Review: Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light Redux (PC)

I can't recall a recent game that has so believably created a sense of place. Right from the get-go I bought into the sci-fi setup of the Metro games and the resulting hardscrabble life of living in underground tunnels. Little snippets of what life is like, coping with hardship, the various factions that have risen up in place of a central government, the cobbled-together devices and an economy driven by bullets and the ever-present threat of mutant attacks and the mysterious Dark Ones. During the periods of downtime I found myself poking around in corners trying to understand how these people are surviving. Even during periods of shooting, sneaking, and battling mutants I often lingered in "cleared" areas to soak in the atmosphere.

Review: Metro: Last Light (PC)

Growing up at the tail end of the Cold War like I did, Soviet Russia was this weird other place that part of me wanted to visit, if only to say that I'd been there and liked what I had in America better.

Russian culture, as far as I could discern from pre-Revolution through post-glastnost, was weird but not that weird.  And being part of the last Cold War generation, as much as I wondered how America might change after a nuclear war, I was equally curious how Russia might change.  I seem to have found one possible scenario in Metro: Last Light, and it's a decidedly Russian experience.  Which is to say, weird but not that weird.