Begrudging acknowledgements, entropy-imprisoned flesh biscuits! Indie darling Hollow Knight team; erm, Team Cherry reveals for us a sequel to the impressively priced Hollow Knight they are calling Silksong. Can only put the link to trailer here instead of embed a youtube, so a wee little faith is required that it is what I claims it is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAknD_9U7c
And the official page for nosier types;
http://hollowknightsilksong.com/?
And the blog for people with noses on noses like some fractal Cronenburg [sub][sub]k[/sub][/sub]nightmare;
http://teamcherry.com.au/hollow-knight-silksong/
The team says;
...
Metro: Exodus is already out in the near future! However, reviews got there first, and so is the time to cautiously observe what numbers mean once more...
PS4:79
PC: 84
Xbone:81
[small]there's no pleasing PS4 players these days[/small]
Now in classic utilitarian democratic fashion, a review from highest, lowest and euro...uh, middle score to cover any particular confirmation bias you may be seeking;
Lowest: hah! Sorry, I meant...here 60.
Highest: blimey, this one's a 90!
Last but probably also least, the euro...uhh, middle score: Fuck knows
Hopefully that pleases almost everyone. If not, tell all in cutting abrasive comment form! Has any flesh biscuit any fleshy opinions on this informations? Thoughts on seeing Metro through to its (final?) conclusion? I suppose I should go back and actually try and complete Last Light this time, while hoping it doesn't glitch trap my save file as a barrier to progression again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAknD_9U7c
And the official page for nosier types;
http://hollowknightsilksong.com/?
And the blog for people with noses on noses like some fractal Cronenburg [sub][sub]
http://teamcherry.com.au/hollow-knight-silksong/
The team says;
So no date specified yet, but trailer looks to promise more the same arthropodic stimulation.
...
Metro: Exodus is already out in the near future! However, reviews got there first, and so is the time to cautiously observe what numbers mean once more...
PS4:79
PC: 84
Xbone:81
[small]
Now in classic utilitarian democratic fashion, a review from highest, lowest and euro...uh, middle score to cover any particular confirmation bias you may be seeking;
Lowest: hah! Sorry, I meant...here 60.
Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033's greatest strength is its location. A nuclear cataclysm drove the few survivors of Moscow deep underground, into the remnants of the metro train system. There, unable to return to the surface because of the nuclear fallout, they scratch out a living, with stations becoming the new cities, economies built around factories that produce mushroom tea, and militaries setting up perimeters in the tunnels against both rival "nations," as well as horrors from the deep. It was an atmospheric setting that made the narrative's subsequent tensions between fascist and communist factions, and humanity at its best and worst, all the more poignant. On playing Metro Exodus, I have to wonder if the development team even read the book or understood why it was such a striking piece of Russian literature. Alternatively, I'm now worried about reading Glukhovsky's future novels that use this setting, because if he was consulted on the narrative of Exodus on any level, he's lost control of the brilliance of his earlier work.
The first two Metro games were some of the finest shooters that I've played, and it's precisely because with them the developer created fairly linear, taut, and atmospheric experiences. The claustrophobia of the tunnels and unforgiving nature of the games meant that they weren't for everyone, but they were appropriate to the vision of the original novel, and distinctive, stand-out examples of the genre.
Metro Exodus lost all of my goodwill for the series in around its second hour. After an introduction that offered a guided stealth section, Artyom and a couple of other renegade soldiers (including his wife) hijack a train and bolt on out of Moscow. There they discover that the world they thought they knew - where the Moscow metro was one of the last bastions of humanity (if not the last) - was in fact a grand ol' lie, and there are actually people alive and well everywhere. So they decide make their way to the Ural mountains, where the never-actually-destroyed political leadership are holed up, to get some answers.
But first, before they can make that trip, they have to deal with their broken-down train, which has come to a stop in a large expanse of wetlands. Open world time! Yes, after the first two Metro titles worked so hard to craft an intense sense of claustrophobia within labyrinthine tunnels, filled with the horrors of humanity (and actual monsters), the real start to Metro Exodus, away from the tutorial, is a stock standard open world that could have come from Ubisoft, Rockstar, Warner Bros, or any of the other "AAA blockbuster" publishers that are churning out open world nonsense without any consideration as to whether an open world is appropriate for the experience.
Metro isn't restricted to one open world, and it often dips back into something more reminiscent of its predecessors, but open worlds are a huge part of the experience this time around, and the open world structure does things to the way stories can be told in video games. None of which the open world genre is about is good for Metro. Where the previous Metro titles offered flowing storytelling, and each in-game step was weighted with narrative purpose, with open world games, storytelling is via bookends; there's the briefing at the start of a mission, where you're told what you need to do, a debriefing once you've completed the mission, and only minor narrative moments in-between. That stop-start approach to storytelling releases the pressure valve on the tension too often, and it's painfully obvious how artificial and scripted the world is, in that stuff on the far-flung edges of the map simply waits for you to show up and trigger the action.
