Metro Exodus for me was shaping up to be a very disappointing experience, thought the plot alone was almost enough to ruin the whole series and the fact it was going the "semi open world" route worried me.
But surprisingly enough, I think it's actually the best in the series. It retains the great atmosphere and story of the other games but without many of they're issues, which means that the gameplay isn't just fineee.
I thought the gunplay was quite great in this one, the way you unlocked attachments for guns was also cool, you don't buy them but get them by looting guns that enemies drop. You can change attachments on the fly now which makes adapting from stealth to combat a lot easier when you can just change to a suppressor when you want to play it stealth and then change to something else when you fuck up the stealth and shit goes to hell.
The backpack and crafting system is implemented extremely well and though I miss using bullets as currency (which was a mechanic with A LOT of potential and was really interesting but oh well), I also like how it is in this game, you don't just pause the game to go to a menu where you can craft stuff but rather take out your backpack in game and then you can craft stuff, it keeps you vulnerable and doesn't break immersion.
Influences from Far Cry 2 can be felt heavily on how the map works for the open areas and the gun jamming thing.
Pulling up your map is, well literally just pulling up a map in front of you, something I wish more games implemented personally. And you have to clean your guns now when you get to a crafting bench otherwise your gun will jam which is a nice twist on gameplay when you're in a really tense moment and then suddenly your gun stops working and you panic and don't know whether to fix it or just switch to another one. Though I have to say, it prb won't happen often to you, for me it only happened like twice in the first 3/4th of the game and a bunch of times in the last mission.
The semi open world aspect of the game will prb be the make or break for most people and for me it’s a make, because it’s actually really well done and doesn’t just go into OK HERE’S THE MAIN OBJECTIVE BUT ALSO HERE’S 6895329532 MARKERS ON THE MAP THAT ARE ALL JUST COLLECTIBLES AND COPY PASTED SHIT! territory, you gotta find the side stuff yourself usually or you’ll be told about them and then the markers appear on your map, there’s only a couple of side missions per area and they are usually either around where a main mission takes place or it’ll be on your path. They’re pretty alright as side quests go and I enjoyed the ones I did.
The train sequences were a huge highlight for me. The game really comes alive in these scenes, the writing is great, the characters are all likeable and it’s really hard to not care for them by the end, they’re all doing something or have something to tell you, it’s not always something deep or important but that’s kinda what makes them so nice, it feels like a friend telling you a story, not a piece of information for the 5 people who want to know everything about the lore or whatever.
The only issue for me is...well Artyom himself, the loading screen narrations are all interesting but the problem is, he never talks outside of them, it’s always been something unique to the metro games but it always felt more like a useless restriction rather than something that adds to the story, especially here when a lot of great scenes could have been elevated into amazing if Artyom just fucking talked or responded to the characters. But oh well as it is, not that bad, at least he talks over the loading screens which is always cool to hear.
The attention to detail in this game is almost insane at points, not just in terms of environment and graphics but also in dialogue and in game stuff, like getting different dialogue if you killed/didn’t kill enemies, if you holster a weapon while talking to someone, that someone might acknowledge it and act differently afterwards. Hell in one of the areas, if you kill enemies you’ll end up getting a bad ending (you’ll get told a bunch to not kill enemies during that part though so you’ll prb figure out that you aren’t supposed to do it lol).
During certain fights, you can notice the enemies dialogue changing as you pick them off, going from them being confident and sure that they’ll kill you to slowly losing that confidence and getting scared, sometimes the last enemy/enemies will even put down their guns and surrender, begging you not to kill them. Seeing that shit happen and not having it be a scripted sequence is simply amazing.
The Metro games up until this game have all been just a bit short of reaching the 10/10 level for me because if the gameplay itself isn’t that great, then the story and atmosphere can only get me so far. But since now the gameplay is great and the atmosphere and story didn’t take a beating, it reaches that level for me.
Really looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here, I hope the next one can be just as good or even better than this one somehow.
But surprisingly enough, I think it's actually the best in the series. It retains the great atmosphere and story of the other games but without many of they're issues, which means that the gameplay isn't just fineee.
I thought the gunplay was quite great in this one, the way you unlocked attachments for guns was also cool, you don't buy them but get them by looting guns that enemies drop. You can change attachments on the fly now which makes adapting from stealth to combat a lot easier when you can just change to a suppressor when you want to play it stealth and then change to something else when you fuck up the stealth and shit goes to hell.
The backpack and crafting system is implemented extremely well and though I miss using bullets as currency (which was a mechanic with A LOT of potential and was really interesting but oh well), I also like how it is in this game, you don't just pause the game to go to a menu where you can craft stuff but rather take out your backpack in game and then you can craft stuff, it keeps you vulnerable and doesn't break immersion.
Influences from Far Cry 2 can be felt heavily on how the map works for the open areas and the gun jamming thing.
Pulling up your map is, well literally just pulling up a map in front of you, something I wish more games implemented personally. And you have to clean your guns now when you get to a crafting bench otherwise your gun will jam which is a nice twist on gameplay when you're in a really tense moment and then suddenly your gun stops working and you panic and don't know whether to fix it or just switch to another one. Though I have to say, it prb won't happen often to you, for me it only happened like twice in the first 3/4th of the game and a bunch of times in the last mission.
The semi open world aspect of the game will prb be the make or break for most people and for me it’s a make, because it’s actually really well done and doesn’t just go into OK HERE’S THE MAIN OBJECTIVE BUT ALSO HERE’S 6895329532 MARKERS ON THE MAP THAT ARE ALL JUST COLLECTIBLES AND COPY PASTED SHIT! territory, you gotta find the side stuff yourself usually or you’ll be told about them and then the markers appear on your map, there’s only a couple of side missions per area and they are usually either around where a main mission takes place or it’ll be on your path. They’re pretty alright as side quests go and I enjoyed the ones I did.
The train sequences were a huge highlight for me. The game really comes alive in these scenes, the writing is great, the characters are all likeable and it’s really hard to not care for them by the end, they’re all doing something or have something to tell you, it’s not always something deep or important but that’s kinda what makes them so nice, it feels like a friend telling you a story, not a piece of information for the 5 people who want to know everything about the lore or whatever.
The only issue for me is...well Artyom himself, the loading screen narrations are all interesting but the problem is, he never talks outside of them, it’s always been something unique to the metro games but it always felt more like a useless restriction rather than something that adds to the story, especially here when a lot of great scenes could have been elevated into amazing if Artyom just fucking talked or responded to the characters. But oh well as it is, not that bad, at least he talks over the loading screens which is always cool to hear.
The attention to detail in this game is almost insane at points, not just in terms of environment and graphics but also in dialogue and in game stuff, like getting different dialogue if you killed/didn’t kill enemies, if you holster a weapon while talking to someone, that someone might acknowledge it and act differently afterwards. Hell in one of the areas, if you kill enemies you’ll end up getting a bad ending (you’ll get told a bunch to not kill enemies during that part though so you’ll prb figure out that you aren’t supposed to do it lol).
During certain fights, you can notice the enemies dialogue changing as you pick them off, going from them being confident and sure that they’ll kill you to slowly losing that confidence and getting scared, sometimes the last enemy/enemies will even put down their guns and surrender, begging you not to kill them. Seeing that shit happen and not having it be a scripted sequence is simply amazing.
The Metro games up until this game have all been just a bit short of reaching the 10/10 level for me because if the gameplay itself isn’t that great, then the story and atmosphere can only get me so far. But since now the gameplay is great and the atmosphere and story didn’t take a beating, it reaches that level for me.
Really looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here, I hope the next one can be just as good or even better than this one somehow.