Metro Exodus (2019)

I took a gamble & played Metro Last Light years ago. I enjoyed the take on the post-apocalypse, so I knew I would eventually play through Metro Exodus. The game was on sale about 4 years ago & I tried to start it, but I bounced off it at the time. I was looking for something to play recently and decided to give Exodus another go.

It's been a good couple years since I played Last Light, so I can't confidently speak to what changes were made between the two games, but I'll try. Exodus continues the series' mix of action and stealth gameplay. When it comes to stealth, you have to keep an eye on your light meter. You are either well-lit or hidden in shadow, no real in between. If you are hidden, crouched, and not moving fast Artyom is almost practically invisible to most enemies. That is one of the noticeable limitations of this game. The enemy AI isn't the most advanced. You can see where they have a set path they can't deviate from much and they won't usually see you in the dark until they physically run into you. I also had a couple of occasions where you could tell the game set the enemies to only roam in a certain area and I was able to shoot them from outside the fenced in area and they never came out to investigate.

When stealth does fail, it isn't game over in that Artyom can hold his own in a fight. You do have to be smart about it though. Artyom isn't a Rambo commando, you can't take a lot of punishment before going down. The human enemies are the easiest to fight, often feeling like something out of a military FPS. It's the mutants where combat gets tricky. They vary in appearance and fighting style, with some that charge at you, some that fly, and others that pop up and shoot you from afar. They often take a lot more punishment before dying. You get a good selection of guns, with a lot of returning favorites from Last Light like the Revolver and AK-47, which were the two guns that got me through most the game. There's is a few new guns as well, these often embodying the game's post-apocalyptic flare. The one gun you'll always have with you is the Tikhar, a pneumatic powered gun that launches steel balls at high speed. It's great for silent kills and often does pretty good damage, one of the earliest guns that can take down mutants quickly. It does come with the extra step of having to pump up the air tank to ensure you have the pressure. Luckily the game is forgiving and you aren't having to pump up the tank after every single shot.

On top of the stealth and combat, I'd also call Metro Exodus an immersive sim. I try to be sparing in my use of that term, because I think it gets overapplied to any game with stealth elements, but Metro has more than the stealth. You do interact with the world by turning off light sources to help hide, but you also have to manage your radiation. There's nothing in the way of RadAway or something like that in Metro, you just have to avoid super irradiated areas, and in lightly irradiated areas you have to use your gas mask to keep from bleeding to death from the rads. While wearing your mask you have to change out filters and wipe off your visor when it gets dirty. There's also a crafting system that I don't remember if Last Light had or not. You collect resources, thankfully split as just 'mechanical' and 'chemical' supplies, that you need to craft medkits, filters, and steel balls for the Tikhar, all which can be crafted out in the field. When you find dedicated workbenches you can build ammo for your other guns, fix your gas mask, clean your weapons, because they will jam when they get dirty, and upgrade your suit and weapons with attachments you find out in the wild. The crafting system is generous enough that you don't feel like you have to grind for resources, but you also always have to be cognizant of how much ammo you're using and how fast you burn through supplies. Being able to craft mask filters did keep me from a soft lock I had in Last Light where I ran out of filters in a highly irradiated zone and couldn't make it to the end alive. The game is committed to having minimal HUD, which is nice for the atmosphere, but it does mean there's no health bar. Instead it goes for the early 2000s trend of having the screen get bloody and red as your health lowers. Which is fine when it's regenerating health, but Metro doesn't do regenerating health, so I found it hard to judge how much damage I took and whether I needed to use a medkit or wait and save it. The map screen is also a bit over designed. You have a clipboard that has the world map, but your position arrow is surrounded by a ring that muddies the map and your arrow gets hidden under map markers, so it can be tricky to orientate yourself sometimes.

