Game #998: Metro Exodus

  A future in which you need to wear a mask to go outside. Topical. Appropriate.

 While I'm a newcomer to the Metro series, the Switch re-release won me over so I got Metro Exodus as fast as I could... even if I'm only got around to playing it now. Reception of Exodus was mixed to say the least, it changes gameplay a lot to focus more on open world explorations, as well as the disastrous limited exclusivity deal that it got on Epic's gamestore on the PC front. However.. I liked it a whole lot.

 Some years after the previous game, Artyom finds himself as part of the Spartans, and he and his wife quickly find out that there's human life living in the radioactive surface of the planet. Hijacking a train, he, Anna, and a small Spartan platoon set off on the Aurora, the train, to find a safe place on earth. Needless to say, most of the game takes place outside the Metro, which is certainly different... but I think they pulled it off very well. The game follows a formula, every one or two chapters you get an intermission chapter that takes place entirely on the train. This intermissions are fantastic for fleshing out the characters, as they have a TON to say... if you let them. Artyom and Ana are one of the most disgustingly cute couples in gaming by far. All that said, I think keeping Artyom as a silent protagonist was a missed opportunity, as some of the dialogue can feel downright awkward since characters just unnaturally vomit dialogue all over you. Sure, they make some cheeky references to Artyom's silence, but it would still be better if he had a voice and actually interacted with the rest of the characters. In other words, I think the world-building is fantastic despite having a silent protagonist. It's great, but it could be even better. As you advance through the story, some of your teammates can die, and there will be dialogue to reflect this, some characters may even be explored post-death, like Duke, who I happened to lose in my adventures, thus Anna will be saddened about it and tell you about when they were younger and how he looked up to Artyom. Dammit, game, makin' me sad about getting an ally killed!

 Having such a strong story element was pretty welcome in my case, but I'm also OK with changing how the game plays. Bullets as currency is a thing of the past, all your weapons and bullets are either crafted or salvaged from enemy corpses. The survival element is still strong in here, as even the default difficulty setting can be quite brutal, and you'll quickly learn that running away from mutants is the name of the game here. The sneaky approach has never been so enticing before! Being silent and non-lethal is more important than ever, as that's the only way you'll manage to keep your squadmates alive, and in turn, the only way to get the good ending. While the surface is not AS radioactive as the characters thought, you'll still need to use your gas mask every now and then since there are radioactive areas. So most survival elements are kept intact, from low ammunition, that you can craft if need be, to having to micromanage your electricity charges, the state of your guns, as they may get stuck if you use them too much, needing to craft filters for your mask and needing to take care of it not breaking during fights as well as the lack of medikits, once again, forcing you to craft them. I felt fairly oppressed on the default difficulty setting, so in a way, the survival element is here, heck, I'd say I found this game harder than the previous two Metro games, keeping in mind I played the Redux versions which I think rebalanced this aspect.

 If the game gets too hard, thankfully, the game offers a Journalist difficulty mode, and you can lower the difficulty setting at any time. I didn't mind the difficulty at first but in the end I caved in while fighting the Baron, I had retried that segment like 20 times and... the game has very lengthy loading times. I was spending more time in the loading screen than actually playing the game, so I said 'Screw it, we gettin' outta here one way or another'. So yeah, a challenging game I can deal with, but having to sit through such lengthy loading screens for every attempt isn't my idea of fun.

 On the other hand, I think the open world works very well. The lengthy loading times are there so that there's little to no loading as you play through each massive area. Every chapter that isn't an intermission takes place in its own area, and these areas have multiple optional objectives. So, if you don't care about the possibility of finding better equipment or increasing your moral points, for the good ending, you can just skip the optional markers on your map. As far as I'm concerned, the game was fun, the environments were pretty, so I did every little bit of questing I could. The one issue I had is that sometimes it can be hard to figure out where to go, as some areas are blocked off by arbitrary invisible walls. Will Artyom climb that rock? Maybe. Maybe he won't. You could try four times and maybe one of those he'll climb up, or maybe he won't because there's an invisible wall. It's not too bad, but sometimes I felt smart about thinking I found a route only to discover an invisible wall wouldn't let me climb over!

 If anything, I've felt quite disappointed over how PS4 games looked, because the jump from PS3 to PS4 wasn't very pronounced. I think Metro Exodus is the best looking game I have played on PS4, it looks amazing. From the character models, to the very detailed environments you explore, everything looks amazing. There are a ton of graphical bugs, including a truck that had invisible parts that made me chuckle a bit, but overall, it's amazing. No wonder the game opens up with enemies grappling to take a bite out of your face, the developers were showing off!

 Lastly, I love how the game will make you feel really bad about not taking the stealthy approach, with characters berating you for not being able to avoid bloodshed. Not to mention that, if you fail to take the nonlethal approach, a squadmate will die and now the rest of the characters will be super sad about it. Heck, at one point, the colonel, Miller, Ann's father, looked directly at me after reminiscing about Duke, as if "Hey, player, you let him die, shame on you!". That said, whenever you do manage to take the nonlethal approach you'll get praised, and since I wound up liking the characters so much... just having them survive is a reward in and of itself. And the ending? It's the perfect emotional sendoff for the series, the music, the intensity, your allies... it's just perfect.

 So I know that Exodus is fairly divisive due to the many changes to how the previous games worked... but in my case, everything felt like it clicked. The new approach, with intermissions built around character development, I feel works really well. The way they approached open world gameplay, having about 5 different self-contained areas worked well given the context of the plot. My one caveat are the loading times, which turn a hard but rewarding game into a frustrating one, but after I lowered the difficulty and my attempts went down the frustration went down and the game only got better. You can fight me on this, but I think this is my favorite Metro game.

 8.5