LogFAQs > #948447925

#11: Metro Exodus

This may have been the largest disappointment of the year for me. It's the game I've most recently finished this year, and it's not a good note to go off of, so I'll be playing another game to wash the taste out a bit.

What I thought the first two Metro games excelled at were how they were drenched in atmosphere and defined by their effective setting. The shooting was functional but not a strength of the game, and the characters/plot were just good enough to make it worth your time. Basically, these were solid games that had room to improve. When I heard about Exodus, I heard about how great the graphics were and how levels were being expanded on to make larger areas. I thought it could be a great game. Yet in Exodus's attempt to take a step forward, it simultaneously takes a couple steps back.

The "open-world" style levels make up most of the game, and they had me missing the tight corridors of the underground. Two of them are too large, too open, and too empty for their own good, while the third is more of a linear level trying to trick you into thinking its open world. For the first two, you'd think that an empty level would contribute to the desolate atmosphere of Metro, but when combined with Exodus's sluggish pace and heavy/slow feel, it's more boring than atmospheric. It's a game that didn't need to attempt the open-world style in any form and shouldn't have.

Additional crimes of Exodus are the abhorrent input lag on console versions that make for a dreadful shooting experience, the unforgivable sound design featuring poorly acted characters that talk over each other, the vague morality system that the game doesn't bother to tell you about, and the driving on the car level.

I don't think Metro is in the league of the worse games I played this year though. It does enough with the journey it takes you on to be memorable at the least, and there are some moments of genuinely incredible tension. And, while the character models are par for the course in today's big titles, the environments are really nice. I'll especially remember ziplining back towards the home base train at the end of a level while overlooking an irradiated lake barely being held back by a dilapidated dam.

It could've been a great game, but suffers too many flaws to be good.

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Got a brand new blues that I can't explain