Flashlights and grubby gas masks at the ready: there will be a sequel to Metro Exodus, the developers of the follow-up to Metro 2033 and Last Light have confirmed. Don’t expect it soon, though, as 4A Games say it’ll arrive “when it’s ready”.
]]>Metro 2033 was a diamond in the rough upon its release back in 2010. Set in the subway beneath a post-apocalyptic Moscow, it was atmospheric, bleak, and buggy. Now it's free to keep, if you grab it before 10am PT/6pm GMT on March 15th.
]]>Well, the gifts start coming and they don't stop coming. The latest free game on the Epic Games Store is Metro 2033 Redux, the revamped version of the spooky shooter set in post-apocalyptic Soviet subways. The game was already a good'un in 2010, then 2014's Redux fancied up its looks and improved bits like the stealth so yeah, worth getting.
]]>Last year, Metro Exodus proved that the series could crawl out of the subterranean tunnels of its past and successfully carve out a new home exploring above ground. What's next in this brave new world, then? A lot, apparently. Developers 4A Games have published an update to mark the tenth year since the series began and to say that they've got a whole lot on their plates. They're working on the next Metro series game, tinkering with concepts for multiplayer Metro, and staffing up for a totally new series.
]]>‘Tis the season / use a brolly / tra la la la / la la la la.
Hello, it's me, the list goblin, here in this festive first week of December to deliver a big black bin bag of presents to you. And by presents, I mean a single irrevocable inventory of the most disastrous and terrible winters in the videogames of recent history. Yes, there will be cannibalism. Yes, thousands will die of exposure. But from this great compendium of coldness will come knowledge, strength, and, okay, at least one adorable puppy. Here are the 9 harshest winters in videogames. Wrap up.
]]>Up for a claustrophobic tunnel crawl packed full of mutants, marauders and otherworldly anomalies? The Russian underground of Metro 2033 should be your next stop, and it's completely free on Steam today. For the next twenty hours (give or take), just check out its Steam page, click to add it to your account and keep it forever. This is the original version of 4A Games's shooter, rather than the polished up Redux edition, but still worth the trip if you've never tried it before.
]]>It’s deathly quiet in the forest. Then the silence gives way to a man shouting for help. He's tied to a post and trying to fend off a ravenous wolf. A single crossbow bolt takes the feral creature out. The shirtless man pleads for my help to free him, cussing as he explains his predicament. I choose to cut him loose. “I owe you my life,” he says. “I’ll never forget this, I swear.”
Inconsequential though it may seem, I begin to ponder his words. Could this have implications? Maybe his captors will return to find he’s escaped and attempt to track me down. It may have been better to leave him tied up. But perhaps he’ll help me the next time our paths cross. It’s this kind of small-scale player choice that runs through the heart of Metro Exodus.
]]>THQ Nordic, publishers of the Darksiders games and recent jankfest Elex, have bought Koch Media, the companies have announced. Koch are the father-company of Deep Silver, who publish games like Saints Row, Metro, Dead Island, and Homefront: The Revolution. That means THQ Nordic now own alllll of those bad boys, among others. Due to all the combined plates this company now spins, they could now make a game where the hero of Mighty No. 9 fights jazzy paint-monster De Blob in a doomed bid for supremacy on Mars, aka, Red Faction 3. Although, they probably shouldn’t do that.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>4A Games will continue their fun/grim post-apocalyptic adventures with Metro Exodus [official site] in 2018, publishers Deep Silver have announced during E3. It'll continue from Metro 2033 and Last Light and apparently get out into some lovely sunshine. Here, check out the announcement trailer, which has a good chunk of demo gameplay:
]]>That story about word of a new Metro coming in 2017? Yeah, the publishers have responding with a statement saying that sure, they're planning another one but nah, don't expect such a thing next year. Where a site for the original Metro novels once said 2017 would bring a new game following on from Metro 2035, it now talks about "An untitled Metro project" due in "?". Gosh, what ever could that be?
]]>We'll be revisiting the subways of post-apocalyptic Moscow next year, it seems, according to a website for the book series first-person shooters Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light are based on. With the English edition of Dmitry Glukhovsky's trilogy-capping novel Metro 2035 coming in December, the site has added of a timeline of the series with a little note saying yup, another game will follow.
]]>The beautifully bleak first-person shooters Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light have both been retooled and are being resold: a bit weird since the latter only came out last year. Is Metro Redux worth the dough if you already own the original games? How about if you don't? How about if, like me, you own one but not the other? Well, here's whut ah thank, y'all! (Note: I'm an American. We all talk like that.)
]]>Update: Relax, everyone! A bit, at least. Steam's offering each Redux for half-price if you own the original game.
Huh! Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light are being "remastered" for re-release, which is a funny thing. The pair of solid shooters are still quite recent, after all, not to mention pretty enough. It all seems quite odd until you remember new consoles now exist--shiny new consoles hungry for pixels and games, which people are quite keen to feed. So thank you, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Thanks to you, 4A Games are giving 2033 a grand makeover and Last Light a fetching new outfit.