This game has the subtitle 'Exodus' for a reason. This game takes Artyom out of the Metro tunnels and puts him on a cross country train journey across Russia. This means the levels are set up different than in previous games. Free of the narrow subway tunnels of Moscow, the levels are a mix of linear levels and miniature open worlds to explore. I enjoy a good open world game, but I'm also coming around to these games that do several smaller open worlds. They often give you the chance to explore different, unique worlds without all of the extra bloat that can get happen in full-on open world games and don't have to run on for 100+ hours. After the brief prologue, you start out in a swampy area of the Volga river that is your first open world area. This also seems to be the one with the most effort too, at least I felt I spent the most time in this level. You explore an old church ran by a neo-luddite cult, a train yard that has a mechanic, and a boat hangar. I think the game did misstep because at the halfway point when you rescue the mechanic, he points out some other points of interest around the area, which to me is game code for “here's some extra places to explore”, but one of the places you couldn't access yet, it unlocked later as part of a story mission. I get maybe they were setting up Chekov's Gun, so you know later where the area is, but it did mean I had to trek across the map just to find out I couldn't get in and then trek all the way back.

I think the Volga level was also one of the hardest levels, and being it's the first real level, it's definitely an interest filter. If you aren't vibing with Metro, you'll probably stop here. It's where I quit the first time I played. The Volga level features rowboats as an important aspect as most of the level is waterlogged and Artyom comes from the long tradition of video game protagonists that can't swim. The problem is with the realism, if you take a boat from one island to another, and then leave it behind, there's no way to summon it to another dock. I had a point where I had all my boats on one side of the map and while you can take walking paths between the islands, it's cumbersome. Using the boats isn't much better. The worst thing about this level is the mutant shrimp enemy. They pop out of the water and spit acid at you. After a few hits you are close to dead. And when you are in the boat, you can't do anything but paddle, so you're a sitting duck and trying to constantly switch between driving the boat and shooting usually just means losing more health. On top of that, the shrimp pop up from the water, shoot immediately, then submerge, making it almost impossible to hit them without getting hit. You can see their wake to know where they are going to pop up, but you can't do anything to dodge their acid while shooting them. I think their acid spit needed a longer wind up time to give you a chance to shoot and stagger them, because this is still early in the game meaning your weapons are too weak to dispatch them quickly. So trying to fight off three while they pop up is basically a “reload your save” scenario. I was constantly chewing through medkits in this level thanks to those shrimp. One trick I did learn though, is if you paddle backwards, the acid spit misses you, but you also can't see where you're going.

The day/night cycle does play a major role in this game, especially for levels like the Volga. Those shrimp are active during the day, but if you decide to stalk at night they are asleep, but other mutants come out at night. I often operated during the day because, again, I was still underpowered and it was much easier to take on the bandits that operate during the day than the mutants that stalk at night. At the end of the Volga level you get a pair of NVGs if you side quest enough. These goggles along with upgraded gear meant that later in the game I was more likely to do missions at night. The NVGs do feel like giving you an easy mode for this game, because now you don't have to worry about your flashlight giving you away during stealth. I don't recall Last Light having night vision in it.

That doesn't really help in the next level though, Yamantau. This one is a linear level where you have to shoot your way through a bunker, after that you visit the other mini open world area, the Caspian Sea. It's a desert area where you have to contend with sandstorms that blot out your vision. After that, you sneak through another linear level in the Russian forests and finally end with another linear level in a destroyed city.

So, the characters that you get to interact with during this trek across Russia. I'll start off by saying you can tell this game is based off a book series. Everyone loves to hear themselves talk. Every dialogue interaction can easily be a 15 min commitment. It does help give the side characters a developed personality, but a lot of the time after the first paragraph of dialogue it feels like it's just noise. It's not helped that your player character, Artyom, is a silent protagonist. I've made my dislike of silent protagonists known here. I feel it makes dialogue feel stilted, basically making conversations into monologues instead. Everyone keeps talking to Artyom with things that a normal person would respond to, but he just sits there mute, or his officer calls him on the radio and Artyom sits there silent. And one of the members of the party is your wife and it's odd having her express her adoration for you when Artyom exhibits the charisma of a wet blanket. Maybe they were trying to imitate Gordon Freeman, as I do think Half Life is at least a subtle influence here. What makes it more annoying for me is that there is a voice actor for Artyom, because he narrates his journal on the loading screens. They don't have to make Artyom a chatterbox, but at least have him interact with his crew.