The structural issues that the open world genre nail into Metro Exodus are on top of the fact that the open world and continent-hopping structure of the game effectively makes the story about the journey, and the journey was never what the actual (literature) Metro was about. Because Exodus is a story about getting from A-to-B, you're never invited to ponder on what's going on in the world. Everything that you come across on that journey is transient, or a temporary stop on the way to the goal, and that gives characters and locations a different tone to the previous Metro titles, in which the action always felt like it was occurring at the doorstep; it was a fight for survival at home. That subtle tonal shift affects the way the story is told, the kind of villains that you encounter along the way, and the relative weight of those villains. In the original Metro games (and book), the presence of fascists and communists, fighting their ideological wars and scrambling for territory on your doorstep, have a greater poignancy than when, in Metro Exodus, the first mob you come across are a bunch of cultist nutters that have a problem with technology. With them, you deal with them quickly and move on to other issues soon enough. Again, they're transient and a roadblock along the way. What they represent feels so much less potent.
Open world games also feature a lot of downtime. The constant need to return back to a "hub" location to get the next mission means that you're spending a lot of time trudging along on foot or using a vehicle of some description, and while you'll sometimes come across some random enemies that show up as a distraction, it's still a wild contrast to the previous Metro titles, where the fleeting moments of downtime were used to drive the narrative further or further build on the setting. Metro Exodus is pretty enough, as decrepit as it tends to be, and the in-game photo mode lets you capture some hauntingly beautiful black & white "photos" of the environments as the story moves between seasons, from the frigid cold to the blistering head (you can do photos in colour too, but B&W is my aesthetic). Despite the technical beauty, regardless of the time of year, the landscape quickly becomes so dreary and aimless to wander over. In short, "open world" is directly at odds with the idea of a focused experience, and Glukhovsky's original vision for Metro, located in the linear tunnels that funnel people around, was both metaphorically and literally focused.
Thankfully, the developer avoided the temptation to fully indulge the nasty habit that open world games have of being loaded with icons to chase around. You'll have a couple of different objectives that you can deal with at a time, but you'll never feel like the developer is deliberately trying to confuse you into inaction by pulling you in a hundred different directions at once. Unfortunately the game's mapping system, while contextually appropriate to the setting and narrative, is badly counter-intuitive. When Artyom pulls out his map, you see a bit of paper nailed to a board, and on that you can see Artyom's location, and the icons representing objectives. Unfortunately, in the name of authenticity, this map also fails to share critical information that is loaded into the menu screens of other open world games, and so I found I needed to refer to it far too often to make sure that I was on track for where I wanted to go next.
When Metro Exodus does break away from the open world stuff, it's at its best. It happens far too infrequently, but there are "dungeons" and enclosed spaces to explore, and they tend to be dark and deadly. There are also moments where you need to don your iconic gas masks, and deal with all kinds of threats while hoping that the fragile mask doesn't get smashed in combat. Those are the moments where Metro Exodus actually feels like Metro. I understand why the game came up with a narrative twist that means for the most part the open world bits are "clean" enough that you don't need the masks. It would have become finicky over the long Metro Exodus campaign to require players manage that mask as a resource. Practical as it is though, thematically, the idea of being in a Metro game where the surface is safe enough that you don't need to worry about radiation or air quality... it simply doesn't fit.
Metro Exodus is best played on the more difficult settings, where resources become scarce enough that you need to carefully manage your use of bullets and weaponry, but on those difficulty settings, the randomised enemy encounters in the wilderness become truly aggravating. The game's not really balanced around you fighting every enemy you spot, so mad dashes about the place to get out of their way becomes the norm. The combat options that you do have are, again, at their best in the set pieces away from the open world, where the developers have been able to carefully design areas that encourage the use of stealth and you can carefully plan out your route through the space. I also appreciated that there were non-violent options for dealing with enemies - that will be a minor feature that most people will overlook, but the idea of leaving people alive sits well with my mental image of who Artyom is, and I needed that, since he's otherwise a silent protagonist, which translates to "very little characterisation."
