The closest thing we'll get to HL3 - Let's Play Metro: Last Light

Let's Plays
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#1

Привет, товарищи! Welcome to

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Metro: Last Light is the sequel to 2010’ s Metro 2033. If you haven’t played Metro 2033, you should check pannycakes’s and ApocalypseToast’s LP’s. I’ll be providing a short summary of the first game’s events that should be enough to get you up to speed, but 2033 is a great game and you may miss out on some of the smaller details and returning characters, so I suggest you go watch them. I’ll wait a bit.

All Done? Wait, what do you mean you can’t be arsed to? Argh, ok, let’s ask Wikipedia:

To be quite honest, I didn’t like Metro 2033 when I first played it. It had a great premise and a fantastic moody setting, but the enemies were bullet spongy as hell and came in swarms, ammo was scarce and you were likely to end up using your Military-grade ammo (the game’s currency) just to shoot monsters, which ended up screwing you in the long run. There was a stealth mechanic in place that helped you get through a lot of the human-populated levels, but since the game never told you you could just stealth sections, you ended up fighting your way out. A lot of people recommended playing it in Ranger Mode, because it made bullets waaaay more lethal, which ended up having the side effect of making the game easier since you ended up saving ammo.

There was also a Karma system which influenced the game’s ending, but it relied on stuff such as “play every balalaika and musical instrument in the game” asides from easier to spot decisions like not shooting the Dark One in the face, and it ended up having causing most people to miss out on the game’s Good Ending, so much that the Ranger Ending -where you blow up the Dark Ones- is the canonical ending to 2033, since that’s what most people got.

The Karma system makes a return in Last Light, and we’ll be aiming for the Good Ending. Please note I said “aiming for”; the karma system is a bit twitchy, but since I’m planning on showing off conversations and grabbing all the notes I’m fairly confident we’ll get it. I’ll be explaining how it works as we run into the positive and negative karma triggers. There will be bonus footage in the videos showing off the different results for the major decisions in the game, and a stand-alone video for the other ending.

I got Last Light with a GFX card, installed it to give said card a test ride and ended up loving it. The game is more accessible, stealth is easier (a lot easier, bordering on cheap if you abuse it), and it looks and sounds amazing. So grab a drink, dim the lights, put on your headphones, and come explore post-nuclear Moscow with Artyom.

Why are you playing this and not Redux?
Metro Redux is a remake of both 2033 and LL in a slightly modified LL engine. As such, there really isn’t much difference between the base game and Redux; if you never played either game you’ll want Redux, but if you already have a copy of LL you’re set. 2033 gains the most from this remake, so if you tried 2033 and found it a bit janky or too difficult you may want to give 2033 Redux a try. I will be playing the DLC missions are on the Redux version of the game, since they’re not available for purchase for the base game anymore.

Update Schedule?
At the time I’m posting this I have videos for 90% of the LP, but instead of dumping it all at once I’ll be updating every couple days to allow for some discussion between videos.

Jesus H. Christ you suck at FPSs.
That’s not a question. Also, yes.

Spoilers?
Discussing 2033’s events is ok, but let’s keep the thread spoiler-free regarding not only the story but setpieces and locations as well. Yes, that means not even in spoiler tags.

Warnings
Expect violence of the shooty/explodey kind, and gigantic fuck-off spider-scorpion hybrids in some videos, which I’ll be tagging individually. This post will have the :tw: tags, the second post will explain exactly what to expect in a given video.







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:tw: Spiders

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#3

It’s also how the book ends!

I really enjoyed Metro 2033, it was one of my favourite games of 2010 and it managed what no other shooter with a horror aesthetic really had until that point: it managed to be maintain a genuinely scary atmosphere in spite of leaning pretty hard into the action. There were so many great moments all throughout, and although it didn’t really have as engaging a story as the book does, and it has plenty of flaws, it made up for it by being a really refreshing experience that distinguished itself from basically everything else out there at the time.

Controversially, I honestly like Last Light less, but I’ll refrain from going into why until the LP is further along. The game is stunning to look at though, if there’s one area LL definitely improves in it’s the art direction, and 2033 already looked amazing. That vista when Artyom and Anna first hit the surface is as beautiful as it is haunting

#4

I loved 2033 but only after playing Redux I enjoyed playing it. The jank on the original 2033 killed any interest I had in playing it and it wasn’t until I played LL (and watched an LP of 2033!) that I decided to revisit it. I do think they lost a bit of the tension from the first game by making LL more combat-focused, even though they give you ample chances to just sneak around and avoid combat. They tried bringing that back by adding ‘Survival’ mode in Redux, but that just modified values on a table without adjusting gameplay and LL ends up being stupidly hard in Survival mode since it wasn’t designed around it. Likewise, playing 2033 Redux on ‘Spartan’ mode makes it a cakewalk. :expressionless:

The art direction in both games is incredible, and after reading ~50% of the first book (I’m making my way through it but the translation makes it hard) I feel they do a better job at worldbuilding and atmosphere than the book does. I mention it on the second video, but it’s kind of weird that they can make something so bleak look utterly beautiful.

