Metro: Last Light Message Board

Outlast, a PlayStation 4 survival-horror game set in a psychiatric asylum, will be available free to PlayStation Plus subscribers starting tomorrow. The service also has a prominent freebie for the PlayStation 3 with Metro: Last Light, the atmospheric first-person shooter based on the post-apocalyptic Metro series from Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky.

A PlayStation Blog post also reminds us of a discount for Dustforce, down to $8 tomorrow, and the imminent end of free downloads for the PS3's remastered Shadow of the Colossus.
[Image: Red Barrel]

We’re kicking off February with a little something for everyone, regardless of what PlayStation console(s) you own. PS4 owners can give themselves a good scare by nabbing Outlast, a survival horror game where you’ll play as a freelance journalist investigating a psychiatric hospital. Not really a job I’d take, but hey, times are tough. There’s no fighting back in Outlast, you can climb or hide, and that’s it, so proceed with caution. If you’re a PS3 owner, you’ll be able to explore post-apocalyptic Russia in Metro: Last Light. A first-person shooter with the option to be stealthy, your decisions throughout the game will impact the story’s outcome. Finally, our PS Vita Play sale also continues this week with Dustforce, which you can grab for $7.99.

You can download Outlast and Metro: Last Light after PlayStation Store updates tomorrow.

Outlast (PS4)

Free for PS Plus members

Hell is an experiment you can’t survive in Outlast, a first-person survival horror game developed by veterans of some of the biggest game franchises in history. As investigative journalist Miles Upshur, explore Mount Massive Asylum and try to survive long enough to discover its terrible secret… if you dare. Metro: Last Light (PS3)

Free for PS Plus members

It is the year 2034. Beneath the ruins of post-apocalyptic Moscow, in the tunnels of the Metro, the remnants of mankind are besieged by deadly threats from outside – and within. Mutants stalk the catacombs beneath the desolate surface, and hunt amidst the poisoned skies above. But rather than stand united, the station-cities of the Metro are locked in a struggle for the ultimate power, a doomsday device from the military vaults of D6. A civil war is stirring that could wipe humanity from the face of the earth forever. As Artyom, burdened by guilt but driven by hope, you hold the key to our survival – the last light in our darkest hour…

PS Vita PLAY Sale

Game Title PS Plus Price Dustforce $7.99

Other Discounts

Game Title PS Plus Price Original Price Adam’s Venture Chronicles $9.59 $11.99 Adam’s Venture Chronicles Sound Track Free $3.99

Last Chance (Leaving on 2/11)

Instant Game Collection
Shadow of the Colossus (PS3)

Discounts
Dustforce
Curve Studios Mega Bundle
Ethan: Meteor Hunter

What’s your favorite content from this week’s update?

If you’ve got feedback on today’s Plus update make sure vote in the poll and leave a comment below. To discuss all things PlayStation, including this update, you can also head over to the PlayStation Community Forums where you’ll find topics you can contribute your thoughts to, or start one for yourself.

Typically when you think of February, your mind goes to chocolates, flowers, and other lovey-dovey things. So we thought we’d celebrate this sappy month by scaring the bejesus out of you with Outlast on PS4.

We also have some great single-player PS3 experiences, including Metro: Last Light, a first-person shooter with an interesting take on morality, and Remember Me, a third-person action adventure where you’ll take down an evil corporation by beating lots of people up with your own unique combos and messing with people’s memories. If you have a significant other, you might be able to rope him or her into some bank-robbing action with Payday 2 on PS3. After all, everyone likes stealing stuff. I mean, uh… nevermind.

Finally, two PS Vita titles are joining the Instant Game Collection: Street Fighter X Tekken and ModNation Racers: Road Trip. Both include functionality with their respective PS3 versions. Fight against your friends in Street Fighter X Tekken no matter what platform they have, or download your previously made PS3 creations and use them in ModNation Racers: Road Trip.

