Metro Exodus Review

[Michael {United Critics}]

Even with everything going wrong, and life becoming hard, there’s always a ray of hope. The game runs on this motto and takes you to a tale of survival. The game offers a full package of horror, action, story, and thrill elements. Going out in the dark with a single magazine of bullets and encountering dozens of mutants while your mask is broken; is not what you usually experience in usual games, but Metro Exodus is on another level. Terrains ranging from bitter cold to scorched deserts and contaminated areas, the game offers promising detailing that keeps you intrigued throughout the journey. Each of your companions holds a unique story and always stands for you. You can craft weapons from whatever you find in the abandoned place. And don’t forget, even with the nuclear disaster, humanity always finds a way to survive; therefore, you need to locate fellow survivors over the land of Russia.

Plot/Story for previous series players(Without spoilers):

After choosing the faith of Dark Ones in Metro 2033 and the hardships for D6 with Baby Dark One in Metro Last Night, Artyom continues his dream of searching for other survivors around the globe. It leads him to a long journey throughout the areas of cold, heat, and radiation. You traverse the land with your crew on the looted train that you named as Aurora. With the addition of old series mutants, you will encounter some new and deadly ones that are bloodthirsty, and mercy is no option for them. Yet again, a brilliant story portrays from the best-selling novel and with the same ideology of–choose your own destination.

Plot/Story for new players(Without spoilers):

The scene is in the year 2036, where the world gets hit with nuclear war, extreme weather, horrifying mutants, and cruel civil war. You, “Artyom” believes that there might be more survives instead of the ones present in the tunnels of Metro. So you assemble a band of Spartan Rangers and your wife to flee the underground Metro and search for a better living place in the East. During the journey, you will face various enemies at different creepy locations. Even with the story focused gameplay, you will still be free to roam around the map and choose your own path. Your actions will determine whether you make a good ending or a bad one which is why the game is popular.

Gameplay:

Horrifying first-person experience through immersive geographical locations filled with mutants and human enemies with day/night cycle. Your playthrough will revolve around a train named Aurora throughout the 12 chapters. It comprises a well-crafted and adequately paced story, which is all mixed with horror/stealth/action gameplay. Controls are quite comfortable except for the jump mechanism, as it feels a bit weird. Overall, little things like cleaning your gasmask, patching it up, throwing trash for a distraction are all minor segments but enhances the gameplay by a lot. Immense customization of weapons shows how survival affects the availability of items and how you come up with solutions at a hard time. You will find a lot of different weapons and equipment throughout the story that will ease your current objective. But every playstyle suits a particular weapon only, so find your perfect match and keep it clean, as dirty weapons might get jammed.

No direction is safe, as a wide variety of mutants are ready to scare and attack you. Your stealth or Rambo gameplay and the side tasks on the map will decide your game ending. You can even re-do the chapters if you want an ending that fits your style. Pay attention to the narrations as they help you get a good ending. You can even craft other equipment using your go-to backpack, which contains all the blueprints. Every enemy possesses unique traits, as some are active at night, and some not. Using your flashlight will immediately alert the enemies, making it hard to sneak.

Graphics:

Metro series games are always ahead of the time in the field of graphics. You will see a creative menu option and never seen before in-game interactions. Animations varying from mask wipe, weapon mods, environmental interactions, and fire are all well done and highly polished. But you will encounter some visual bugs here and there. The selection to enable RTX makes the game a delight to the eyes. Vivid colors, even being a dark theme game, is a task well done. The game includes a lot of fascinating cutscenes that will pass a chillwave through your bones. The geographical locations divide into many parts ranging from chilling winter, dark places, and summertime. Every area enriches with a brilliant color pallet.

Main Pros and Cons:

Pros-

• Great Story.
  
• Wide gameplay variation.
  
• Impressive graphics.
  
• Decisions you make will affect your ending.
  
• Perfect balance of story and open world.
  
• Variety of enemies keep the horror aspect lively.

Cons-

• Visual bugs.
  
• Artyom not having any dialogues makes some conversations pretty awkward.
  
• Unskippable dialogues.
  
• Killing mutants are just a waste of ammo.

Tips to new players:

Every takedown offers you two options, either kill them or knock them out. Not killing them will lead you to a good ending. Always take a stealthy approach, as you will find yourself out of ammo throughout the entire game. Loot every corpse for ammo and attachments. Dismantle the extra items for further crafting and monitor your gasmask condition. Killing whatever you see is not the best approach here. Stay low and only use your flashlight when you absolutely have no other choice.

Miscellaneous Information:

Spiders -
Metro is always well-liked for its terrifying crawling and deadly spiders. You can kill the spiders just by using your flashlight. Your lighter helps remove the spider-web as they might decrease your movement speed and can cause you a fatal death.

Anomalies -
An Anomaly, or Dark Star, is an extremely dangerous phenomenon that travels through the Metro and electrocutes anything that comes in its contact. This mysterious floating orb will attack both humans and mutants.

Honest Rating:

Definitely the best in the series, with better graphics and overall gameplay variety. Keeping the old game vibe, and delivering the same horror atmosphere, makes it a top-notch preferred game in the horror-survival genre. It will keep you immersed throughout the whole gameplay and hit you with an absolute emotional ending.

Rating: 8.5/10

Reviewer: Guri