3/5 ★ – corbintm's review of Metro: Last Light Redux.

I can’t completely isolate why this game doesn’t click for me, but it doesn’t. It’s just fine. I remember liking Metro 2033 quite a bit. This linear, story based FPS has fun moments, but ultimately it falls a bit flat for me. These games are so difficult to review because I feel like they have an identity crisis. For me, metro is best as a stealth game and at its worst as an on-rails shooter. Unfortunately, I feel as if the game is more of the latter and less of the former. The best parts of Metro have always been the story and world they’ve crafted. You can listen in to lengthy conversations, read notes, and take in the environmental storytelling. It’s a surprising amount of depth and most of it is completely optional. The immersion of your face mask, filters, and Geiger counter add to the experience. It’s best played with headphones or surround sound. Gameplay is a bit of a mixed bag. The combat is either really engaging or frustratingly annoying. Stealth is fun, offering different paths, alarms, and the ability to turn off lights, use throwing knives, etc. Its fun to pull of a room full of enemies without ever being spotted. Sometimes the AI can be pretty dumb, but that doesn’t get in the way most times. I would like the ability to move bodies, but I respect the design choice of not doing that as it forces you to plan out your movements a bit more carefully. The other combat with the monsters is more frustrating and less fun. Overall anytime spent on the surface is more frustrating than not. You cannot stealth the monsters and they’re a huge ammo dump (not that you’ll likely run out). They can take your health off quickly, and they come in giant packs at times, quickly overwhelming you as the player. As far as exploration, maps can be quite large (especially on the surface) , spread thin, and movement speed is slow, even while sprinting. It’s a strange design choice, and I found myself lost in the maze of some of the more open levels. Hearing that Metro Exodus iterates on the semi open world approach makes me not want to play it at all. Overall, I feel like this game is trying to be diverse gameplay-wise while not capitalizing on its strengths. I know some find everything about this game engaging, a perfect mix of combat and stealth, a great immersive experience with a strong story. For me, I just wish it stuck to one approach with how it played, as I found half of the gameplay loop to be very dull.