![]() ![]() His movements are slow and cumbersome when climbing, and the logic of what he can and can’t vault is inconsistent.Įxploring every point of interest is the best way to find new attachments and critical upgrades to your equipment. If Artyom has a limitation, it’s his traversal skills. The variety of weapons and their accompanying attachments also give you a lot of flexibility on the battlefield and encourages experimentation I frequently tweaked my loadout on the fly to try new configurations. Combat awards precision and punishes firing wildly, which I appreciate. ![]() If you prefer to shoot first and ask questions later, you have that option as well. Attacking at night with a stealth approach lets you avoid wanton bloodshed, which can alter the outcome of your interactions with the various factions and determine the fate of certain sidekicks. As with the previous games, most of the time Exodus allows you to approach combat scenarios however you like. When his wife Anna struggles to come to grips with the moral complexity of a situation the crew just extracted itself from, his silence feels downright perplexing.Īrtyom may be a terrible conversationalist, but he’s a capable guerrilla fighter. Artyom has always been the strong and silent type, but these conversations feel awkward given the length at which many of these characters speak to him with no response whatsoever. The lack of back and forth between Artyom and his crew also robs the scenes of their intended weight. At times, the actors sound like they are listlessly reading words off a script. I applaud the attempt to bring more depth to these characters and the world, but the emotional impact of the story’s most dramatic moments is often undermined by wooden voice performances. The ending is bittersweet, but the journey is what leaves the biggest impression. Your friends suffer sicknesses, celebrate marriages, express unshakeable hope, and occasionally succumb to despair throughout your journey, bringing everyone closer together. Some characters are unique, but others feel eerily familiar – the handyman Tokarev and love interest Anna bear an uncanny resemblance to Wolfenstein's Set Roth and Anya, respectively. In between missions, you spend time aboard the Aurora locomotive hanging around your compatriots, gaining insight into their personalities and motivations. If the previous two games were influenced primarily by Half-Life, Exodus takes its narrative cues from MachineGames’ recent Wolfenstein titles – almost to a fault. The suffocating atmosphere and supernatural occurrences that pervaded your every action in the previous games are sparser this time around, but each region has its own foreboding locations where the jump scares and dread reside.ĤA Games has always held storytelling in high regard, and that emphasis continues here. Metro Exodus’ greatest triumph is this well-tuned pacing no region overstays its welcome, and all have interesting places to explore and memorable characters to meet. ![]() The trip occasionally deviates from open areas in favor of a more straightforward mission that recalls the level design of its predecessors. The variety of environments and seasons keep the game feeling fresh throughout the roughly 25-hour campaign, delivering new factions to battle and new mutated beasts to fight or flee. 4A Games’ technical prowess is on full display in these dynamic play spaces, with gorgeous lighting illuminating the impressive landscapes. Metro Exodus isn’t an open world, but rather a series of defined sandboxes that allow players freedom to go where they want and tackle objectives at their own pace. With a gorgeously realized world and a well-paced campaign, Exodus makes a compelling case for that acceptance, even though some anachronisms keep the story from realizing its full potential.Īrtyom and crew have left the Metro in search of a better life, and each stop along the voyage offers a new territory to explore, from the flooded flatlands of the Volga River to the dried and dusty former waterfront of the Caspian Sea. Developer 4A Games aims to step out of the shadows of cult fandom and challenge for mainstream acceptance with Metro Exodus, taking the action out of the cramped underground and into the irradiated Russian landscape. But over the course of two critically acclaimed games and a well-executed redux collection, it has steadily gained an audience appreciative of its dynamic gameplay, grounded storytelling, and gripping tension. The Metro series has never delivered a runaway hit to elevate it among the most esteemed first-person shooters. ![]()
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