]]>Er, I suppose there's some uncertainty that Metro: Last Light might actually be released, but for now let's proceed on the basis that THQ have managed to save themselves from the moneyan apocalypse.
Last Light, from an hour or so I spent watching real-time play recently, appears to be almost a do-over of the ambitious but awkward Metro 2033 rather than a traditional sequel. It's rescuing and remixing the stuff that worked but, as far as I can tell, without devolving into a shiny Call of Dudebro affair. That critical switching between indoor and outdoor action and gun-free survivor settlements remains, as does the strange bullets-as-currency system. It's much more like 2033 than I'd presumed, I'm relived to find, glossier though it may be.
]]>Update: I got in touch with the Humble Bundle folks to find out more about how this out-of-nowhere partnership came about. See what they had to say after the break.
Original: I was incredibly tempted to begin this post with a joke about how the charity slider on this Humble Bundle is redundant, because THQ is already basically a charity. That would be mean, though, so I opted to-- oops, I already did it. Hm. Shame backspace was never invented. Anyway, the latest bundle of densely packaged humility puts the spotlight on a decidedly non-indie THQ, but oh well. Indie's a pretty terrible word when it's used to write off great games because they weren't coded by a half-person team in a garage-bedroom constantly beset by subarctic winds and ravenous wolverines. So, right then, let's take a look inside.
]]>This is scandalous! When I buy a shooter, I expect - nay, demand - for it to include a multiplayer mode that makes a mockery of the carefully-created fiction, is defined by the hollow pursuit of unlocks and is so rapidly abandoned by its players that it's near-impossible to find a match about a fortnight after release. So hearing that Metro 2033 sequel Last Light has dropped its multiplayer really grinds my gears.
(It doesn't. It seems like a very smart thing for a singleplayer-focused shooter to do).
]]>When I beat the absolutely wonderful Thirty Flights Of Loving over the weekend, I had precisely one immediate reaction: “Wait, what just happened?” I cannot even begin to tell you how much that excites me. But then I decided to write an article about it, largely because one of my greatest passions in life is defying nonsencial figures of speech. At any rate, Thirty Flights Of Loving packs loads of information into not-even-30-minutes with hardly any dialog or exposition. But, in some ways, it's even more of a supposed “un-game” than, say, Modern Warfare 3. I mean, all agency is illusory. Without spoiling anything (note: that'll happen a little bit after the break), you're along for the ride – and that's it. In a couple bits, it doesn't even matter where you walk. The game will just jump-cut you to your intended location.
So why is it one of my absolute favorite games – and yes, I one hundred percent believe it's a game – of the year? Because it made me think about what happened. No, scratch that. It required me to think.
]]>4A's sequel to Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, seems to have been slipping beneath our radar a bit. The post-apocalyptic original was so close to being proper good that it's definitely worth keep an eye on what they're up to next. With that in mind, we caught up with THQ's Huw Beynon to find a bit more about what's happening with the game, which is set for release in mid 2012.
]]>THQ and 4A's Metro 2033 sequel promises a 'last light'. I would like to take issue with this, for I can see over ten different lights across the following five new screenshots of the forthcoming post-apocalyptic, subterranean beast'n'manshooter. Who wants to call trade descriptions?
]]>We knew that Metro: Last Light was happening back in April, after THQ registered the related URL. However, the official reveal of the Metro 2033 sequel has taken place today, along with a whole one screenshot (click on it to see it full size) and a teaser trailer. It's off to post-apocalyptic Moscow once more.
]]>This story's about as flimsy as a wet paper bag full of knives, but let's soldier on. Joystiq note that THQ have registered a domain by the name of "Metro 2033 Last Light", which could very well be the name of the forthcoming Metro 2033 sequel. ...yeah. That's all I've got. Who's excited? I'm excited.
If Metro 2033 passed you by, it was an atmospheric FPS (a toxic, unbreathable atmoshpere, specifically) set in a post-apocalyptic rendering of Moscow's subway system, full of shadows and mutants and terror and all that good stuff. Alec got along well with it, and you can watch the launch trailer after the jump. It's more than a year old now but still every bit as impressive.
]]>Well, better late than never. I'm not sure which bit of the game it features, but this 3gb demo seems to have surfaced last week and can be grabbed over on Fileshack. Definitely worth taking a look if you have any interest in the Russian post-apocalypse, which we were fairly enthused about earlier in the year. Alec wrote up some conclusions about it here. I found it mixed, being impressive in places, frustrating in others, and incredibly atmospheric throughout. I look forward to the sequel.
]]>Nearly Good shooter Metro 2033 is to recieve a sequel, Metro 2034. If you missed the first 2032 Metro games, I suspect it's a bit too late to catch-up now. Where have you been?