February PlayStation Plus Preview

Outlast (PS4)

Free for PS Plus members

“Outlast perfects this self-inflicted madness in every area of its design, and it’s absolutely petrifying.” – Joystiq.com

Hell is an experiment you can’t survive in Outlast, a first-person survival horror game developed by veterans of some of the biggest game franchises in history. As investigative journalist Miles Upshur, explore Mount Massive Asylum and try to survive long enough to discover its terrible secret… if you dare.

Metro: Last Light (PS3)

Free for PS Plus members

“Last Light is notably superior to its predecessor, merging storytelling, shooting, and sneaking into a remarkable and cohesive whole.” – GameSpot.com

It is the year 2034. Beneath the ruins of post-apocalyptic Moscow, in the tunnels of the Metro, the remnants of mankind are besieged by deadly threats from outside – and within. Mutants stalk the catacombs beneath the desolate surface, and hunt amidst the poisoned skies above. But rather than stand united, the station-cities of the Metro are locked in a struggle for the ultimate power, a doomsday device from the military vaults of D6. A civil war is stirring that could wipe humanity from the face of the earth forever. As Artyom, burdened by guilt but driven by hope, you hold the key to our survival – the last light in our darkest hour…

PayDay 2 (PS3)

Free for PS Plus members

“The adrenaline flows steadily as you inevitably repel the barrage of police waves while trying to make your getaway.” – GameInformer.com
PAYDAY 2 is an action-packed, four-player co-op shooter that once again lets gamers don the masks of the original PAYDAY crew – Dallas, Hoxton, Wolf and Chains – as they descend on Washington D.C. for an epic crime spree.

Remember Me (PS3)

Free for PS Plus members

“Not only beautiful graphics and incredible sound, but also a new combat approach wrapped around a very engaging storyline.” – GamingTrend.com
Neo-Paris. 2084. Personal memories can now be digitized, bought, sold and traded. The last remnants of privacy and intimacy have been swept away in what appears to be a logical progression of the explosive growth of social networks at the beginning of the 21st century. Remember Me is a 3rd person action adventure where players take on the role of Nilin, a former elite memory hunter with the ability to break into people’s minds and steal or even alter their memories.

Street Fighter X Tekken (PS Vita)

Free for PS Plus members

A dream collaboration between the two biggest fighting game franchises is now a reality! A deluge of highly demanded characters join the fray in this tag team-based game! The second round of this war begins now!

ModNation Racers: Road Trip (PS Vita)

Free for PS Plus members

Welcome to the never-ending season of ModNation kart racing, where competitive racing and community creativity collide. Whether you race for the fastest time, customize your own karts or tracks, or you discover new courses online – ModNation Racers gives you everything you need for your next “Road Trip!” Use common gestures to create or edit your Mod, Kart, or Track. If that wasn’t enough, you will have full access to all creations made on the PS3. That’s right, download and play with your favorite PS3 creations and take it where ever you go.

What are your thoughts on last month’s Instant Game Collection?

If you’ve got feedback on PlayStation Plus make sure you take the poll above as well as leave a comment below. To chat about all things PlayStation, including this update, you can head over to the PlayStation Community Forums. You’ll also find other topics you can contribute your thoughts to, or you can start your own discussion.

I suddenly find myself paying that much more attention to which games are seeing Linux conversions, as a sudden rush would imply big things for Valve’s SteamOS project. Could Metro: Last Light’s belated Penguin edition be a herald of Things To Come?(more…)

Deep Silver have had quite the couple of years. They’ve gone from a European publisher of quietly successful strategy games and RPGs (the X games, Gothic, others), to finding mainstream success with Dead Island, to picking up where THQ left off with Metro: Last Light and Saints Row 4.

In an interview with Deep Silver’s CEO, The Penny Arcade Report mention that Saints Row IV has sold triple that of Saints Row 3 on PC over the same time period, and that Metro: Last Light sold more across all platforms in a single week than the original did in three months.(more…)

Seems like only yesterday that we weren’t even sure if Metro: Last Light would ever see the light of day. Seems like markedly closer to yesterday that it was flinging massive balls of spiders at us (this is the point where you should begin imagining this all like one of those fond memories flashback montages, except with the aforementioned imagery instead of a slow-mo snowball/food fight). Now, though, it’s packing its bags and preparing to leave us, probably forever. But before it closes up shop once and for all, it’s got one last dollop of content for us to remember it by. Three characters, three stories interwoven with Artyom’s adventure, three thousand borscht-o-flops of intrigue. Unlike the Faction Pack, however, Chronicles’ freshly playable faces should strike you as a bit more familiar.

