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See two minutes of Metro: Last Light's E3 demo
We know that not all of you have played Metro 2033, which, despite its problems, is still one of last year's best games. We get it. There are absolutely some janky flies in that otherwise delicious soup, and some of you just don't have a strong enough stomach. It's fine. But after watching the above two minutes of pre-alpha gameplay (the first in a three-part series) from follow-up Metro: Last Light, it looks like this may be a stew that you won't be able to resist slurping down. Just look at the physics when Artyom shoots the pot! You can practically feel the soup sloshing out of it! In closing, who's ready for lunch?
Metro: Last Light preview: Once more, with feeling
THQ's Huw Beynon (that's pronounced "Hugh" by the way) calls last year's Metro 2033 "a flawed masterpiece." The Ukranian-developed shooter somehow managed to over-deliver on some of the rarest components and fail on the most obvious one; a mountain of wonderful flourishes toppled by a clumsy and downright bad combat system. 4A Games nailed the bleak, post-apocalyptic tone, coupled it with survival horror-esque resource management (like the necessity to monitor your gas mask filters), and layered in home-brewed weapons like the pneumatic shotgun which you pressurize, air pump-style. What it failed to do in 2033 was to make the combat compelling ... at all. So when Beynon calls it a "flawed masterpiece" that's what he's talking about. To correct this in the sequel, dubbed Metro: Last Light, the team at 4A has "rebuilt all of the gameplay systems from the ground up" meaning "better stealth, better weapons and core combat." If you're worried that this change might upset the original game's unique tone, like I was, Beynon says that's not their intention. "We don't want to dumb this down, or westernize it," he said. "We're giving the studio complete creative freedom to tell the apocalypse their way." THQ and 4A are avoiding the desire to follow the usual sequel route and "dial it up to 11." Since novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky's original sequel to Metro 2033, titled cleverly enough Metro 2034, didn't follow the same story, the team at 4A opted to handle writing duties in-house. "It's an original story that leads on from the end of 2033," Beynon told us. "The author of the original book actually wrote a pseudo-followup called 2034 which is a very different style of book entirely. He kind of describes it as an art-house thriller where the first one was perfect material for a video game." So instead, we're back in the Moscow Metro as Artyom, the unassuming protagonist from the first game. %Gallery-124654%
THQ confirms 'Metro: Last Light' as Metro 2033 sequel
Speaking this evening during an investor conference call, THQ CEO Brian Farrell confirmed that "Metro: Last Light" will be the title of the sequel to last year's gritty FPS Metro 2033. Last month, domain registrations for "Metro2033LastLight.com," "MetroLastLight.com" and "LastLightGame.com" served as evidence of an upcoming game under some permutation of that title, but THQ had yet to offer anything official about that title -- and it wasn't clear whether that related to a sequel (which has previously been known as "Metro 2034") or some kind of spinoff. The important thing, of course, is that it hasn't been titled "Unreleased FPS Project." In fact, this game will be the focus of a "first-class marketing campaign," THQ core games CEO Danny Bilson told us earlier this year.
THQ registers domains for 'Metro 2033 Last Light'
The in-development sequel to Metro 2033 might not be called "Metro 2034," as we'd previously heard. Superannuation has found some domain registrations by THQ referring to something called "Metro 2033 Last Light." Though THQ does have a predilection toward "transmedia" adaptations of its game properties (and the Metro one, of course, is already adapted from the books), it seems safe to guess this title is being used for a game, since one of the registrations is "lastlightgame.com." The others include metro2033lastlight.com and metrolastlight.com. It seems most likely that the "Metro 2033 Last Light" title refers to the sequel, but there are other possibilities. Perhaps THQ is planning to use it for a downloadable Metro companion game on the order of Red Faction: Battlegrounds -- hopefully not one exactly like Red Faction: Battlegrounds.
THQ's Bilson: Metro 2033 'wasn't properly nurtured,' sequel to address issues
Last March, Metro 2033 snuck up on our reviewer radar and went on to earn respectable Metacritic scores of 77 on Xbox 360 and 81 on PC among critics at large. Though THQ CEO Brian Farrell characterized the title as "very profitable" for the publisher, it wasn't exactly burning up the sales charts. Speaking with the company's VP of Core Games, Danny Bilson, this week, we asked about Metro 2033 falling short of its potential. "I'll give you the straight answer: It wasn't properly supported in all areas," Bilson said frankly. "It was a cool deal," he explained of the publishing agreement with developer 4A Games, "where it was inexpensive and they were doing their stuff." "Did the game need polish in certain areas? Yes." he admitted. "So when I say it wasn't fully supported, it was product development and marketing that didn't support it the way it should've been." Bilson described Metro 2033 as "an orphan stepchild," saying that "a great marketer picked it up with four months to go and did what he could with four months to go, but it wasn't properly nurtured by marketing." The absence of polish, Bilson assured, won't be an issue for Metro 2034, the in-development sequel. "The new one doesn't have any of those issues," Bilson said. "I green-lit the sequel before [the first] one shipped, because I know what [4A Games is] capable of -- I knew how cool it was."
Metro 2034 revealed by THQ's Bilson
4A Games' Metro 2033 came out under the radar, but quickly became a sleeper hit with Joystiq staff, what with its heavy atmosphere and mature, bleak tone. So, as you could imagine, the announcement of a sequel in development makes our hearts glow as if they were just hand-cranked by a post-apocalyptic Russian. In discussing the topic of 3D gaming with CVG, THQ's Danny Bilson said, "We're going to be doing a 3D version of that on Metro 2034 - the sequel. And there will be some engineering costs there, but that's in our lowest cost centre in the world." Okay, so maybe we could do with a little more fanfare accompanying our game announcements, but there you have it.
