Metro Exodus: An honest first impression review
Hello everyone. I want to start off by saying that I understand that I am quite late to the party of Metro Exodus, and this is my first time making such a post simply due to how baffled I have been left by this game. This is quite a long and messy review but I feel like I have a lot to say about this game and I want to share my thoughts since I have heard so many opinions about it.
CONTEXT:
I have always been into the post-apocalyptic genre, having played games such as EFT and the whole Stalker Franchise. My journey with the Metro series started a few months ago when I decided to give the franchise a chance. I started with the first game and absolutely loved it. Everything from the atmosphere to the gameplay although quite dated instantly captivated me. I have then also played the second game, Last Light. However, due to a series of events I had taken a break from gaming and couldn't play Exodus. Fast forward a while and I decided to finally sit down and give Exodus a try...and I was left disappointed.
Before I dive into my honest review, I have played Exodus until and including some of the desert part after meeting a certain character in a lighthouse and descending into the communications bunker. Additionally, this is not a rage/vent/beatdown of the game. The game is great..but for me it's just not what I was expecting at all. I will only be focusing on the gameplay and not the story. I have heard some mixed feelings about the writing and plot but I don't feel like I have the right to judge the game's story fairly without having finished it.
The good: I came into this experience with the idea that I will be able to experience the conclusion to Artyom's story in a much fresher environment gameplay wise (new graphics, new mechanics, newer approach) compared to the older games in the series. And..I got what I expected...at first.
The game really shines in terms of its design, the sound, the world building. FInding notes and learning about events going on around you was something that really immersed me in this game. A great example is in the Volga level where I had stumbled upon a destroyed house and once in I saw bodies, it seemed like a makeshift care house for the ill. My ideas then having been confirmed by a notebook I found of the man taking care of some radiation patients inside his house and then succumbing to the illness himself. All that followed by hallucinations of the ghosts of the dead, their screams and cries. Finding stuff like this while exploring really helped sell the new idea of an open world metro game where you gradually discover the outside world and the "aftermath" of the war.
The design of the levels was great. While I am not a great fan of stealth I found myself actually prioritising it over killing everyone, trying to follow the ideals of the Spartans that Artyom belongs to, of them being bringers of justice and security and not mindless savages like everyone else in the wasteland and metro.
The levels up until where I have played (the desert) were quite varied and pleasant to explore. No area really felt tedious to complete and the encounters were all unique: The cultists, the mutants lurking around at night, the mutant shrimp, the cannibals, the mad-max looking oil miners in the desert. But then this is where the good things ended, especially when I've reached the desert.
The bad
After reaching the desert I had instantly realised that the whole game was just going to be: Go here with train, train is old so it breaks/we run out of fuel, we have to stop, random event happens, we get a twist or two with the characters we encounter, repeat.
This is not bad design in my opinion, but it just left me really disappointed due to the expectations I had. After clearing the underground communications bunker with the spiders in the desert I realised that I just can't force myself to slug through the entire game knowing that it's just go to X, do 2-3 missions, do the same again but the map has a different colour now. The events on each map felt very forced. One example is here in the desert where I am initially sent to investigate the nearby surroundings and find out more about the area and the locals, then halfway through the Colonel is already besties with the woman in the lighthouse and I have to go kill a bunch of raiders to help her get me in the bunker. Sure, it adds to the world building but the whole process feels very loosly thought out. Why set this vague objective and not let the player piece everything together if you're gonna make an open world level? The first games were linear and simple yes, but it also allowed them to be unpredictable and give you something fresh to think about, or a new section of the metro to get tangled in in order to achieve your overall objective while piecing it all together: the factions, life in the metro, the mutants, the dark ones and their connection to the events unfolding. Here with these open world "episodes", they feel much more like one-off stories rather than part of the same game, with the only connecting element being the train. Take Yamantau where it s really just a shootout gallery that s maybe 40 minutes long trying its absolute best to give us a reason to progress into the next open world desert section. It makes sense from a writing perspective I guess but the way it plays made me feel like I was playing a linear COD Zombies level full W forward sprint. What it did not make me feel like, and what it should have made me feel like was fighting for my life against creepy cannibals trying to save my wife in a dark unwelcoming place reminiscent of the claustrophobic and dark D2 bunker (even one of the squad memebers acknowledges that this looks just like D2). So on paper they had the same map almost but made it feel less intimidating, less tense and more like a whack-a-mole pop the cannibal when he gets out of cover. Mind you I was playing on the highest difficulty.
The previous games were scary, tense and really put you on edge. Even on the highest difficulty in Exodus I was never out of supplies, enemies were easy to deal with and the Watchmen which absolutely terrified me in the first 2 games when encountering them had become nothing more than an annoyance when traversing the map. The closest that Exodus got to feeling like this was in the underground comms bunker with the spiders, fighting for my life in the vents, in the dark, fending off the bulletproof spiders with my flashlight only to then go back out again to popping raiders and running around from one outpost to another.
I ended up uninstalling the game because I did not feel like I could enjoy another 25 hours of the same formula of playing different loosely tied mini-episodes of this Stalker wannabe game. And I am a fan of open-world games, don't get me wrong. It's just that for me personally, I feel like they have ruined what the name Metro meant with this new take that they did on the game.
I want to end the review by saying that I give credit to the team that created this game. It takes a lot of courage to completely switch up the well established formula that the 2 games had and go for something new. However, for me personally, it just didn't cut it and left me disappointed enough to want to voice my opinion regarding what people say is a masterpiece. This is a beautiful and well made game in terms of what it means to be an FPS and I wish I could finish it one day.
If you read this far I want to thank you for hearing me out. In the end so many people loved this game and I completely understand why, which made this review even more interesting for me to write even if I feel like I have missed a lot of good talking points.