All aboard?
In Metro Exodus, Artyom and a band of survivors must flee the shattered ruins of the Moscow Metro and embark on an epic, continent-spanning journey across the post-apocalyptic Russian wilderness. Explore vast, non-linear levels, lose yourself in an immersive, sandbox survival experience, and follow a story-line that spans an entire year in the greatest Metro adventure yet.
The Metro games have been consistently great from the original Metro 2033 to it’s sequel Metro Last Light, but the history of the series was shrouded in doubt after the THQ collapse and after Deep Silver bought the rights to the series, released next-gen ports of said games. A while passed and some assumed we’d not get a third entry, but boy we were wrong…
First of all, Metro Exodus is absolutely stunning and perhaps the best looking FPS on the market at the time of writing. It runs at native 4K and HDR and runs at a smooth framerate throughout, plus the level of detail from the fog on your gas mask to the enemies you face are nothing short of incredible.
As with past Metro games, Exodus tasks you to keep going forward and to keep your air filters replenished, but it deviates from the underground formula to take the fight topside in the biggest shake-up to the series to date. Crafting from your backpack and customising your weapons is a big plus for this survival shooter and is often underappreciated in its design, but works well here and is paramount to your survival.
Exodus can be at times, unforgiving…especially on harder difficulties, but it’s more of a tactical shooter than it’s predecessors with more open environments, instead of the traditional claustrophobic tunnels. It’s a nice change to the formula and while some will miss the claustrophobia, allowing players to access the surface changes the way you play and is all the better for it.
The Verdict
Metro Exodus is the best looking FPS at the time of writing, it surpasses the previous games with new ideas and risks that most shooters wouldn’t take, so they’ve not played it safe in any sense…but the gamble has more than paid off and what we have here is an early contender for GOTY…