1 person found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 38.3 hrs on record
Posted: 1 Mar, 2020 @ 6:42pm
Updated: 12 Apr @ 5:07pm

Metro Exodus is an excellent capstone to the Metro 2033 & Metro Last Light series of games. The game employs effective storytelling, exploration and punchy horror to great effect and showcases the substantial investment that 4A Games has made into Dimitri Glukhovsky's post-apocalyptic franchise. Unfortunately, a litany of uncontrollable issues sour an otherwise fantastic gaming tour de force. Despite the weaknesses, I will be awaiting 4A Games' next foray into video game storytelling.

Metro has great graphics, rendering large, living worlds with sharp 4K-capable textures, excellent lighting effects and adequate character/enemy models. Maps are expansive, interesting and possessed of character/personality themselves. Character models lack amazing animations and often seem less impressive by comparison. The sound in Metro is wholly adequate as well, with the exception of the musical score, which is excellent and emotionally impacting. The same can't be said for the voice acting, which ranges from good to laughably bad. It's quickly obvious that Metro's greatest strength lies in its fantastic atmosphere.

The game play in Metro is great, with a sufficiently deep crafting system, various ammunition types, weapon modifications, stealth, melee, healing, irradiation effects and more. Objectives can be resolved either forcefully or by employing guile and you are always able to update your weapons on the fly in order to best fit your needs. Weapon models and animations are great, with strong, staccato firing sounds that make discharging them a joy. The game begins like previous Metro titles with cramped, linear subway missions but soon evolves into a far more open experience, not unlike FarCry.

Each of the large areas has a pervasive identity with Volga being mostly swamp/marsh-like, Caspian being an arid, scorched desert and the Taiga being a lush, vibrant forest. Within each of these areas, Artyom will find a variety of underground bunkers, decrepit buildings, radioactive hellscapes, mutant-infested ecosystems and bandit/NPC communities. Tons of hidden loot abounds, with many items hidden from all but the most sagaciously persistent. Punctuating the three large areas are several other stops with interesting concepts and consequences, propelling the story forward, slowing only for poignant moments between Artyom and his companions on the the train (the Aurora). Sitting outside and watching miles of scenery zip by as you race forward towards your next location is a great trick and something I had never experienced before on any game.

Characters are reasonably fleshed out and the story, while not superlatively unpredictable or clever gets the job done. Tons of written logs are available for perusal and members of your crew will leave, resulting in surprising amounts of disappointment. Your proclivities towards aggression or cruelty will result in a specific ending, so players should be careful about what decisions they make. The save system is pretty bog standard, albeit not very robust. Game difficulty at medium is adequate and higher difficulty levels can be quite challenging. The ending plucks at the heart strings. Anyone that alleges that Metro Exodus isn't horror-focused is a intentionally misleading. The entire game is littered with forays underground, both long and short. The finale, which takes place in the Metro of Novosibirsk, makes past Metro games look like Disney Land. The game has simply evolved into a larger, more varied, more ambitious experience.

Technically, even a year after release, the game is still a bit of a mess. A small group of players have lost their save games. Many players have experienced crashes to desktop (including yours truly). I actually experienced 2 additional crashes in Taiga that were unrecoverable, with ALT-TAB, ALT-F4 and ALT-CTRL-DEL having no effect. I had to hard-restart the computer, souring the experience somewhat, as the crashes happened within a few minutes of each other. The game's optimization is disappointing. At 4K, ultra, I was hovering between 45-60 fps with current computer, which has run other, equally-attractive games, far better. Players often get hung up on floating objects, or get caught on clipping errors in the map/scenery. The game's AI is pretty awful. While bad AI is excusable for brain dead mutants, it is obviously not for human opponents.

The greatest issue with Metro was Deep Silver's decision to make the game an Epic Games Store exclusive. Ironically, I would've purchased the game at full price and probably would've purchased all the DLC full price as well but, instead, had to wait a full year to play the game. This was disappointing as the game was no longer discussed in the current gaming community and many of my Steam friends nixed the game from their wishlists, never to return. While 4A Games/Deep Silver made up for the slight, somewhat with deep price cuts on the Steam release week (I bought everything for about 40 dollars), the decision to make the game exclusive no doubt cost 4A Games/Deep Silver good will from their customers and fans. Hopefully the lesson has been learned for next time.

However, despite those weaknesses, I can honestly affirm that Metro Exodus was one of the greatest games of 2019 and easily worth any FPS fan's precious gaming time.

Recommended.

8.5/10.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
Comments are disabled for this review.