]]>This Stalker-meets-Doom shooter arrived late last week, and made quite the change from shepherding around tiny armies in that bizarre glut of real-time-strategy games which have marched onto our hard drives this month. 4A's sci-fi/horror FPS is arguably the biggest-budget, highest profile Russian/Ukranian game to date, a real break from the eyes-bigger-than-their-stomach fare we're used to from that neck of the woods - which makes it a fascinating moment in time. Is it worth the ride down its menacing, ultra-graphicked train tracks? Join me do.
]]>Metro 2033 is out at the end of this week. Who knew March was the month for games? Dragon Age: Awakening, this, Just Cause 2... It's like it's November or something. So to celebrate its arrival there is of course a launch trailer, which in this case acts as a sort of best-of compilation of clips, finally reaching some in-game footage toward the end. Shooting! Monsters carrying off cars! A man having a look inside a drawer! I'm really not sure how that bit got in there, but it's clear that the whole thing was built to match the tune, John Murphy's In The House In A Heartbeat, familiar from 28 Days Later.
]]>Stacks of Metro 2033 news has arrived in the last few days, so I thought I'd do a quick rundown. First up was the news that the game will be supporting DirectX 11, for which THQ released a bunch of new screenshots, one of which is above. That's some eleven, right there. Great news for that bloke I saw buying a DX11 capable card in PC World the other day... Then, perhaps more interestingly, there's the news that the game will be shipping with Steamworks. What does that mean? Well, Steam Achievements, Steam support for in-game DLC, and a bunch of other Steam stuff including the cloud savegame thing, so you can keep your saves online. Finally Eurogamer have some footage of the game being played. Doesn't look terrible, anyway.
]]>Two new videos of upcoming shooter Metro 2033 have surfaced via the omnipotent vid-tubes of GameTrailers, and I've posted them below. There's some interesting elucidation of the plot, some discussion of the interaction with NPCs, and some talking about how bullets are currency. For a closer look and some thoughts on the game from our own Mr Meer take a look at these impressions.
]]>Hey! Stop that, you've got it wrong: this is not Stalker by another name. In fact, it's not Stalker to the extent that, were you to say "Is this like Stalker?" to one of the ex-Stalker developers behind it, they'd probably punch you in the the nose, walk to the top of the nearest mountain and then scream in raw fury at the skies until someone shot them up with enough tranquilisers to knock out a blue whale. It's very determinedly not like Stalker, and I can't imagine how many times the poor dears have had to bat away the same questions and presumptions. Metro 2033 is a post-apocalyptic shooter set in mutant-strewn modern Russian, but it's not open-world survival fantasy. It's a strictly linear first-person shooter, albeit with a touch of shopping and soaking up the atmosphere of civilian settlements in between dealing death to things that go bump in the subterranean perma-night. It's Half-Life, it's Bioshock, it's Call of Duty - it's anything but Stalker.
]]>The incidental detail and little flourishes of scripted events are looking like the main thing that Metro 2033 has going for it. We understand that it's all set to be a fairly traditional monster-shoot, but there's no denying the loveliness of the ruined-Moscow in which it takes place, as you can see in the trailer I've posted below. I believe we've got some detail impressions of this in the pipeline, so expect an RPS brain-dump on the excitement-value of this game fairly soon.
]]>We're peering through the futurescope at the games we can expect to see in the coming year. There's plenty to work through, so let's get on with a look at some of the notable games of Spring and Summer 2010. (You can read part one here.)
]]>After several years in development hell, it looks as if the Ukrainian shooter Metro 2033 will finally surface in "early 2010". THQ have put out another trailer, showing a little more about the world, and the challenges that the lead character, Artum, will face. It's worth mentioning that despite the post-apocalyptic theme and Ukrainian heritage this is not "another Stalker", as it's a traditional scripted shooter. Nevertheless it's looking good, as you'll see below.
]]>We've been following this Ukrainian shooter since the first footage appeared a couple of years ago. Metro 2033 appears to be what THQ did after the split with GSC, and it has the same dark-future apocalypse vibes as Stalker. This time it's set in a Moscow ravaged by monsters, with the survivors of the apocalypse hiding in the Russian capital's epic metro system. It's got a strong "Russian Fallout" whiff to it, which echoes what a 1c boss said to me last year about their love of the game. THQ's blurb reads: "You are Artyom, born in the last days before the fire, but raised Underground. Having never ventured beyond your Metro Station-City limits, one fateful event sparks a desperate mission to the heart of the Metro system, to warn the remnants of mankind of a terrible impending threat. Your journey takes you from the forgotten catacombs beneath the subway to the desolate wastelands above, where your actions will determine the fate of mankind." Anyway, go take a look, this is very promising.
]]>The first time I saw Metro 2033 was during Games Convention 2006 when 4A Games' "pre-alpha" footage was released. A bit of quiet for two years, and now some, um, pre-alpha footage has been released. However, if you go back and forth between the two almost shot-for-shot-the-same trailers, you can see quite how much progress has been made with their 4A Engline.
]]>
