Metro: Last Light Season Pass Review: Sighing on the Metro

The Red Line Sniper creeps along at a snail's pace, with a stealth mission that is neither offensive or engaging in any way. If sneaking through nooks and crannies with a silenced sniper rifle and learning guard location patterns is your bag, you'll find thirty minutes' worth of enjoyment here, but 40 minutes to complete two-thirds of a DLC pack doesn't exactly seem as though it's worth the cash.

The Developer's Pack is an interesting amalgam of developer tools, like the occasionally useful bot battles as well as a single-player mission that players with arachnophobia would do well to avoid, but at $4.99 for the standalone package, it's another resounding "nay" to the "should I purchase this?" query. The arachnids' domain, while offering a flamethrower and some nerve-wracking unease in claustrophobic passageways, isn't long enough to justify the entry price, even if it does offer some long-awaited chills and thrills. It's not what I was expecting — but we still have the fourth and final pack to sift through, don't we?

You'd think the final DLC pack to round out the season pass would ensure the latest entry in the Metro saga would go out with a bang — all misses and no hits so far, right? Unfortunately, that isn't the case with this rather pedestrian package that rolls up several new chapters, but less originality than the base game itself. It feels as though 4A Games has gone through the motions, obliging players hungry for more with just that, though they've sacrificed what made Last Light memorable in the first place.

The bonus missions included within Chronicles follow Pavel, Anna, and Khan, some of the lesser (in personality and in ranking) characters we didn't spend much time alone with in-game. Pavel's chapter is our first introductory brush with how Chronicles is going to play out, and is undoubtedly the strongest. We meet up with Pavel after the battle with Artyom. It's straight from the frying pan into the fire as Pavel is captured by mercenaries from which he has to escape — and fast. After improvising an escape route thanks to a handy syringe in his captor's neck, Pavel's on the lam, without weapons or supplies.

Pavel's chapter is heavily reliant on stealth, asking players to scavenge for loot and supplies from soldiers littering the area. It's a fairly solid stealth-based mission with pushes toward silenced weapons and tranquilizers, which suits Pavel's style of play. I particularly enjoyed Venice's market, which offered several minigame-styled venues of entertainment to partake in before heading back to the dreary world of the Red Line. Though a bit contrived, Pavel's journey is the most engaging one, as he was the one secondary character I would have liked to have learned more about. Unfortunately, the mission skids to a stop seemingly just as soon as it begins, as if 4A Games was afraid of delivering a product that might have capitalized on what players are likely clamoring for.

Khan's mission is up next, following the memorable train sequence from the Last Light's main story path. Khan's story is an entertaining mix of flesh-eating rats, ghouls, and bizarre happenings, but there's not as much about Khan as you'd like, especially since the Ranger made some chilling mistakes back when he was young. It does attempt to fill in some blanks, but there's still this lingering, nagging feeling that this is a mission you've played several times before across game after game — the only thing that's different is the character and the location.

Anna's mission is nearly worthless, an episode that could have been erased from Chronicles' trio of assignments due to its simplistic and plodding nature. As Anna, you'll provide covering fire for Artyom during the prologue to Last Light, which consists of aiming and pulling the trigger on a super-powered sniper rifle. Lather, rinse, and repeat — you might remember similar engagements in the Modern Warfare series as Soap's missions, though even back there you had more setpieces to explore beyond traveling to point A to point B. It's derivative, short, and just plain boring at times — why is Anna relegated to the short end of the stick, anyway?

It's frustrating that out of four standalone releases, only one may be worth your time, and that's if you purchase it outright. It's as if another team entirely came up with the additional content, as if Metro: Last Light were some wretched abomination no one wanted to play. The game deserves better, and fans deserve better. Those desperate for a trip back through will likely find some use for this season pass, but I can't recommend it for anyone else.