Ultimately I simply didn?t get what I wanted - or expected - from Metro Exodus. Rather than be content with a distinctive and creative FPS property that was ? rarely for the genre ? centered around in-depth and interesting storytelling, the developer of Exodus instead decided to produce yet another blockbuster open world game, and it looks, feels, and plays like a dime-a-dozen experience. I know that developers now understand what counts as a "safe" blockbuster that the maximum number of players will reliably enjoy, and if you're investing that kind of money in making a game of that scale, you are naturally going to go for the safe bet. Unfortunately that also leads to homogenisation, and while Metro Exodus doesn?t do anything wrong as a blockbuster open world shooter, where the original titles were original and refreshing, Exodus is also yet another entry in a ever-deepening pool. The Metro franchise deserves better than to be generic to the point of being exhausting.
The first two Metro games were some of the finest shooters that I've played, and it's precisely because with them the developer created fairly linear, taut, and atmospheric experiences. The claustrophobia of the tunnels and unforgiving nature of the games meant that they weren't for everyone, but they were appropriate to the vision of the original novel, and distinctive, stand-out examples of the genre.
Metro Exodus lost all of my goodwill for the series in around its second hour. After an introduction that offered a guided stealth section, Artyom and a couple of other renegade soldiers (including his wife) hijack a train and bolt on out of Moscow. There they discover that the world they thought they knew - where the Moscow metro was one of the last bastions of humanity (if not the last) - was in fact a grand ol' lie, and there are actually people alive and well everywhere. So they decide make their way to the Ural mountains, where the never-actually-destroyed political leadership are holed up, to get some answers.
But first, before they can make that trip, they have to deal with their broken-down train, which has come to a stop in a large expanse of wetlands. Open world time! Yes, after the first two Metro titles worked so hard to craft an intense sense of claustrophobia within labyrinthine tunnels, filled with the horrors of humanity (and actual monsters), the real start to Metro Exodus, away from the tutorial, is a stock standard open world that could have come from Ubisoft, Rockstar, Warner Bros, or any of the other "AAA blockbuster" publishers that are churning out open world nonsense without any consideration as to whether an open world is appropriate for the experience.
Metro isn't restricted to one open world, and it often dips back into something more reminiscent of its predecessors, but open worlds are a huge part of the experience this time around, and the open world structure does things to the way stories can be told in video games. None of which the open world genre is about is good for Metro. Where the previous Metro titles offered flowing storytelling, and each in-game step was weighted with narrative purpose, with open world games, storytelling is via bookends; there's the briefing at the start of a mission, where you're told what you need to do, a debriefing once you've completed the mission, and only minor narrative moments in-between. That stop-start approach to storytelling releases the pressure valve on the tension too often, and it's painfully obvious how artificial and scripted the world is, in that stuff on the far-flung edges of the map simply waits for you to show up and trigger the action.
The structural issues that the open world genre nail into Metro Exodus are on top of the fact that the open world and continent-hopping structure of the game effectively makes the story about the journey, and the journey was never what the actual (literature) Metro was about. Because Exodus is a story about getting from A-to-B, you're never invited to ponder on what's going on in the world. Everything that you come across on that journey is transient, or a temporary stop on the way to the goal, and that gives characters and locations a different tone to the previous Metro titles, in which the action always felt like it was occurring at the doorstep; it was a fight for survival at home. That subtle tonal shift affects the way the story is told, the kind of villains that you encounter along the way, and the relative weight of those villains. In the original Metro games (and book), the presence of fascists and communists, fighting their ideological wars and scrambling for territory on your doorstep, have a greater poignancy than when, in Metro Exodus, the first mob you come across are a bunch of cultist nutters that have a problem with technology. With them, you deal with them quickly and move on to other issues soon enough. Again, they're transient and a roadblock along the way. What they represent feels so much less potent.
Open world games also feature a lot of downtime. The constant need to return back to a "hub" location to get the next mission means that you're spending a lot of time trudging along on foot or using a vehicle of some description, and while you'll sometimes come across some random enemies that show up as a distraction, it's still a wild contrast to the previous Metro titles, where the fleeting moments of downtime were used to drive the narrative further or further build on the setting. Metro Exodus is pretty enough, as decrepit as it tends to be, and the in-game photo mode lets you capture some hauntingly beautiful black & white "photos" of the environments as the story moves between seasons, from the frigid cold to the blistering head (you can do photos in colour too, but B&W is my aesthetic). Despite the technical beauty, regardless of the time of year, the landscape quickly becomes so dreary and aimless to wander over. In short, "open world" is directly at odds with the idea of a focused experience, and Glukhovsky's original vision for Metro, located in the linear tunnels that funnel people around, was both metaphorically and literally focused.