On this journey, Artyom is joined by his fellow Spartan Rangers. I think this is the first appearance of most of these in a Metro game. They all have a defining character trait, like gentle giant, womanizer, or American. It's enough that they are distinct and memorable, but you aren't getting a deep character study of every Ranger. Of the few returning characters there's your aforementioned wife, Anna, who is a headstrong and a bit playful. She gets the most time devoted to her character since she's so closely related with Artyom. Her father is your commanding officer, Col. Miller. He is the blandest of all the characters. He mostly just speaks in exposition, often repeating things like “She is my daughter and your wife”. And his delivery is very monotone. The new characters joining Artyom are the Rangers Duke, who is the young thrillseeker; Sam, an American Marine that was working at the US Embassy before the War; Damir, a Kazak who longs to see his ancestral homeland; Alyosha, a Ranger who is more interested in babes than anything else; Idiot, the group's philosopher, and Stefan, a gentle giant. Along with the Rangers, a few civilians join you on the train, Yermak, the old engineer who runs the train; Krest, a mechanic who likes a chatty smoke break; and Katya and Nastya, a mother and daughter you save from a cult and Katya serves as the medic for the team. While some characters like Idiot and Krest fade into the background, you still get the feeling of general camaraderie between all of the crew.

The story of Exodus would be best described as a road adventure. With these Eastern European games, the story usually delves into some type of philosophical diatribe examining the soul of a man. What I remember of Last Light, it dealt with the Metro being on the brink of war between the Commies and Nazis & Artyom fighting to protect an elusive alien baby. It was very much in the mold of an Eastern European game. Exodus is much more lighthearted and free spirited. Early in Exodus I tried to remember how Last Light ended and all the lore, but luckily it's more of a self contained journey. You aren't going to be dealing with the factions of the Metro or have lots of returning characters. Once I just enjoyed Exodus' story for what it was, I had a much better time.

We pick up Artyom's story where he's been going out to the surface searching for radio signals, he finds one and believes there are other survivors outside of Moscow. Now, there'll be spoilers from now on, skip to “all in all” to miss them. He finds that the Hansa, the leaders of the Metro, have been operating a train line on the surface and capturing and disposing of any survivors who wander into Moscow. We learn that the Hansa have set up a radio jammer over Moscow, which Artyom breaks, and that there is a lot of radio chatter out there. Before he is executed, Artyom escapes on a stolen train with his Ranger buddies, setting out to find these other survivors. Col. Miller does confess that they've been jamming radios to make Moscow appear 'dead' because the war is still going on. He recommends going to the Russian government bunker in Yamantau to find out the state of the world. On the way, you stop at the Volga river to fix the train and find your first settlement of humans outside of the Metro. These are the neo-luddites who worship a giant catfish. Every faction you encounter is hostile, you aren't going to come across any settlements like a Megaton or Goodsprings to explore.

There is a morality system in Metro though and killing all the civilians does give you the bad ending and means not all of your crew makes it to the end game. It's very much based on “These are just people trying to survive, doesn't mean they deserve to die”. Bandits and mutants are the only things you can kill guilt free. The morality system is the main thing the game uses to encourage you to use the stealth systems and not just mow down everyone. You save Katya & Nastya here and Stefan instantly becomes enamored with Katya. Anna also explores an abandoned toxic dump site. After escaping the Volga, you get to the Yamantau bunker. I honestly expected the bunker to be the end goal of the game, but no it's the next level. It turns out the people left in the bunker are mindless cannibals and there's no real government to speak off. You also don't come across any occupation forces, leading everyone to think the war is actually over and there aren't any foreign spies or invading armies in Russia.

