They strip you of hope, only to dangle a tiny sliver of it ahead of you like a carrot on a stick. They plop you in a post-apocalyptic world, then fill it with tons of minor but substantial details, like the shadows of once-living people now permanently nuked into stone walls. They nail the core tenets of a shooter, then force you to react to enemies in ways outside of simply taking cover. Indeed, subtlety is what makes Metro 2033 and Last Light such exceptionally immersive games. It's easy to lose an hour or two admiring the surprising level of detail packed into each location, and rushing through a non-combat zone to get back to the killing is a huge disservice to the subtle stories housed within the metro tunnels. Eavesdropping on the locals is a great way to hear some fascinating stories, and in one station you can even sit down and watch a 30-minute theater performance, an event that can be passed up entirely. There are plenty of moments where you'll spend time in a Metro station taking in the sights before heading out to your next objective. So, too, does its fantastic sense of pacing. Not sure you want to plop down $50/£29.86 for the whole package? You can purchase the Redux version of Metro 2033 and Last Light piecemeal, with each retailing at $24.99.

You can buy each game separately, or as a package Every encounter, save for a few mediocre boss battles that are a relic of old shooter design, offers a wealth of strategic opportunity, which helps Last Light and its predecessor stand apart from the average shooter. Likewise, initiating a firefight with a grenade will often cause enemies to raise an alarm or, in the case of an encounter that took place in some sort of engine room, seal all the doors and flood the area with a deadly gas, forcing you to equip a vision-obscuring gas mask. Taking one out from the shadows with a silenced weapon, for instance, will send the rest into panic mode as they begin searching for you. It's also extremely satisfying to mess with foes, as the AI reacts to your actions in a logical, lifelike way. It's entirely possible to bypass most human enemies by staying hidden and taking advantage of vent shafts or maintenance corridors, and shooting out lights will help you remain undetected. It's hard to resist trying all the new guns as you find them, and eventually you'll build a loadout of favorites that cater to your preferred playstyle: stealth, guns-blazing, or a mixture of both. And you'll feel the choking grip of panic when you're surrounded by more hellish creatures than you have bullets to put down. You'll feel a powerful sense of urgency whenever the filter on Artyom's gas mask needs to be swapped out and you're all out of spares, or when the mask's visor cracks and there's no replacement to be found. Navigating a tunnel deep within the Metro network is excruciatingly isolating the hairs will stand up on the back of your neck once your flashlight dies and you have to spend precious seconds manually recharging it with a crank as mutant spiders scurry about. Still, the atmosphere here is of a caliber that many games fail to achieve, and its grim tones bleed into Redux's every mechanic to create an incredibly immersive experience. If you haven't played Metro, now is the time. These are fantastic games, and Redux's graphical improvements and gameplay tweaks make them even better. Also, they now run at 60fps-a significant change from their non-Redux counterparts, which has the added benefit of making gunplay feel far more accommodating than the too-sluggish 30fps. They are incredibly gorgeous games-and the visual overhaul that both receive in Metro Redux finally does them justice on consoles.

When Metro 2033 and Last Light came out, playing them on a high-end PC was the only way to go.

Metro last light pc or metro redux ps4