Thankfully, the developer avoided the temptation to fully indulge the nasty habit that open world games have of being loaded with icons to chase around. You'll have a couple of different objectives that you can deal with at a time, but you'll never feel like the developer is deliberately trying to confuse you into inaction by pulling you in a hundred different directions at once. Unfortunately the game's mapping system, while contextually appropriate to the setting and narrative, is badly counter-intuitive. When Artyom pulls out his map, you see a bit of paper nailed to a board, and on that you can see Artyom's location, and the icons representing objectives. Unfortunately, in the name of authenticity, this map also fails to share critical information that is loaded into the menu screens of other open world games, and so I found I needed to refer to it far too often to make sure that I was on track for where I wanted to go next.
When Metro Exodus does break away from the open world stuff, it's at its best. It happens far too infrequently, but there are "dungeons" and enclosed spaces to explore, and they tend to be dark and deadly. There are also moments where you need to don your iconic gas masks, and deal with all kinds of threats while hoping that the fragile mask doesn't get smashed in combat. Those are the moments where Metro Exodus actually feels like Metro. I understand why the game came up with a narrative twist that means for the most part the open world bits are "clean" enough that you don't need the masks. It would have become finicky over the long Metro Exodus campaign to require players manage that mask as a resource. Practical as it is though, thematically, the idea of being in a Metro game where the surface is safe enough that you don't need to worry about radiation or air quality... it simply doesn't fit.
Metro Exodus is best played on the more difficult settings, where resources become scarce enough that you need to carefully manage your use of bullets and weaponry, but on those difficulty settings, the randomised enemy encounters in the wilderness become truly aggravating. The game's not really balanced around you fighting every enemy you spot, so mad dashes about the place to get out of their way becomes the norm. The combat options that you do have are, again, at their best in the set pieces away from the open world, where the developers have been able to carefully design areas that encourage the use of stealth and you can carefully plan out your route through the space. I also appreciated that there were non-violent options for dealing with enemies - that will be a minor feature that most people will overlook, but the idea of leaving people alive sits well with my mental image of who Artyom is, and I needed that, since he's otherwise a silent protagonist, which translates to "very little characterisation."
Ultimately I simply didn?t get what I wanted - or expected - from Metro Exodus. Rather than be content with a distinctive and creative FPS property that was ? rarely for the genre ? centered around in-depth and interesting storytelling, the developer of Exodus instead decided to produce yet another blockbuster open world game, and it looks, feels, and plays like a dime-a-dozen experience. I know that developers now understand what counts as a "safe" blockbuster that the maximum number of players will reliably enjoy, and if you're investing that kind of money in making a game of that scale, you are naturally going to go for the safe bet. Unfortunately that also leads to homogenisation, and while Metro Exodus doesn?t do anything wrong as a blockbuster open world shooter, where the original titles were original and refreshing, Exodus is also yet another entry in a ever-deepening pool. The Metro franchise deserves better than to be generic to the point of being exhausting.
Highest: blimey, this one's a 90!
Following the events of Metro: Last Light, Artyom and his Spartan squad depart the safety of the Moscow Metro system to scout the barren, foreboding post-apocalyptic wasteland that lurks above and hunt for a new life of peace and prosperity. Thrilling cutscenes and fiery combat sequences are seamlessly strung together in a way that plays fluidly for maximum immersion and keeps you on your toes throughout. For returning fans, this is an unpredictable story that?s choc-full of familiar faces. Upon procuring the Aurora, your trusty locomotive, the game releases it?s tight grasp on your hand and gives you the liberty to negotiate it?s hostile, unforgiving setting at your own leisure.
Travelling through Russia, your journey is broken up into ?open world-lite? segments that span the seasons, taking a far less daunting approach to its sandbox elements than other shooters. The story will steer you through very different biomes, each distinctly different in appearance to the next and each retaining its own selection of collectibles, rest stops and bandit camps. This compliments the FPS centre-point of the title which ultimately isn?t staggered by long-winded exploration. It doesn?t however deny players the opportunity to stretch their legs and venture out into the eerie, ruthless setting of the game with plenty on offer for more courageous explorers who care to stray from the beaten path.
Exodus features a dynamic weather system that transforms its already bitter and unrelenting world into an even more fierce and unpredictable place. However, this doesn?t deter from the fact that each environment you nervously trudge through is an ominous treat for the eyes. The stunning visuals really do bring your unsettling surroundings to life, for better or for worse. Fortunately, 4A Games have incorporated a nifty photo mode that will allow you to take countless haunting shots in tight underground confines or capture every irradiated sunset in all its glory.
In the world of Metro, resources are scarce and enemies plentiful. Mutant creatures roam every square inch of the remains of Earth and ensure that proceeding from A to B is far from an easy task. Watchers are waiting to sniff you out and chase you down on land, Tsar fish lie in wait beneath still waters ready to make a beeline for your rickety row boat, and bandit camps riddled with cultists ensure your pathways are constantly blocked ? enter Metro?s esteemed stealth mechanics.