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The Chronicles Pack brings three new perspectives to the story of Metro: Last Light, in brand new single player missions.

Attention passengers: We are arriving at "Chronicles Pack," the last stop on the Metro: Last Light downloadable content line. The fourth and final piece of DLC includes three solo missions filling in side stories that run parallel to the game's main tale. The pack also includes the "multi barrelled bicycle shotgun," a fan-created weapon that 4A Games was impressed by enough to toss in the game.

The Chronicles Pack is priced at the reasonable round-trip ticket price of $4.99. It's also part of the Metro season pass, which now includes all four pieces of DLC immediately available for $15.

What’s the deal with game developers and spiders? I’m actually working on a podcast-ish feature thing that tackles that very subject (it’s been quite enlightening so far!), but for now I will sum up my findings in a brief, easily parsed expression of unbridled terror: EWWWEWWWWEWWWW. And also this for good measure. Metro: Last Light’s “Developer Pack” DLC continues gaming’s heartfelt, eight-legged embrace of arachnophobia with a horrific-sounding Spider’s Lair solo mission. Also, it includes a bunch of a fun developer tools (think AI battlefields, etc) for you to toy around with. This, I assume, is merely a distraction so that the spiders can sneak up behind you and lay eggs in your hair.

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Metro: Last Light's third piece of DLC, the Developer Pack, will arrive next week. The pack includes one new solo mission called "The Spider's Nest," which challenges players to escape from a "spider infested catacomb" while carrying a flamethrower. It also features a shooting range for players to test out gun and attachment combinations, a "Metro Museum" gallery and AI arena to play with custom human and mutant squads.

The Developer Pack will be free for Season Pass holders, or $3.99, £3.19 and €3.99 on its own. It will launch on Steam, Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 17, while European PS3 owners will have to wait one more day for it to arrive on September 18.

The Metro: Last Light Developer DLC pack features a fully-stocked shooting range, an AI battle arena, and a museum filled with the game's characters and creatures. There's also a solo mission filled with spiders, so screw that. The pack will release September 17 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. You can read about it here, while I cower. Read more...

The Tower Pack for Metro: Last Light should have arrived in your Steam window by now. It’s a tower climb, a series of increasingly tough floors, setting the task of seeing how high you can climb.

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4A Games is gearing up to launch the second batch of downloadable content for its subterranean first-person shooter, Metro: Last Light, next week.

Metro's Tower Pack offers a series of single-player challenge levels that advance in difficulty as players scale a fortified guard tower in virtual reality. Each stage is packed with hordes of mutants and other enemies, and players will be ranked on a level-by-level basis in the mode's global leaderboards.

Last Light's latest round of DLC will debut via Steam, Xbox Live, and the PlayStation Network on September 3 in North America. The Tower Pack is available as part of Metro: Last Light's Season Pass content, and is priced separately at $4.99.

If you're a fan of the "suffocating despair" found in the Metro series, the good news is you'll be able to buy a ticket back to that world in the future. Today at Gamescom, Deep Silver CEO Dr. Klemens Kundratitz told Joystiq the company is sticking with the series beyond Metro: Last Light, which it picked up nearly complete for $5.9 million during the THQ asset auction.

"It's been a positive experience," he said. "I'm very glad we acquired that brand. While it launched in a very dry space in the gaming calendar this year, it still got a lot of attention. Our ambition is to absolutely continue with that brand and we will also, in the next phase, look to making it more accessible for a broader gamer audience."

Asked whether broadening the imposing, claustrophobic experience would diminish what fans love or create problems with the license holder, Kundratitz clarified.

"It is true with a license you have to be aligned with the license holder. In this case it's [Metro 2033 author] Dmitry Glukhovsky who holds the license and he's a great guy. He enjoys the game, the success of the game and we have a good relationship." Kundratitz continued, "He is a great contributor. Also, going forward, as he has been very positive contributing to the last game - I think he can play an active role for whatever comes in the future."