#5

2033 had some quality jank. I gave up on it after spending an entire evening updating/rolling back drivers because a tram car (or something like that) kept crashing PhysX, in such a way that the game would disappear but loop sound. Real pleasant. I should watch an LP of it though - cool setting.

#6

A while back, I played 2033 and there must have been a glitch in my game, but there’s a part where you go in one of those railcars/handcars and you have to duck down as you pass a station, and I always died there (I was on the medium difficulty). I stopped there, but restarted about a year later and managed to not only get past that section with no problems, but I ended up completing the game. And I really liked all of it. It’s the kind of game that I can recall the atmosphere and the way it made me feel really well.

I haven’t really gotten around to picking up LL and I probably won’t anytime soon, but I am looking forward to this LP!

#7

I’m toying with the idea of making a 2033 Redux LP, but for the moment I’m kinda burnt out on Metro; the DLC is proving to be much harder to record while trying to maintain the ‘clean runs’ I’ve been going for in the base game, even with some editing.

I’ll probably end up taking a stab at it sometime down the line, but it’s not going to be my next project.

Regarding glitches… yeah, the games have more than their share. You’ll see the ones I was able to catch on a recording at the end of their respective videos (and some during the videos), but for the most part they’re physx/collision fuckery and nothing too serious.

#8

There’s a couple up on the LPArchive, so I wouldn’t stress about it. Watching a subtitled one at the moment actually - boy, those don’t really exist much anymore, do they?

#9

Yeah, those are the ones I linked in the OP, but they are not the Redux version of the game, and I think the updated graphics engine alone justifies taking another stab at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV3xP8-4BRs

Also what do you mean you subtitled LP’s don’t exist much anymore! You’re posting in one! :kissing_cat:

Joking aside, this came up where I originally posted the LP, so let me quote myself on my thought process:

I was originally planning to make this a voiced LP, thinking I’d have to time any commentary as not to talk over dialogue, but I began playing and realised that people talked way more than I remembered and that the lulls in the “conversations” were not long enough for anything longer than a sentence, which would sound super weird, so I gave subtitles a try. I found I could settle into a nice rhythm with some one-off remarks and jokes in between conversations and longer stuff like mechanics or gameplay stuff when people finally shut up that I hope believe goes well with the natural flow of the game; I’m not sure I could have managed that doing voice commentary.

I’m also trying to not be too tone-deaf with what’s happening on screen, so I try to keep quiet during more serious/sober stuff or a particularly atmospheric bit, even if noone’s yapping on at the moment. That’s what I’m going for at least; I’m still new at this though, so I may still be calibrating that particular sensor. Hope some of it is making it through.

Also the sound design is fantastic and I wouldn’t want to spoil it with my voice. :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

Metro 2033 was one of those games where I was super hyped about it from the trailers, but once it came out I had sort-of forgotten about it and never heard much about it from word of mouth to remind me to go see it anywhere… I’m choosing to just skip ahead to watching LL, but I very much agree with your praises on the atmosphere so far, and I do think a subtitled LP compliments this type of game well.

Also, that baby dark one is oddly… cute? Not in a squish-your-little-cheeks way, but in an I’d-feel-guilty-shooting-at-you way, which is an important if not uncommon distinction.

#11

The Little Dark One is adorable and I won’t have anyone saying otherwise.

Hmm, I just edited in today’s update and it didn’t bump the thread like it used to; I was using that as a way to avoid spamming the thread with update posts but at the same time giving you guys a way of knowing a new update was up.

Should I just post everything I’ve got so far in the two main posts? (That’d be the full game, bonus ending and 2 of the DLC missions). I was doing ‘one a day’ to leave room for a bit of discussion, but I’m not sure it’s worth it since everyone can just access everything from my YT profile.

1 Like
#12

:tw: Giant, fuck-off spider-scorpion hybrids. A metric shitton of them.



Where we become Musketeers.

Journal entries for this update:

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#13

[SPOILER]Oh god I’m planning on catching up with this LP a bit later but I remember playing through all those things. I’m terrified o spiders they really set me off in games. I am surprised I even managed it with how scary those fuckers are.[/SPOILER]

#14

:tw: We’re back to the small spiders in the cobwebs, but there’s a bit of a jumpscare involving one at 5:46 when I turn the corpse over. Skip to 5:55.


Yeah, I don’t mind them so much but the bloody skittering noises are still erghhhhhhhh. There’s a DLC mission that’s a solid half hour of nothing but those bastards. It’s called “Spider Lair”.

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#16

Honestly? I’m fine with, uh… those things. It’s actually the smaller ones that look more like actual spiders that freak me out. Might just be that the bigger ones look more like scorpions than spiders and I find those things cool.

#17

Korbut is a super short level, so have 2 updates! :kissing_cat:



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