Meticulously assessing enemy encounters and adopting a stealthier approach is almost always the more favourable approach. Night vision goggles, the ability to extinguish flames and hide in the shadows, and distraction techniques all make for adrenaline-filled stealth gameplay that invokes a real sense of accomplishment when you succeed. Furthermore, toying with the dynamic day-night cycle will also alter the odds of battle. For instance bandit camps are more easily tackled at night, but comes with the risk of encountering the bigger and badder demons as they prowl through the darkness.
Regardless of your approach, should you step on to rusty scaffolding or rotten floorboards, plummet to the ground and alert all nearby enemies to your location, it?s not the end of the world. Numerous weapon and armour upgrades can be salvaged from fallen foes and modified at any camp in order to ensure your arsenal is fighting fit in the worst case scenario. You can even make some more rudimentary changes and crafting on the fly, thanks to Artyom?s fancy new backpack.
Much like its prior instalments, Metro Exodus leans into its survival-horror roots as it shrewdly toys with some of the most common fears. During the introductory missions alone you?re forced through tight crawl spaces, ushered through the dark and dingy Metro Tunnels guided by nothing but torchlight, and are hassled by enormous spiders that crawl up your arms and across your gas mask.
It?s insanely obvious 4A Games wants to ensure you feel vulnerable and this is a theme present in all aspects of the game. Limited ammo, the need to keep weapons clean and functional, having to recharge your electronics midway through a mission, and pump up the iconic Bastard gun. These factors overshadow your every decision in-game and ensure you never feel safe ? great for maintaining the game?s thrill, but also for introducing a fantastic degree of realism and immersion.
The game?s production does have some rough edges, with dialogue not always meshing well together. Again, you can see 4A?s ambitious design, as they try to create seamless conversations within gameplay, but it can sometimes feel rushed, as though characters simply can?t wait to butt in and start talking over the top of each other. Having a few more cutscenes could have made the dialogue more engaging and given narrative heavy sections an excuse to be a little more long-winded, but it doesn?t detract from the various twists and turns of this Russia railroad trip.
Travelling through Russia, your journey is broken up into ?open world-lite? segments that span the seasons, taking a far less daunting approach to its sandbox elements than other shooters. The story will steer you through very different biomes, each distinctly different in appearance to the next and each retaining its own selection of collectibles, rest stops and bandit camps. This compliments the FPS centre-point of the title which ultimately isn?t staggered by long-winded exploration. It doesn?t however deny players the opportunity to stretch their legs and venture out into the eerie, ruthless setting of the game with plenty on offer for more courageous explorers who care to stray from the beaten path.
Exodus features a dynamic weather system that transforms its already bitter and unrelenting world into an even more fierce and unpredictable place. However, this doesn?t deter from the fact that each environment you nervously trudge through is an ominous treat for the eyes. The stunning visuals really do bring your unsettling surroundings to life, for better or for worse. Fortunately, 4A Games have incorporated a nifty photo mode that will allow you to take countless haunting shots in tight underground confines or capture every irradiated sunset in all its glory.
In the world of Metro, resources are scarce and enemies plentiful. Mutant creatures roam every square inch of the remains of Earth and ensure that proceeding from A to B is far from an easy task. Watchers are waiting to sniff you out and chase you down on land, Tsar fish lie in wait beneath still waters ready to make a beeline for your rickety row boat, and bandit camps riddled with cultists ensure your pathways are constantly blocked ? enter Metro?s esteemed stealth mechanics.
Meticulously assessing enemy encounters and adopting a stealthier approach is almost always the more favourable approach. Night vision goggles, the ability to extinguish flames and hide in the shadows, and distraction techniques all make for adrenaline-filled stealth gameplay that invokes a real sense of accomplishment when you succeed. Furthermore, toying with the dynamic day-night cycle will also alter the odds of battle. For instance bandit camps are more easily tackled at night, but comes with the risk of encountering the bigger and badder demons as they prowl through the darkness.
Regardless of your approach, should you step on to rusty scaffolding or rotten floorboards, plummet to the ground and alert all nearby enemies to your location, it?s not the end of the world. Numerous weapon and armour upgrades can be salvaged from fallen foes and modified at any camp in order to ensure your arsenal is fighting fit in the worst case scenario. You can even make some more rudimentary changes and crafting on the fly, thanks to Artyom?s fancy new backpack.
Much like its prior instalments, Metro Exodus leans into its survival-horror roots as it shrewdly toys with some of the most common fears. During the introductory missions alone you?re forced through tight crawl spaces, ushered through the dark and dingy Metro Tunnels guided by nothing but torchlight, and are hassled by enormous spiders that crawl up your arms and across your gas mask.
