Metro: Last Light - Faction Pack DLC Review

Ever since completing the imperfect but utterly enthralling Metro: Last Light earlier this year, I have been looking for a reason to go back to the game. Something about its haunting setting has lingered in my psyche more than any other title this year, and with the release of the first of four planned DLC's I found my reason to start the game up again. The new "Faction Pack" DLC contains three unrelated missions that can be completed in any order, and will set you back five bucks unless you have invested in the fifteen-dollar season pass.

The first of the three missions is essentially a repeat of the final moments of the base game, with you playing a Reich heavy soldier defending against waves of incoming enemies. This is a disaster of a mission as it doesn't play to the strengths of the game, as bullets stream in from every direction and you blast away with a mini-gun until everything dies, including your frame rate as the sheer number of effects on screen causes your computer hardware to work overtime. Thankfully this mission is rather brief, and you aren't required to finish or even play it before moving on to the other two missions.

The second mission is the best of the three, and is where the meat of the DLC lies. You play as a scavenger of sorts, working out of a small base located near the Library that players will recognize from Metro 2033. You are told to go out in search of cultural artifacts, initially given nothing but a janky submachine gun, pistol and five minutes of filters. From here you must work your way out from the base and collect artifacts until either your backpack is full or your filters are running out, then return to the base where you are paid for what you found on the surface. You can then spend this money on buying and upgrading weapons, ammo, filters and even a couple of suits that improve your survivability. As you explore further out from the base, you will encounter increasingly difficult monsters, although you also discover shortcuts back to the base which eliminates excessive backtracking. You can save any time at the base, but not while you are out exploring.

This mission works well because it effectively limits your resources and forces you to think carefully about risk vs. reward. Should you press on and grab a couple more artifacts even though you are running low on filters and ammo, or should you go back to base and stock up despite not having found much? I found myself running out of both filters and ammunition on a few occasions; at one point I did actually run out and had to make a frantic dash back to the base, gasping for breath and vision blurring. You also encounter other friendly rangers while exploring the Library, sometimes you will help them out of a jam, other times they come to your assistance. The terrain you explore is varied and beautiful, with a rain storm raging outside and mutants scuttling in darkened sewers making for a very atmospheric experience. I spent well over an hour on this mission and still didn't see everything it had to offer; it alone is worth the price of the DLC.

The last offering is a stealth mission where you play as a red army sniper infiltrating a Reich base. This is another good level, and effectively mixes ranged and close-quarters action. Near the end there is even an area you can choose to clear from a distance with a sniper rifle or creep around in dispatching foes up close and personal. If the enemies notice your presence they will raise an alarm which results in a mission failure, meaning that the flexible gameplay which worked so well in the base game is not really apparent in this mission, although the high quality of the stealth makes it a success regardless. This level is also relatively short, lasting around thirty minutes, and it ends rather abruptly.

While the first set of DLC missions for Last Lights fail to reach the quality of the base game due to a lack of narrative context, the strong gameplay and level design paired with the haunting atmosphere it propagates will surely satisfy fans looking for a dose of new content.