If you’ve never gotten around to buying and playing Metro: Last Light, the remastered version is free on the GOG store today and tomorrow (via Polygon). The game has been out for a while now, but it’s still as terrifying as ever, even if you’re playing it for a second or third time. And, when you get a game from GOG, it comes without any DRM, so your copy of the game isn’t tied to any particular platform. You can download the files to your hard drive, and it’ll still run without GOG’s launcher installed.
The process of claiming the game is a little non-obvious, as the “Metro: Last Light giveaway” link at the very top of the page just leads to GOG’s search screen. To claim the free game, you’ll first want to log in (or create an account if you don’t have one), then go to the homepage. Scroll down until you see banner with a button that says “Yes, and claim the game”. The “yes”, by the way, is you opting in to marketing emails from GOG, so be aware of that before clicking. Clicking the button should add the game to your library, where you can then go and download it.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22204877/Screen_Shot_2020_12_30_at_10.11.40_AM.png)
Offering a free, genuinely very good game may be an attempt by GOG’s owner, CD Projekt Red to try to earn back some of the goodwill that it’s lost this month. The company has been dealing with the botched release of Cyberpunk 2077, as well as a PR crisis concerning GOG itself: there are concerns by some that the company capitulated to the Chinese government by rolling back its decision to carry Red Candle Games’s Devotion, which contained unflattering references to the Chinese president in an early version.
If you’ve decided not to use CD Projekt Red’s services for whatever reason, and don’t mind the game being stuck on a single platform, you can still pick it up pretty cheap on Steam — it’ll be $3.99 there until January 5th. No matter which platform you pick, Metro: Last Light is a great game with a solid story — and a lot of tense and heart-pounding moments. I played it when I was admittedly maybe a bit too young, and it resulted in a fair share of nightmares, so it may not be for the faint of heart.
If you’re itching for more free games, Torchlight II is free on the Epic Games Store today.