It?s insanely obvious 4A Games wants to ensure you feel vulnerable and this is a theme present in all aspects of the game. Limited ammo, the need to keep weapons clean and functional, having to recharge your electronics midway through a mission, and pump up the iconic Bastard gun. These factors overshadow your every decision in-game and ensure you never feel safe ? great for maintaining the game?s thrill, but also for introducing a fantastic degree of realism and immersion.
The game?s production does have some rough edges, with dialogue not always meshing well together. Again, you can see 4A?s ambitious design, as they try to create seamless conversations within gameplay, but it can sometimes feel rushed, as though characters simply can?t wait to butt in and start talking over the top of each other. Having a few more cutscenes could have made the dialogue more engaging and given narrative heavy sections an excuse to be a little more long-winded, but it doesn?t detract from the various twists and turns of this Russia railroad trip.
Last but probably also least, the euro...uhh, middle score: Fuck knows
There are two sides to Metro Exodus, 4A's third and probably greatest post-apocalyptic adventure - two varieties of space engaged in a hesitant dialogue. On the one hand, there are the wilds of post-nuclear Russia, absurdly splendid, absurdly deadly and moderately open-ended, from dessicated ports where beached tankers jut like dinosaur bones, to ice-locked cities whose sewers have become intestines, clogged with squirming radioactive polyps. Here, you'll act much as you do in other virtual wilderness escapades - trotting to the points of interest you've circled on your paper map, shaking down corpses for crafting resources and avoiding or murdering the many people and things who want to make soup from your thighbones.
These are spaces in which life is cheap - cheaper, certainly, than medical kits - and the risk of ambush is unrelenting. Exploring them is a breathless yet resolutely workmanlike experience, in which you'll spend a lot of time crouched in the undergrowth, wondering whether your last three shotgun shells are enough should the bandit upstairs catch sight of your weapon's laser pointer. But running through these vistas is another kind of space, in which other kinds of action - kinder actions, in fact - are possible. This is the mighty steam locomotive that carries protagonist Artyom and his comrades from map to map, as you journey eastward from Moscow's underground in search of a new home. Between lengthy stopovers in each region, usually for the sake of fuel or to deal with obstructive locals, you'll spend an interlude aboard the train - rattling past arid woodlands, poisoned waterways and wilting apartment blocks, in one of 4A's trademark masterstrokes of location design.
Each interlude corresponds to a season - Exodus's 20-30 hour campaign spans a year in-game - and it's a joy to watch those variations play out across the train's dented hull, sand caking the engine in the dry salvages of the Caspian Sea, ice brightening the fittings in the depths of winter. You can even walk along the boiler to the prow to watch the miles disappear under your feet, like Leonardo DiCaprio glorying in the view from the Titanic. But the real triumph of the train is that it's a living place, in each sense of the word - a space that evolves during the narrative as carriages are added to serve various plot purposes, and new faces join your ranks. Metro Exodus is, in this regard, both a quest for home and a story about how journeys create their destinations, as you nourish a haven whose greatest strength is that it's utterly transitory, always in motion.
What begins as a dingy cabin crowded by rowdy blokes in converted welder masks gradually becomes a little village on wheels. Making my way down to the passenger car I find the squad's amateur guitarist, Stefan, playing a melancholy folk ditty, and Sam, our lone American, fussing over a stewpot in the canteen. To the rear somebody is showing a little girl we rescued how to repair a leather strap, while the train's engineer Krest sneaks a cigarette break behind the toilet. It's reminiscent of BJ's submarine headquarters in Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, though 4A doesn't really need the inspiration - the first two Metro games are stuffed with comparably makeshift and cosy NPC settlements, scraped together from the rubble of Moscow's underground stations. And as in Wolfenstein's submarine, you can exert forms of agency aboard that train - "verbs", to lapse into armchair designer parlance - that are seldom available when you disembark.
You can mess around with a radio, for one thing, searching for one of Russia's few surviving DJ stations or to eavesdrop on conversations at your next stop. You can share a smoke with the group's cantankerous leader, Colonel Miller, discussing the previous chapter's events (characters often pick up on your choices in each chapter, especially if it involves bloodshed, though none of these substantially change the story's outcome).You can cuddle up on a bunk with Anna - Artyom's wife and the squad's ace sniper, though she's more often found playing the part of damsel in distress. You can escape, in short, from the well-thumbed fantasy of the apocalyptic world as a kind of post-historical firing range, and explore a prospect videogames seldom really investigate - the reforging of connections in society's aftermath, the gentle process of rebirth.
