I suddenly find myself paying that much more attention to which games are seeing Linux conversions, as a sudden rush would imply big things for Valve’s SteamOS project. Could Metro: Last Light’s belated Penguin edition be a herald of Things To Come? (more…)

Deep Silver have had quite the couple of years. They’ve gone from a European publisher of quietly successful strategy games and RPGs (the X games, Gothic, others), to finding mainstream success with Dead Island, to picking up where THQ left off with Metro: Last Light and Saints Row 4.

In an interview with Deep Silver’s CEO, The Penny Arcade Report mention that Saints Row IV has sold triple that of Saints Row 3 on PC over the same time period, and that Metro: Last Light sold more across all platforms in a single week than the original did in three months. (more…)

Seems like only yesterday that we weren’t even sure if Metro: Last Light would ever see the light of day. Seems like markedly closer to yesterday that it was flinging massive balls of spiders at us (this is the point where you should begin imagining this all like one of those fond memories flashback montages, except with the aforementioned imagery instead of a slow-mo snowball/food fight). Now, though, it’s packing its bags and preparing to leave us, probably forever. But before it closes up shop once and for all, it’s got one last dollop of content for us to remember it by. Three characters, three stories interwoven with Artyom’s adventure, three thousand borscht-o-flops of intrigue>. Unlike the Faction Pack, however, Chronicles’ freshly playable faces should strike you as a bit more familiar.

(more…)

What’s the deal with game developers and spiders? I’m actually working on a podcast-ish feature thing that tackles that very subject (it’s been quite enlightening so far!), but for now I will sum up my findings in a brief, easily parsed expression of unbridled terror: EWWWEWWWWEWWWW. And also this for good measure. Metro: Last Light’s “Developer Pack” DLC continues gaming’s heartfelt, eight-legged embrace of arachnophobia with a horrific-sounding Spider’s Lair solo mission. Also, it includes a bunch of a fun developer tools (think AI battlefields, etc) for you to toy around with. This, I assume, is merely a distraction so that the spiders can sneak up behind you and lay eggs in your hair.

(more…)

The Tower Pack for Metro: Last Light should have arrived in your Steam window by now. It’s a tower climb, a series of increasingly tough floors, setting the task of seeing how high you can climb.

(more…)

Want to know all about Metro: Last Light’s Factions DLC? Sure you do. Three short stories featuring new player characters from different groups. Nathan’s already written quite a lot of words about the chaps in question and the kind of things that can be expected but he made a schoolboy error. Why write words when there’s probably a trailer just around the corner that will show such weapons as the Hellbreath in action? Words can not do justice to the Hellbreath. Actually, hang on, the words are better than the reality could ever be. Hellbreath. It’s just a bloody flamethrower, isn’t it?

(more…)

Hmmmm. I was really hoping that Metro: Last Light‘s story-based, world-expanding “Faction Pack” DLC might at least put us behind the gas mask of one> non-combat character just trying to live in the game’s diseased, decaying cesspit of a civilization, but alas. Still, it sounds like it’ll be an interesting opportunity to understand where more militantly proficient folks who aren’t Artyom come from, and that’s definitely an intriguing prospect. Details after the break.

(more…)

Launch trailers are released weeks before anything launches, trailers have their own trailers, and one day there will be a fifteen millisecond teaser for the reveal of the logo that is set to appear in a five second viral video that is itself advertising an advert for a web-based spin-off of your favourite game. I’m sorry, that’s just the way of it. Metro: Last Light is defying convention by opting for a post-release trailer that is there minutes long and also a thing of beauty. The creation of Alexander Bereznyak, 4A’s lead technical artist, the ‘Mobius’ video is a journey through a single moment in the life (and death) of a Metro station. The camera drifts through the frozen figures, tableaux in a high-tech ghost train, and lingers on scenes of desperation, heroism and catastrophe. Watch.

(more…)

Metro: Last Light is my current slithering, senses-constricting conquest, but I haven’t quite finished it yet. Thus far, however, my feelings align pretty well with Jim’s, bringing Hivemind Orgiastic Synergism rates up to 212.5783 percent. Last Light’s different from 2033 but still of a similar spirit, and I quite like the idea of viewing its intoxicatingly disheveled world from different perspectives. That’s precisely the idea behind 4A’s summer flood of single-player DLC, so I’m definitely not complaining. According to legends, complete Hivemind synergy will actually cause> the apocalypse, so you’ll probably want to dive into the break’s dank tunnels for safety. Also, details.

(more…)

To hear former THQ boss Jason Rubin tell it, Metro: Last Light studio 4A Games is maybe not the best place to work. He doesn’t mean that in a whip-crack-y, everyone’s-a-jerk way, though. Quite the contrary, actually: he recently claimed it was a case of absurdly talented people working elbow-to-elbow in “appalling” conditions. Their offices? “More like a packed grade school cafeteria than a development studio.” Picking up new hardware was apparently also quite the ordeal. “When 4A needed another dev kit, or high-end PC, or whatever, someone from 4A had to fly to the States and sneak it back to the Ukraine in a backpack lest it be ‘seized’ at the border by thieving customs officials,” said Rubin. But what about 4A’s side of the story? Creative director Andrew Prokhorov recently saw fit to chime in.

(more…)