Now Playing: Metro: Exodus

I enjoyed – but didn’t love – the previous Metro games (2033 & Last Light), so I didn’t go into Exodus with particularly high expectations, but I still came away disappointed. I think it’s the weakest entry in the Metro series and a game I’d be very reluctant to recommend.

Whereas the previous Metro games had, at the very least, a strong sense of identity, Exodus doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. It’s a confusing mixture of very linear, scripted missions and semi-open world maps loosely strung together by a muddled story.

Exodus has an opening ‘prologue’ section set in the Metro before you and a small team embark upon the titular Exodus. This section plays more like the missions of the previous games, with tightly designed levels and a mixture of combat and stealth. I’d say it’s one of the better parts of the game . . . if it wasn’t for the story aspect.

Without getting into spoilers, the reason for the Exodus feels like an unnecessary and contrived retcon of everything the previous games established. I wasn’t particularly invested in the story of the previous games, but even I felt cheated by the way Exodus sets up its plot.

 

It certainly doesn’t help that so many key dialogue scenes seem to have several characters all talking at once (a problem that persists throughout the game) making it hard to follow exactly what’s being said. The story, sadly, doesn’t really improve once the Exodus begins. The ‘twists’ are easy to see coming, as each new section tries (and fails) to tell its own story within the larger plot.

Once you complete the prologue and embark upon the Exodus you’ll enter your first open-world-but-not-quite map. It’s one of only two in the game as all the other missions are completely linear in nature. And I just don’t see the point of these larger maps – outside of the core mission locations, there’s practically nothing to see or do.

The best things about the previous Metro games was their atmosphere, attention to detail and the tight design of their environments and level progression. Exodus, attempting to transfer these strengths onto much larger maps, fails spectacularly.

The first map is mostly empty, with a lot of wasteland to traverse making it a tedious slog just getting from one place to another. The map is broken up by various waterways which require the use of a boat to cross, restricting your movement and essentially transforming this ‘open’ map into a series of smaller, linear lanes.

 

The map, beyond the core mission areas, has a few old ruins with some angry (and stupid) zombies to shoot, and a handful of generic ‘bandit’ camps. But there’s nothing in these optional locations to really make it worth the time or trouble to explore. If you’re playing on higher difficulties, you can end up expending more valuable resources clearing these locations than you’ll receive in return, meaning its best to just avoid them.

Once you finish your core missions on this first map you’ll travel onto the next location which, for me, was probably the best part of the game because it was, like the prologue, more similar to the linear, focused design of the previous Metro games. Unfortunately, this improvement doesn’t last as you then move onto the next ‘open’ map which is, more or less, the Mad Max map.

The open desert is a welcome change of environmental variety compared to the snow and dank tunnels of the last, but the same design problems persist – the map isn’t really ‘open’ but a series of linear lanes with just a few ruins and camps full of bandits to kill. You get a vehicle to drive on this map which, to a degree, makes traversing the map less of a tedious slog but ultimately, it still gets pretty annoying having to travel from one end of the map and back again just to progress the story.

The previous Metro games, for all their flaws, always had the player moving forward, never back. These ‘open’ maps in Exodus totally lack that clarity of level progression and feel like unnecessary and pointless filler content to drag out the experience. There really is nothing worth seeing or exploring upon them – and believe me, I tried. I explored everywhere. I found all of the collectible letters, postcards and upgrades. What a waste of time.

 

From here, it’s almost as if the developers themselves realised that this semi-open world approach just wasn’t working, so the game becomes far more linear in terms of progression. You enter a forest map which, although large, really only has a single path to follow.

The last mission is probably the worst. Although it feels more like the previous games in terms of design, it’s a weak mission with little combat and far too many scripted animation sequences breaking up the flow. I was pretty sick of the game at this point, becoming more and more agitated every time my progression was delayed by yet another unnecessary scripted sequence. I just wanted to get to the end and get it over with.

Visually, Exodus is, overall, a good looking game, but it’s also a pretty inconsistent experience – some environments look fantastic, but others look pretty drab. The combat is . . . fine, I guess? But how much you’ll enjoy it does vary depending upon the location and situation. The enemy AI is also pretty bad – it doesn’t feel like it was properly designed for the larger, more expansive maps.

 

Oh, and the game has a similar ‘moral points’ system like the previous games that determines which ending you get, but it feels even more stupid in Exodus as in order to get the ‘good’ ending you pretty much have to avoid killing anyone – even religious fanatics and bandits that are actively hunting and trying to murder you.

Overall, I can’t really say I enjoyed Metro: Exodus. I enjoyed parts of it, here and there, when the focused design, atmosphere and attention to detail of the previous games shone through. But most of the game was a poorly designed slog with a muddled story and shoddy AI. Even if you were a bigger fan of the previous Metro games than me, I’d still think twice before playing Exodus – very little of what you probably liked about those games exists here.

Exodus, if I’m being really harsh, feels like a mistake from start to finish. A mistake in terms of story, mission design and level progression. It feels like the developers realised their mistake at some point but by that time it was too late to turn back, so we end up with a messy game that feels cobbled together with inconsistent quality and a rushed and unsatisfying conclusion.

5/10