Kundratitz politely emphasized Deep Silver isn't announcing a Metro sequel, but he says the brand is part of the future of Deep Silver, and the company has plans to work with Metro developer 4A Games.

Want to know all about Metro: Last Light’s Factions DLC? Sure you do. Three short stories featuring new player characters from different groups. Nathan’s already written quite a lot of words about the chaps in question and the kind of things that can be expected but he made a schoolboy error. Why write words when there’s probably a trailer just around the corner that will show such weapons as the Hellbreath in action? Words can not do justice to the Hellbreath. Actually, hang on, the words are better than the reality could ever be. Hellbreath. It’s just a bloody flamethrower, isn’t it?

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4A Games has kicked off its Metro: Last Light DLC series with this week's release of the Faction Pack on PC, Xbox Live, and the PlayStation Network. The pack is available for $4.99, and arrives as the first of four add-ons bundled in Last Light's Season Pass.

The Faction Pack adds three new single-player missions, each of which casts the player in a different role from the warring Red Line, Reich and Polis Rangers divisions. 4A will continue to release Season Pass content throughout the year with the upcoming launches of Last Light's Tower Pack, Developer Pack, and Chronicles Pack.

Hmmmm. I was really hoping that Metro: Last Light‘s story-based, world-expanding “Faction Pack” DLC might at least put us behind the gas mask of one non-combat character just trying to live in the game’s diseased, decaying cesspit of a civilization, but alas. Still, it sounds like it’ll be an interesting opportunity to understand where more militantly proficient folks who aren’t Artyom come from, and that’s definitely an intriguing prospect. Details after the break.

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Metro: Last Light's first piece of downloadable content pulls into the station on July 16 (July 17 for PS3 in Europe). The "Faction Pack" includes three single-player missions, with players taking on three specialist roles in the radioactive wasteland.

The DLC includes the perspective-shifting roles of a Redline Sniper, Reich Heavy and Polis Ranger. The Faction Pack is priced at $4.99 (£3.99, €4.99, 400 MSP), and there's always the Metro: Last Light Season Pass for $14.99 (£11.99, €14.99, 1200 MSP), which also includes the Abzats weapon and all upcoming DLC.

The upcoming three packs were also revealed today, but there's no release window to be found in the rubble. The "Tower Pack" includes a challenge-based game mode, the 'Developer Pack' adds another solo mission and finally "The Chronicles Pack" explores the side-stories of Pavel, Khan and Anna.

Launch trailers are released weeks before anything launches, trailers have their own trailers, and one day there will be a fifteen millisecond teaser for the reveal of the logo that is set to appear in a five second viral video that is itself advertising an advert for a web-based spin-off of your favourite game. I’m sorry, that’s just the way of it. Metro: Last Light is defying convention by opting for a post-release trailer that is there minutes long and also a thing of beauty. The creation of Alexander Bereznyak, 4A’s lead technical artist, the ‘Mobius’ video is a journey through a single moment in the life (and death) of a Metro station. The camera drifts through the frozen figures, tableaux in a high-tech ghost train, and lingers on scenes of desperation, heroism and catastrophe. Watch.

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We’re back and later than ever! PlayStation World Wide Studios of America Senior VP Scott Rohde joins the fray as we talk Metro: Last Light and The Last of Us. We also veer into Killzone Mercenary territory with new hands-on impressions (dem graphics) of the upcoming PS Vita shooter. We delve back into the ongoing discussion around the merits of popcorn entertainment, then cover the new releases (PSN and Blu-ray) for PS3 and PS Vita.

Stuff We Talked About

• A distinct lack of facial hair
• The Last of Us
• Metro: Last Light
• Killzone Mercenary
• Best PS Vita games
• Entertainment vs. Art
• A recipe! Sort of
• Star Trek: Into Darkness (don’t worry, no spoilers)

Send us questions and tips: blogcast@playstation.sony.com

The Cast

• Sid Shuman – PlayStation Social Media Manager
• Justin Massongill – PlayStation Social Media Specialist
• Scott Rohde – SVP of Product Development, Worldwide Studios America
• David Nottingham – Co-founder, Dynamighty

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

• Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music.