All of which may sound rather grandiose, and I shouldn't overstate how far Exodus strays from type. This might be a shooter with a heart, but it is still very much a shooter. The weapons are still dirty great handfuls of pipe, wood and wire, and you now have the gratification of clipping them together yourself from scavenged parts - plonking down your backpack to attach and remove scopes, barrels, different magazine sizes and stocks, the effects of which are immediately apparent in the handling. In addition to rifles, shotguns, SMGs and pistols, there's a choice of pneumatic ball-bearing rifle or crossbow as your special weapon. The satisfaction of cranking the former's Super Soaker handle aside, their appeal is that you can craft ammo for them on the go, while bullets, grenades and shells must be manufactured at workbenches that are few and far between.
The general scarcity of ammunition makes for more considered gunplay, as does sluggish character movement and the absence of automatic health regen. There are plenty of stretches in which combat can't be avoided - bunkers full of giant spiders, for instance, and a bossfight with a bear large enough to plough through cover - but Artyom is no Master Chief. Given the choice, you'll probably hold fire more often than not, scouting positions through your binoculars, then sneaking around them after sunset with the aid of night vision and motion trackers. I think there's more, however, to this ethos of restraint than the heart-stopping click of an empty chamber. Like many a video game narrative greased by shooting before it, Metro wants you to question the role violence plays in its world. Unlike most such games, it goes about this convincingly.
Partly, that's because it isn't really an open world game, however much it might resemble one. There are only two wasteland environments that feel anything like Far Cry; the rest are roomy canyons or winding, scripted corridor encounters in the style of Half-Life. Nor are these maps systematised to the gills, as in the average Ubiworld: there are no territory bars to fill, no thickets of side-mission categories to hack through, no outposts to cleanse and turn into fast travel points. Each region has its spread of optional weapon and gear upgrades, and as in Far Cry 3, you can tag objects of interest through your binoculars, but all of your objectives are bespoke, part of the main plot or a slight departure from it. If the game is to some degree a response to the open world, Metro's borrowings from that genre are as delicate, as thoughtful as the process of dividing up crafting ingredients between ammo and health kits. As such, it stands firm against the open world's propensity for empty, cyclical violence in the name of piecemeal content drops.
Beyond that, it's a game in which you'll often leave people alive because they appear to be, well, people, even when bluntly labelled "THUG", "TRIBAL" or "BANDIT" in dialogue, and even - or perhaps especially - when committing obscenities. Metro harbours plenty of anomalous mutants, unhinged sorts and predatory animals who can be gunned down with impunity. The writing can also be very clumsy, not least because Artyom only speaks during (lengthy) load-break voiceovers, which means you sometimes feel like a post-apocalyptic Lassie. "What's that Artyom? You say Anna's fallen down the hole into the underground biowaste disposal plant?" But the game's wealth of incidental overheard chatter is good at making you question those dialogue labels, thinking about the grayzone between stranger and enemy.
Besides clownish rants about rape and pillage, you'll hear bandits grumble about their leader's decisions, joke about lazy friends, muse about the lives they nearly led, comment on the weather. Far to the east there's a forest tribe who are undergoing an existential crisis about whether killing can be justified in self-defence: while sneaking around their encampment, you'll overhear arguments about whether to actively hunt intruders or just chase them away. In the Caspian Sea, oilmen turned false prophets have enslaved the surrounding tribes: their followers are fanatical and armed to the teeth, but they are still victims of exploitation, and if you're surgical, there are ways you might spare them.
Stealth is valuable, here, not just because it's more economical or less risky, but because it allows you to get close to these lives, pull the two sides of Metro Exodus together. While touring a treehouse settlement at night I encountered a sentry sitting at a small table, lost in thought. On the table there were books, dented crockery, faded pictures of children - a small, candlelit circle of belongings and memories. I spent a few moments looming over the man, the kill/stun HUD prompts framing the back of his head, thinking about Artyom's own bedside table back on the train, with its sunflower-pattern linoleum and typewriter, and about the miles of hungry emptiness all around us. It doesn't take much to suggest that a fictional construct might have an inner life, a value apart from its value as a pleasing hazard or an inconveniently mobile collection of resources. It's a bit of an indictment of games, or at least of blockbuster action games, that this feeling has become a novelty. We need more experiences like Metro Exodus that know how to resist empty bloodshed and kindle such closeness, finding the warmth in the wasteland.
These are spaces in which life is cheap - cheaper, certainly, than medical kits - and the risk of ambush is unrelenting. Exploring them is a breathless yet resolutely workmanlike experience, in which you'll spend a lot of time crouched in the undergrowth, wondering whether your last three shotgun shells are enough should the bandit upstairs catch sight of your weapon's laser pointer. But running through these vistas is another kind of space, in which other kinds of action - kinder actions, in fact - are possible. This is the mighty steam locomotive that carries protagonist Artyom and his comrades from map to map, as you journey eastward from Moscow's underground in search of a new home. Between lengthy stopovers in each region, usually for the sake of fuel or to deal with obstructive locals, you'll spend an interlude aboard the train - rattling past arid woodlands, poisoned waterways and wilting apartment blocks, in one of 4A's trademark masterstrokes of location design.
