TA Playlist game for January 2025 announced

We hope you’ve enjoyed exploring the mindscapes with the December 2024 TA Playlist feature, Psychonauts 2, but as the year is drawing to a close, it’s time to announce the winner of the January 2025 TA Playlist poll.

January is the depth of winter for those of us in the northern hemisphere, so to prepare for the bleak cold months ahead, we decided to focus on games that are set in freezing, wintry climates or feature cold as a mechanic. These included mountain-climbing platformer Celeste, action-adventure mystery game Kona, and survival sim/management game Frostpunk: Console Edition, but those three were left out in the cold as one game caught fire and jumped out to a commanding lead. The winner, and first TA Playlist game of the new year, is Metro: Last Light Redux!

Metro: Last Light, developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver is a first-person shooter set in the underground tunnels of post-apocalyptic Moscow. We’ve featured both Metro 2033 and Metro Exodus in previous Playlists (October 2018 and November 2019, respectively), so it’s a good time to go back and pick up the middle entry of the trilogy. Metro: Last Light was originally released in May 2013 for the Xbox 360 but was remastered for Xbox One in 2014 as Metro: Last Light Redux, and is also part of the Metro Redux bundle.

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…

Metro: Last Light has a TA user rating of 4.19-4.4, depending on which version you’re looking at, with more than 250,000 tracked gamers playing at least one version of the game. The original version has since been removed from the Microsoft store and is not backwards compatible, so we imagine most people starting the game for the first time will be playing Metro: Last Light Redux, which has been completed by over 6,500 tracked gamers (5%) and has a completion estimate of 20-25 hours for all 49 achievements.

If you don’t currently have access to any version of Metro: Last Light, it’s worth noting that it’s currently on sale for record-low prices, with the standalone Metro Last Light Redux 75% off ($4.99/€4.99/£3.99), or as part of the Metro Saga Bundle for 85% off ($8.99/€8.99/£7.49).

This was one of the more lopsided TA Playlist polls in recent memory. Within the first couple hours of the poll, Metro: Last Light had already pulled to a triple-digit lead over Kona, which held a distant second place throughout the poll. Celeste maintained third place, with Frostpunk frozen in fourth for the duration of the vote.

As always, any tracked version of Metro: Last Light will count for participation, including the original, the Japanese stack, and the Redux bundle. And you can also participate by posting a substantive comment in the Spoiler and Spoiler-Free threads that will be posted on January 1.

A note about the forums: we’ve made a bit of a change in the background as to how forum participation badges are awarded. This used to be an automatic process that occurred on a regular schedule, but it didn’t allow the forum moderators enough time to go through and check for any non-substantive “badge only” type of posts. From now on, the process will not run automatically, but will be manually processed periodically after we’ve removed any non-substantive posts. So if you’re participating by forum post only, it may take a little longer for your badge to show up, but rest assured, as long as you haven’t been notified that your post isn’t substantive enough, the badge will be awarded before the end of the month.

Since we’ve started to crack down on the “badge only” posts, the number has declined significantly, so we’d like to thank everyone who has participated for putting in that extra effort to provide substantive posts relating to the game of the month. TA Playlist really is all about the discussion, and we appreciate all of you joining along each month!