With the government in shambles, the Rangers decide to find a new place on the surface to set up a new civilization. The first place you try is on the Caspian Sea. It's a desert land that is ruled by a warlord that controls the oil used to run cars. It's very Mad Max-like. This level is also the hardest in regards to the morality system. There are oilmen bandits and their slaves that both fight you and it's hard to tell who you shouldn't be killing for the good ending here. I just took the L on this one and shot anyone that was shooting at me. It's here too where I really felt the vignette nature of this story, because there's gaps in time between levels that could be months. Each level is it's own little story. In the Volga you were dealing with cultists and a broken train, then here in the Caspian now we're dealing with half the crew having heat stroke and no fuel for the train. It does give you a fun road journey where you experience all the different post-apocalyptic tropes, but does make the continuous narrative feel broken. In the desert, you help a lone sniper, Guil, free her people that the oil baron and his men enslaved. Your friend Damir decides to stay and help fight with Guil. After that is one of my favorite levels, the Taiga forest. You go through the mountainous forest area that is inhabited by a group of survivalist that were kids at a summer camp when the war started 20 years ago. This isn't like Little Lamplight though. The writing is good in that you can see their immaturity, but they are still capable survivors who could live in these woods. I also like the woods because it's lightly irradiated, so you aren't fighting the normal mutants, but instead you are fighting wolves and bears. It's a nice change in pace from the other levels. And in this level Alyosha becomes smitten with the leader of the survivalists, Olga. I'd say the overarching plot of this game is about traveling across Russia with your hot Russian wife and helping your buddies find love.

It turns out the toxic waste dump Anna fell in gave her an illness that can only be cured with an experimental drug buried in the irradiated ruins of Novobriski. After she passes out at the wedding of Stefan & Katya, Artyom and Miller decide to go into Novobriski to find the cure. While going through the ruins, Miller and Artyom both succumb to the radiation sickness. In this game, radiation sickness is treated as making you trip balls and hallucinate people that aren't there. Depending on your choices, you could have lost Duke, Damir, and Alyosha during the game, and if you did Artyom dies from radiation. If you keep at least two of them around, they are able to give Artyom a blood transfusion to save him. Regardless of your choices, Miller dies. The game tries to hit you in the feels with that, but again, Miller was just Colonel Exposition to me, so I didn't feel shaken up by his death. The thing that did get me was as Artyom passes out in the snow all your buddies jump down from the train to come save you. With Anna & Artyom saved, the train travels on to Lake Bikal, a paradise in the wastes where the Rangers start a new settlement and look to save the people of the Metro back in Moscow and across all of Russia.

All in all, much like with Last Light, I enjoyed my time with Metro Exodus. It was a much more adventurous tale that takes you out of the cramped Metro and into the Russian wastes. The story is much more straightforward, with no real wacky supernatural stuff like with the Dark One aliens. Dialogue does have a habit of going on for too long. The gameplay is engaging and gives you a good mix of action and stealth. The worlds are fun to explore. There's some flaws of course, but Metro as a series has left most of it's Eurojank roots behind to make an overall solid game. If you are a fan of the Metro series, post-apocalyptic games, or stealth action games, I can recommend Exodus for a sale.

(You can check out my thoughts on the Redux version of the first 2 games here.)

Exodus excels at most of what it attempts. Yes, the switch to an open world design won’t please everyone, and the LOD pop-in certain areas didn’t do it any favours. But while I agree the openness of these areas removes a bit of the corridor claustrophobia that made 2033 so special, it also keeps things oriented and focused enough that these wider grounds never feel useless or padded. In essence, Exodus perfects the art of scavenging for and crafting resources in expertly-designed hubs that fully react to your exploits (you won’t find any of that respawn nonsense if you’ve already been to and cleared a place). Besides, not only do you still get quite a few interior segments, the Forest area brings back the linearity of the first two games, forbidding you from exploring as freely as in the two previous hubs, rather doing it in progressive chunks instead. It’s a ‘best-of-both-worlds’ approach that I feel works quite well due to its execution.