The reveal of the Xbox One might have overshadowed content on the Internet this week, but that certainly wasn't the case for the craftiest of internet denizens who convert anything worthy into an animated GIF. Whether it's some sort of a video game glitch, like giant Spock's terrifying stare above, or a nice form of art, we sifted and sorted to grab the most popular ones for you. Just as we did last time, it is time to round up some of the funniest and greatest animated GIFs that popped up during the week. The game might be years old, but Grand Theft Auto IV, with the correct mods, is still an unlimited source of fun and place to defy gravity. Horses of the Wild West in Red Dead Redemption need to chill out. Pedro M Filho invites us for some heady GameBoy-Ception. We featured the animated aftershock of the Xbox One reveal earlier, but this little fella explaining the console's name missed the round-up. After some nice animated treatment to 3DS Pokémon covers from last week, the other generations also got theirs. Could this scene possibly be the only part of Metro: Last Light that's not depressing? Waywarddoodles has a really good idea of how to spend the weekend and test the strength of your friendships. Bumped into a GIF during the week that is much better? Hit the comments and post them! To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

When the Metro 2033 was released in 2010 it contributed to raise the PC graphics bar making good use of the latest DirectX 11 rendering technologies such as depth of field and tessellation along with high resolution textures. Before that little was known about the developers of Metro. 4A Games was founded by Oles Shiskovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, former programmers at GSC Game World, who left about a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. It's no coincidence that Metro 2033's visuals bared resemblance to those of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, though we would argue that they were better. Both Shiskovtsov and Maksimchuk had worked on the development of the X-Ray engine that powers GSC's first person shooter. Metro: Last Light 82 follows its predecessor roots by using a heavily customized version of the 4A Engine. Three years of extra work put into the engine and you can take for granted that visual effects such as lighting, which was a huge focus for 4A Games in the original Metro have been vastly improved. There's also a lot more destruction and interactivity into the environments. According to 4A, the custom nature of the engine allowed them to focus on improving and creating new sections instead of trying to repurpose existing ones that were made by other developers for different mechanics. Furthermore, the developer has continued to cater to loyal PC gamers who have considerably more power than console gamers at its disposal by including a richer gaming experience visually as well as a benchmark tool for measuring your system's performance. As usual our focus on this article will be graphics card and CPU performance, but if you are wondering about gameplay, check out the full review of the game. Here's a small excerpt to get you started: The Metro series is set some years after nuclear war has ruined the surface of the Earth and put an end to civilization as we know it. In Russia, survivors have retreated to the Metro, re-forging a bleak semi-existence in the tunnels beneath the city. This is the sort of game that mentions, in its opening cinematic, the very real possibility that God is dead. Testing Methodology Although we jumped to test Metro: Last Light at the first opportunity we got, we had to delay this performance review until both Nvidia and AMD cards were performing up to par. We tested almost 30 DirectX 11 graphics card configurations from AMD and Nvidia covering all price ranges. The latest drivers were used, and every card was paired with an Intel Core i7-3960X to remove CPU bottlenecks that could influence high-end GPU scores. Although we usually rely on Fraps to record up to 90 seconds of gameplay for our benchmark data, 4A has provided us with an easier method that is also more accurate. Last Light's rolling demo runs for almost 3 minutes and plays out a number of very detailed battle scenes. The benchmark tool allowed us to create our own graphics quality presets. In total we went with nine major tests covering three resolutions and three quality settings. We tested Metro: Last Light at three common desktop display resolutions: 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 using DX11. We also tested using three visual quality presets: Very High, High and Medium and an additional test for SSAA. HIS Radeon HD 7970 GHz (3072MB)HIS Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB)HIS Radeon HD 7950 Boost (3072MB)HIS Radeon HD 7950 (3072MB)HIS Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB)HIS Radeon HD 7850 (2048MB)HIS Radeon HD 7790 (2048MB)HIS Radeon HD 7790 (1024MB)HIS Radeon HD 7770 (1024MB)HIS Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB)HIS Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB)HIS Radeon HD 6850 (1024MB)HIS