There is so much suffocating despair in Metro: Last Light. The world is irradiated rubble, blanketed in noxious fumes and trampled by gnarled monstrosities. Humans that remain must huddle underfoot, eking out lives in Moscow's underground railways. But the worst thing, the cruelest twist, the darkest dick move of the apocalypse, is that millions die and the accordion still makes it.

If not its purpose, I have to respect the accordion's presence in Metro: Last Light. You can listen to the instrument's musical wheezing as part of a show put on in a dilapidated theater, one of several populated hubs you'll visit in your trek through the tunnels of Moscow. If you opt out of the game's scavenging and shooting for a few moments, there's an entire show to take in. It has all the awkwardness and earnestness of a production that only needs to be less bleak than its surroundings.

Last Light, much like predecessor Metro 2033, is a feat of obsessive, paradoxical world-building - you believe this as a place that has been demolished, poisoned and forced to retreat into claustrophobic hovels. There are glimmers of recuperating life in these bastions, most of all in Metro's stunning sewer-bound equivalent of Venice. The town layouts are noticeably linear, in part because there isn't much room for subterranean sprawl, and because the game spends all its money on the critical path. To explore is to linger, listen and look; and that's fine.