One other thing Exodus definitely excels at is - you guessed it! - immersion. The previous games had already raised the bar in this regard, but this raises it even further. You can see your mask getting slightly foggy as you exhale. Due to its hub nature, sound is now a much more prominent aspect, making those suppressors really useful. You can only carry 2 regular weapons and a 'special' one (and special gains a whole new meaning when you get your hands on that bad boy of a crossbow). Resource scavenging is taken up a notch, and you can now actually craft items on the go with your backpack or maintain your weapons at a workbench - plus the weapon mod system is greatly expanded. Last but certainly not least, Exodus regaled me with the most effective diegetic UI experience I remember seeing in a game, with zero HUD elements cluttering your view, a fully in-game map that is a thing of absolute beauty, and almost everything you need to know shown on Artyom’s bracer or weapons. All these aspects come together to deliver a genuinely impressive sense of post-apocalyptic believability, and I for one soaked it all up like there was no tomorrow. Which was, of course, thematically appropriate.

Finally, a word on the story. There’s a lot of cinematic action in the beginning which I wasn’t a fan of, and boy some characters sure love to talk a lot. But Exodus features a strong narrative, with strong narrative beats and characters, both new and reoccurring. Artyom as a silent protagonist makes less sense here, but nevertheless there are many emotionally effective moments at play, including some that seem innocuous at first glance. The train really functions as that ‘home-like’ experience: I welcomed every time I went back to it, and interacting with all the characters in-between missions was something I’ve come to truly appreciate throughout my time with the game. The morality system, which I didn’t really care for in the first 2 titles, is far better implemented here, and even if it can still feel a tad confusing, there is clearly more logic and consequential outcomes behind it. To top if all off, the endings were great and, in my opinion, properly rewarding of my playthrough.

I don’t think I had ever played a trilogy where I felt each game had overall improved on the previous one, but that’s exactly what the Metro series did for me. I loved 2033, really loved Last Light, and Exodus is now one of my all-time favourites. It blends a type of setting I’m super into with a bunch of really smart and well-executed design choices that had me hooked from start to finish throughout all three games. And Exodus was, simply put, nothing short of the epic the culmination to an epic gaming journey. 9.5/10

This is my first review in like 15 years but I felt compelled to come back for this.

I just finished Metro: Exodus based off of a friend's recommendation - they said this game is awesome, so why not try it after buying it in a bundle?

It's ok. The game has a pretty rough start. I don't love the Hollywood-esque linear sections, but they're here. The following open world area is pretty great, and probably the best part of the game because it feels cold, along with being open and empty and fairly scary. I just hate the water sections - traveling on the boat is so slow and annoying.

The Caspian Sea area is alright. I love the little car they give you, and I did all of the side content. The little map you can use reminds me to Far Cry 2 (I mean that as a compliment!), it feels so immersive. I also love the weapon customization. This works especially well when you get to the forest and have all of your shit stolen - the weapon customization rocks, seriously.

I thought the forest area was the best, with good gunplay and good flow. I genuinely despised the areas with the spiders, both here and in the Caspian Sea. Just horrible to play through imo, they just aren't fun to fight.

The final area of the game is alright. You can tell the devs were like "wait... we should take the best part of the best Metro Game (the first one) and just remake it!" and it turned out worse. It's fine, it just makes me want to play the first game instead.

Overall: it's ok. I love the train in execution. I liked the story ending. I liked the water sections in theory (horrible in practice, such slow pacing and annoying overall). I like this game in theory, but I just felt like I wanted it to end. I'm conflicted rating this low because the game had some good highs, so I don't want to be harsh. Also the devs clearly have gone through hell, so, I feel a bit bad? If I could cut out all of the bad parts of this game and mush the remaining sections together, it'd probably be a nice 7/10 - otherwise it's around a 5/10 maybe.

Hay demasiadas malas decisiones de diseño. Un mundo abierto que hace que se pierda la pasión por el detalle y la ambientación. En general un tono descuidado que lastran mucho la obra. Es una saga que solo madura en lo superfluo y abandona lo importante.

A pesar de todo sigue un juego estupendo, pero pierde mucho de sí mismo en el proceso.

Finally finished the last game of the saga. Sadly i enjoyed this game the less overall. I have a lot of complaints but the main ones are that the steam release is very buggy and stealth feels boring.

