open world”. Yes, you could create an open world but that’s not what they do here.
The model for the Metro games is pretty obviously Half-Life. That’s still very much the case with Last Light*.
-Tom
- which is soooooo good**
** but you didn’t hear that from me until Monday night
That’s what I wanted to hear. I really liked 2033, despite a few rough edges. Those horrible experiences of running out of air, during a top-side firefight have definitely stayed with me. Looking forward to the review.
I was recently gifted 2033 from the giveaway thread. I need to go play that ASAP so I can play this while everyone is still talking about it.
Wouldn’t you think the model for the Metro games is the Metro 2033 book where the story came from, which coincidentally is taking place mostly in the Moscow metro ? :-)
Got this pre-ordered, really looking forward to it after completing the first game a couple months ago. Sounds like reviewers have no option to pick Ranger Normal or Ranger Hardcore? Metro 2033 had such wonky difficulty modes, switching from Normal to Ranger Hardcore changed the whole game and my impression of it for the better.
Ranger modes were added in a DLC/patch for 2033, maybe it’s the same for Last Light? When you preordered, did it mention any bonuses?