Radeon HD 5870 (2048MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX Titan (6144MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 (2048MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 (2048MB)Gainward GeForce GTX 660 Ti (2048MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 (2048MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost (2048MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti (2048MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 (1024MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1024MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 (1536MB)Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 (1024MB) Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz)x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 (CAS 8-8-8-20)Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79)OCZ ZX Series 1250wCrucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s)Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 64-bitNvidia Forceware 320.14AMD Catalyst 13.5 (Beta 2) High Quality Performance Using high quality settings there is an obvious drop in performance from what we observed on the previous page. The GeForce GTX 660 went from 60fps in medium, down to 45fps in high. Likewise the Radeon HD 7850 dropped from 56fps to just 40fps. Both still offered playable performance but given the resolution we don’t expect to go much farther. The GeForce GTX 670 was able to deliver 60fps, while the Radeon HD 7950 Boost just fell short with 59fps. The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition was slightly slower than the GeForce GTX 680 rendering 66fps opposed to 67fps. As expected when increasing the resolution to 1920x1200 the GeForce GTX 660 and Radeon HD 7850 dropped below 40fps. Mid to low-end cards don't fare all that well as the Radeon HD 7790 managed just 28fps and the 7770 a mere 21fps. Metro: Last Light is proving to be a challenge if you want to play at 2560x1600 or let alone multi-monitor resolutions. The GeForce GTX Titan averaged just 48fps here and keep in mind this is not the highest quality setting preset. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti SLI cards turned in 43fps making them faster than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and GeForce GTX 680 cards which both managed 39fps. The Radeon HD 7950 and GeForce GTX 670 averaged 32fps and 34fps, making them the slowest cards we would bother trying to play with at this resolution. Very High Quality Performance Metro's very high quality settings at just 1680x1050 is already looking like a seriously demanding benchmark. The GeForce GTX 680 fell short of the 60fps target with 57fps, while the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition was slower again with 56fps. The mid-range GeForce GTX 660 Ti and Radeon HD 7950 cards averaged 47fps and 45fps, while the Radeon HD 7870 and GeForce GTX 660 dipped below 40fps. Only the GeForce GTX Titan was able to average over 60fps at 1920x1200. Mid-range graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 660 and Radeon HD 7870 just managed to pass the 30fps mark. Those wanting to play Metro Last Light at extreme resolutions in all of its glory are asking for a somewhat unrealistic scenario for the time being considering we wouldn't pay for a GTX Titan and then run a game at just 41fps no matter how well it looked. This score was matched by a pair of GeForce GTX 660 Ti SLI cards. Read More... Medium Quality PerformanceVery High Quality + SSAA PerformanceCPU PerformanceWrapping Things Up Republished with permission from: Steven Walton is a writer at TechSpot. TechSpot is a computer technology publication serving PC enthusiasts, gamers and IT pros since 1998.

Metro: Last Light is my current slithering, senses-constricting conquest, but I haven’t quite finished it yet. Thus far, however, my feelings align pretty well with Jim’s, bringing Hivemind Orgiastic Synergism rates up to 212.5783 percent. Last Light’s different from 2033 but still of a similar spirit, and I quite like the idea of viewing its intoxicatingly disheveled world from different perspectives. That’s precisely the idea behind 4A’s summer flood of single-player DLC, so I’m definitely not complaining. According to legends, complete Hivemind synergy will actually cause the apocalypse, so you’ll probably want to dive into the break’s dank tunnels for safety. Also, details.

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Throughout the summer, Metro: Last Light developer 4A Games is planning to release four different content packs, all bundled together today in a season pass available on Xbox Live, PSN and Steam for 1200 MS Points ($15).

The Faction and Chronicle packs are the first listed, each aimed at continuing the single-player story of Metro: Last Light - Faction is due first, in June. The Tower pack will be aimed at Metro veterans, offering "a unique solo challenge." Finally, the Developer pack aims to offer some additional tools aiding in exploration. All season pass purchases will also unlock an exclusive semi-automatic shotgun rifle; each piece of DLC will be available for individual purchase, of course.

