Metro: Last Light achieves parity between console and PC version – THQ

By: Moses Abaortae

  |   December 17th, 2012   |  

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THQ talks up the game and how the studio is working to ensure that the console and PC version of the games are both the same, pretty much, apart from a few minor details.

There is a general consensus in the video game industry at the moment that the PC has overtaken the current generation of consoles in terms of power. The most obvious examples of this have to be the Unreal 4 engine as well EA’s first-person shooter titles, Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

Both games look and run exceptionally well on PCs, with the console counter parts looking more as if a number of elements had been toned down. One example of this was the restrictions on the number of players on each team in the game’s online mode on the consoles, with the PC version able to support a greater number of players.

However, one developer seems to want a similar and consistent experience on all the platforms.

Huw Beynon, the head of global communications at THQ, explained that although they had been demoing a PC version of the game all this time, the console versions would be extremely similar to what everyone has already seen.

He began, “We’ve obviously been showing it to you on PC all driven through an Xbox controller, but there’s absolutely no gameplay difference between platforms. You have an, essentially, identical gameplay experience.”

Before pointing out that there will be one or two areas where the PC would perform better than its console counterpart buts the core experience would remain the same.

“There are obviously things we can do on PC just because this is a studio where you give them a hardware limit and they’ll expand to it and push it – higher resolution, slighter higher frame rate at that resolution, a few fancier lighting and graphics effects, whatever we can eke out the very latest generations of graphics cards for PC.” Before going on to emphasize, “But all the fundamentals – dynamic lighting, physics and AI – everything that has a material impact on the game is identical across platforms.”

THQ has been struggling on the financial front over the past year and is only still around due to the unexpected success levels of Saints Row: The Third and Darksiders 2 has been doing well on the sales front as well.

In the meantime, the publisher is offering its Humble Bundle, which sees all of its titles on offer for a minimum price of $1 and the option to pay more if they wish. All the extra proceeds will be donated to charity. So far THQ has raised over $5-million since the Humble Bundle offer was released and is even offering Metro 2033 for free to anyone who likes their Facebook page.