Better Late Than DEAD is a survival adventure game developed by Odin Game Studios, being published on Steam in July of 2015 on Early Access.

As we have come all too familiar with the survival genre of games; you start off as a single character, dropped in the middle of nowhere and you are expected to survive. Games of this genre are often a hit from the start or just flop straight away. Unfortunately Better Late Than DEAD does not have a very bright future in my eyes.

Gameplay is…well, almost none existent. I started out in the ocean and had to swim at least five minutes before I got to any sort of land. I spent almost an hour exploring the island, finding a couple of houses, and that is it. Whilst exploring the houses I found that each of them had their own loot, strangely enough, the houses were all an exact copy of each other and the loot was spawned in exactly the same place. The loot that I found were again, everything you would expect to find in this type of game, cans of food, bandages, knives, etc. As far as game play goes, that is it. There is absolutely nothing else to do in this game; I didn’t find any animals, enemies, nothing.

The graphics are bad to say the least; the screenshots really shows the game in a different light to how it actually looks in real time. Awfully low quality textures on almost everything, the water certainly doesn’t look like how it does in the screenshots, and neither does the skybox. On top of the poor graphics, the animation side of the game is horrible; your character has just an awful run cycle that looks like some sort of jelly man was used to rig it – also this game features possibly one of the highest jumping ability I have ever seen in a game, I swear I was jumping up entire flights of stairs in one go… It should also be known, that from jumping, I managed to break my leg in the game twice and die from it once – lord knows how.

At the beginning of the game, I was presented with a cut scene that sets up for a quite interesting story; but that is it. After that intro, I found no other plot elements, or anything. I was particularly disappointed as I would have really liked to have seen more of it. Hopefully the developers will be adding something in via patches in the future on this aspect.

Better Late Than DEAD also has some audio problems. Whilst playing the game, you will have the same repetitive soundtrack playing in the background, and when it loops, boy do you notice it. There is an obvious cut in the track, and it just starts playing again; this for me seemed like a really basic issue which should not be seen in the game, it really ruined the game’s immersion (the little it actually had).

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Metro: Last Light is a very linear first person shooter, incorporating stealth and resource management. Neither of these seemed necessary when playing on normal difficulty, so for the intended experience, I’d suggest a harder mode. It paces itself well; shifting between slow moments of atmospheric storytelling, faster paced combat and the occasional boss fight. But the FPS side of this game is not it’s strongest attribute. Your character never levels up in any way, or gains any new abilities (unless you count night vision). Aside from increasing the Kalash’s ammo, the weapon modifications made little difference on any of the wide selection of guns. If you’re looking for a shoot’em up gibfest, this isn’t the game; but certain mechanics enhance the realism and improve the experience. The best example of this being the gas mask, which the player must put on when going above ground, replace when damaged, recharge with scavenged filters and wipe off when covered with blood, debris or water.

The part of this game that really shines is the storytelling, or more specifically, the tone. It’s classified as horror, but it lacks the jump scares and excessive gore one might expect from this genre. Instead it has a more mature and suspenseful disposition reinforced by the dimly lit yet detailed level design. Unlike a run and gun shooter, Metro: Last Light encourages the player to patiently explore it’s environment, taking in the scenery and appreciating it. Notes revealing more of the story are randomly scattered throughout the levels, forcing the player to search in areas that would otherwise be passed without notice.

Graphically the game is great, considering the budget this studio had. Sure, the character animation is a bit stiff and the child voice acting is awful but the character models are good enough to not distract from the story and, like the movie Gravity, this game is a rare example of a product that becomes a different experience when using 3D. I’ve found 3D becomes tiresome in most games and I turn it off after a while, even 3D Vision Ready ones such as Metro: Last Light. But I played all 10 hours of this game with Nvidia 3D Vision enabled and it intensified the immersion in a way that couldn’t be accomplished otherwise (most notably when the gas mask was cracked or dirtied). As unpopular as 3D gaming is, I’m glad I have it for games like this. It’s also worth noting that the game runs on Mac as well as Linux.

I don’t like moral choice (karma) systems in games, but I don’t hate them; and there are ways of ameliorating them. One such method, employed by Metro: Last Light, is to hide it completely from the player, allowing them to make organic decisions during gameplay.

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