Metro: Last Light launched on May 14, a game our review said is deserving of being in the company of Half-Life. The game was originally set to be published by THQ, but after the studio's fall, Deep Silver came in and acquired the game.

Throughout the summer, Metro: Last Light developer 4A Games is planning to release four different content packs, all bundled together today in a season pass available on Xbox Live, PSN and Steam for 1200 MS Points ($15).

The Faction and Chronicle packs are the first listed, each aimed at continuing the single-player story of Metro: Last Light - Faction is due first, in June. The Tower pack will be aimed at Metro veterans, offering "a unique solo challenge." Finally, the Developer pack aims to offer some additional tools aiding in exploration. All season pass purchases will also unlock an exclusive semi-automatic shotgun rifle; each piece of DLC will be available for individual purchase, of course.

Metro: Last Light launched on May 14, a game our review said is deserving of being in the company of Half-Life. The game was originally set to be published by THQ, but after the studio's fall, Deep Silver came in and acquired the game.

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What a show we have for you kids today! Spelunky creator Derek Yu stops by to talk about his upcoming PS3 and PS Vita adventure. Then, we dip our toe into E3 with new interview focusing on some of the minds behind Doki Doki Universe and The Last Of Us at the pre-E3 Judges’ Day event in Santa Monica. Plus: New letters, a call for listener PSN Gems of the Week, and one memorable voicemail. Let’s listen in!

Stuff We Talked About

• Spelunky
• The Last of Us
• Doki Doki Universe
• E3 Judge’s Week
• Just the right amount of movie talk
• Metro: Last Light
• Far Cry 2

Send us questions and tips: blogcast@playstation.sony.com

The Cast

• Sid Shuman – PlayStation Social Media Manager
• Nick Suttner – PlayStation Account Support Manager
• Justin Massongill – PlayStation Social Media Specialist
• Derek Yu – Creator, Spelunky

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

• Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music.

To hear former THQ boss Jason Rubin tell it, Metro: Last Light studio 4A Games is maybe not the best place to work. He doesn’t mean that in a whip-crack-y, everyone’s-a-jerk way, though. Quite the contrary, actually: he recently claimed it was a case of absurdly talented people working elbow-to-elbow in “appalling” conditions. Their offices? “More like a packed grade school cafeteria than a development studio.” Picking up new hardware was apparently also quite the ordeal. “When 4A needed another dev kit, or high-end PC, or whatever, someone from 4A had to fly to the States and sneak it back to the Ukraine in a backpack lest it be ‘seized’ at the border by thieving customs officials,” said Rubin. But what about 4A’s side of the story? Creative director Andrew Prokhorov recently saw fit to chime in.

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We’ve yet to WiT Metro: Last Light on RPS, thanks to the review code not working, but its recent release has prompted ex-THQ boss Jason Rubin to write an astonishing article on the development of the game. Over at GamesIndustry.biz, Rubin has written an incendiary post on the daily struggles that Kiev-based dev team 4A Games faced, calling their game “a stunning achievement”, and asking for more recognition of their abilities. If accurate, he paints a team building a game with a tiny budget, in a country where implied corruption necessitates smuggling higher-end equipment past customs officials, for a company he describes as “irrational”. I’m British, so my monocle is currently on the floor.

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Metro: Last Light features a fixed field of view, and while we didn't have a problem with that, other players have. Developer 4A Games heard the feedback and has a fix in the next title update coming to Steam - but it comes with a warning. Changing the field of view could trigger a range of bugs, including breaking cut scene animations and decreasing game performance in general.

"We had considered offering three FOV pre-sets, but this would still require significant work to re-do every animation, adjust the HUD and UI and other seemingly small but incredibly time consuming tasks," 4A writes on the game's Steam discussion board. "Even with a wider but still fixed field of view, Artyom's hands would look too far away. We know - we tried."

4A is looking at other possible solutions, but for now the next title update's fix will have to do.

"This may well trigger a number of issues listed above - you have been warned!" 4A says.

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