![]() Metro Last Light is a ruthlessly checkpointed game with only a single checkpoint available and the Faction Pack does nothing to work around that fact. Unfortunately, the answer for me is “no, I can’t find any fabled crossbow, much less make any progress”. There’s even the hint of invaluable equipment lost when previous rangers died in the field. Do you push ahead for a little more progress, or do you fall back to save the game here? Someone at Metro developer 4A Games likes Dark Souls. Screw in lightbulbs along the way to track your progress and unlock shortcuts to get around easier. The idea is that you set out into the level to find artifacts and scrounge resources, which you can then cash in to buy more ammo, health syringes, air filters, weapons, upgrades, and even suits to get you past irradiated areas. This is very nearly a roguelike except that nothing is randomized, there’s no permadeath, and it’s a Metro game. And now a special focus on the forgotten detritus of a lost civilization and a new system of stakes. The Polis scavenger hunt manages to pull together a lot of what makes Metro special: tone, characters, suspense, the dark lonely ruins. The one-third of the Factions Pack that isn’t brainless shooting nearly makes this is a must-have piece of DLC for a must-have shooter. From a gameplay perspective, you could just as easily turn your brain off in a Call of Duty game starring boring ol’ licensed firearms and Sam Worthington’s voice. Too bad it’s full of the usually frustrating scripted difficulty boondoggles like snipers instakilling you and inscrutable fail-states instafailing you. Now you’re doing it in Metro’s richly atmospheric engine. Now you’re doing it in paid DLC featuring new guns (you won’t soon forget the sheer glee of spraying ammo from the Reich minigun like water from a firehose). You’ve done this stuff in pretty much every other shooter, including Metro: Last Light itself. The former is mowing down hordes of dumb enemies and the latter is, well, a sniper mission. ![]() Most of the Faction Pack consists of 1) the last mission of Metro Last Light, but played from the perspective of the Nazis, and 2) a new sniper mission, played from the perspective of the Stalinists. I’m here to shoot funky fugly lovely guns and chew bubblegum, and the apocalypse burned up all the bubblegum.Īfter the jump, say hello to my ugly friends Firing these ungainly beauties was nearly enough to make me not care that two thirds of the Faction Pack is brainless shooting minus Metro’s somber storytelling. The first round of downloadable content for Metro: Last Light, called the Faction Pack, has some grand new additions, like the Reich’s pneumato-electro-whatever sniper rifle (pictured) and the last-resort single-shot flare gun for the Polis ranger. These so-ugly-they’re-beautiful Frankenstein firearms are the most memorable weapons you’ll find this side of your Borderlands locker. Namely, that a good gun isn’t a pretty gun. Awkward, ruthless, post-apocalyptic testaments to the harsh reality of scavenging.
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