I liked the first two games because they felt "medium" sized. The games were ~10hrs long, placed in a big world but contained in small maps, used linear gameplay and had a good enough story with a lot of thought behind, but were not an "epic". This game got away from those features and tried to be more, which i respect, but didn't like since the game is twice as long but not twice as good.

I still got "medium" entertained, but i feel like you could cut out some sections entirely and nobody would've noticed, maybe it would have even made the game better.

I've liked all of the Metro games, and this is easily my favorite so far. It adds an open world that at least gives the illusion of a bigger world, even though most of the open areas are pretty barren. Still, it gives the game a scope that the other games didn't have. That's not a criticism of the earlier games because that's not the vibe they were going for, but it's nice that Exodus offers a change of pace from their claustrophobic linearity (though this one certainly has sections with that old vibe). The story and characters are much more memorable than the previous games. I have to ding it for some really janky storytelling, though. Dialogue is very stilted, some of the acting is pretty bad, and the timing of the dialogue is way off most of the time. I often thought a character was finished talking and started walking away, only to hear them start up again. Sometimes it seemed like they were actually waiting for me to walk away before starting up again. It was almost comical.

I also have to ding it a star for serious bugs. I played the Windows version on Xbox Game Pass and was surprised by how a game that came out 7 months ago could still have such serious bugs. One almost game-breaking bug is that I lost almost all of my non-weapon upgrades each time I moved to a new chapter. That means I lost the vest upgrade that allowed me to carry more ammo, the battery upgrade that held a charge longer, and the mask upgrade that made filters last longer. For some reason I didn't lose the brighter flashlight upgrade, but losing the others was a real pain--being stuck with the default amount of ammo, battery charge, and filter duration made some of the later areas a real nuisance. A friend was playing on PS4 and had the exact same bug. Even worse, he had a bug in the Dead City level where his battery charger completely stopped working, so he couldn't use his flashlight or night vision at all and had to do some very dark and difficult areas with just his lighter! Both of these bugs have been reported for months, but have not been patched. They even came out with DLC recently before patching the base game! In the end, I feel like this is worth taking a star off my score, even though I think the gameplay and story are really top notch (though I could have done with less talking--man do they talk forever!).

First of all let me say that I loved the first two Metro games. They were beautifully designed and the story was rather fun. Post-apocalyptic Moscow was a blast to play through.

Exodus looked like it was shaping up to be a good game however I was in for a shock. The big open sandbox levels sound great, however in reality they get tedious and dull really fast. Caspian and Volga are the worst, after an hour I just wanted it to be over as soon as possible. While the mutants are scary, they too become tedious. The game is a survival horror so ammo and filters are scarce however the mutants are bullet sponges and just don't seem to die. Humanimals are the worst offenders, I find myself just running past them most of the time which is a terrible shame. Human enemies are slightly better however they seem to absorb bullets too. Its like I'm shooting them with a pellet gun. Seriously close range with a shotgun did barely any damage. That's if you land a shot. A lot of the time, the bullet will miss despite the shot being clearly lined up.

Artyom seems to walk like he's on the moon and as soon as ht a shrub your movements slows down to a grinding hold. Artyom cannot run for a long distance which is less than ideal in big open worlds. I also found that he would get stuck, and I am unable to use the controls thus forcing me to reset.

Another frustrating thing is the load times. on a PS4 I was stuck on loading screens for a good 3-6 minutes.

The game isn't all bad though. The backpack system is wonderful and I like being able to change weapon attachments there and then. The crossbow is brilliant and its my favourite, go to weapon in the game. The levels that are more linear are much more fun in my opinion and it reminds me of Last Light. The game seems to excel here. Mutants are genuinely scary and disturbing, and there is one level that is quite unsettling, it's brilliant.

In summary, its ok I guess but it falls way short of the standard Metro has set for itself in the past. If I'm honest it suffers more from technical issues. Maybe I'm just bitter I spent £50 on this game. My advice buy this pre-owned, its worth about £25 max.