The folk sheltering from nuclear winter in Metro: Last Light’s subway system are determined to be diverse. Despite being forever plagued by bands of scavengers and mutants they’ve found the time to become well versed in multiple languages. Already fluent in Xbox, Playstation, and Windows, they’ve been brushing up on their Linux.
Developer 4A Games now consider the Metro NPC community well trained enough in the penguin’s code that they’re going live on the Linux OS.
But you should probably play it now, because our Metro: Last Light review says it’s “one you ought to play”, so why wait?
The game’s also been ported to Mac. This means that whatever form of PC you’re running you can delve into the dark tunnels of Metro: Last Light.
Furthermore, Deep Silver and 4A Games have announced that they will be supporting Steam OS and the Steam Controller when they launch. Metro: Last Light will even come bundled with the 300 prototype Steam Machines that are being distributed to users in the console’s beta.
In the press release Deep Silver sent us 4A’s chief technical officer,Oles Shishkovstov, wrote that “We are excited by the prospect of bringing the ultimate Metro experience, powered by next-gen PC hardware into the living room. Metro: Last Light will be a great showcase for Steam OS and the Steam Controller.”
If you bought Metro: Last Light through Steam you’ve now access to all three versions of the game. Simply install the game through Steam client to have the appropriate version booted to your machine.
Valve are hoping many developers will make the jump to Linux development. Their SteamOS is built for that codebase and games written in Linux will run natively on their Steam Boxes. While details are still sparse, it seems that Windows games will have to be streamed from your gaming PC to your Steam Box, rather than run on the console themselves. While Valve will no doubt have invested a great deal of time into developing a stable, high-quality streaming system, running a game natively will always be the ideal option for developers; their game’s will run with lower latency and higher visual fidelity.
There will likely be a great many more developers following suit in the coming months as we learn more about the Steam Machines.