Each interlude corresponds to a season - Exodus's 20-30 hour campaign spans a year in-game - and it's a joy to watch those variations play out across the train's dented hull, sand caking the engine in the dry salvages of the Caspian Sea, ice brightening the fittings in the depths of winter. You can even walk along the boiler to the prow to watch the miles disappear under your feet, like Leonardo DiCaprio glorying in the view from the Titanic. But the real triumph of the train is that it's a living place, in each sense of the word - a space that evolves during the narrative as carriages are added to serve various plot purposes, and new faces join your ranks. Metro Exodus is, in this regard, both a quest for home and a story about how journeys create their destinations, as you nourish a haven whose greatest strength is that it's utterly transitory, always in motion.
What begins as a dingy cabin crowded by rowdy blokes in converted welder masks gradually becomes a little village on wheels. Making my way down to the passenger car I find the squad's amateur guitarist, Stefan, playing a melancholy folk ditty, and Sam, our lone American, fussing over a stewpot in the canteen. To the rear somebody is showing a little girl we rescued how to repair a leather strap, while the train's engineer Krest sneaks a cigarette break behind the toilet. It's reminiscent of BJ's submarine headquarters in Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, though 4A doesn't really need the inspiration - the first two Metro games are stuffed with comparably makeshift and cosy NPC settlements, scraped together from the rubble of Moscow's underground stations. And as in Wolfenstein's submarine, you can exert forms of agency aboard that train - "verbs", to lapse into armchair designer parlance - that are seldom available when you disembark.
You can mess around with a radio, for one thing, searching for one of Russia's few surviving DJ stations or to eavesdrop on conversations at your next stop. You can share a smoke with the group's cantankerous leader, Colonel Miller, discussing the previous chapter's events (characters often pick up on your choices in each chapter, especially if it involves bloodshed, though none of these substantially change the story's outcome).You can cuddle up on a bunk with Anna - Artyom's wife and the squad's ace sniper, though she's more often found playing the part of damsel in distress. You can escape, in short, from the well-thumbed fantasy of the apocalyptic world as a kind of post-historical firing range, and explore a prospect videogames seldom really investigate - the reforging of connections in society's aftermath, the gentle process of rebirth.
All of which may sound rather grandiose, and I shouldn't overstate how far Exodus strays from type. This might be a shooter with a heart, but it is still very much a shooter. The weapons are still dirty great handfuls of pipe, wood and wire, and you now have the gratification of clipping them together yourself from scavenged parts - plonking down your backpack to attach and remove scopes, barrels, different magazine sizes and stocks, the effects of which are immediately apparent in the handling. In addition to rifles, shotguns, SMGs and pistols, there's a choice of pneumatic ball-bearing rifle or crossbow as your special weapon. The satisfaction of cranking the former's Super Soaker handle aside, their appeal is that you can craft ammo for them on the go, while bullets, grenades and shells must be manufactured at workbenches that are few and far between.
The general scarcity of ammunition makes for more considered gunplay, as does sluggish character movement and the absence of automatic health regen. There are plenty of stretches in which combat can't be avoided - bunkers full of giant spiders, for instance, and a bossfight with a bear large enough to plough through cover - but Artyom is no Master Chief. Given the choice, you'll probably hold fire more often than not, scouting positions through your binoculars, then sneaking around them after sunset with the aid of night vision and motion trackers. I think there's more, however, to this ethos of restraint than the heart-stopping click of an empty chamber. Like many a video game narrative greased by shooting before it, Metro wants you to question the role violence plays in its world. Unlike most such games, it goes about this convincingly.
Partly, that's because it isn't really an open world game, however much it might resemble one. There are only two wasteland environments that feel anything like Far Cry; the rest are roomy canyons or winding, scripted corridor encounters in the style of Half-Life. Nor are these maps systematised to the gills, as in the average Ubiworld: there are no territory bars to fill, no thickets of side-mission categories to hack through, no outposts to cleanse and turn into fast travel points. Each region has its spread of optional weapon and gear upgrades, and as in Far Cry 3, you can tag objects of interest through your binoculars, but all of your objectives are bespoke, part of the main plot or a slight departure from it. If the game is to some degree a response to the open world, Metro's borrowings from that genre are as delicate, as thoughtful as the process of dividing up crafting ingredients between ammo and health kits. As such, it stands firm against the open world's propensity for empty, cyclical violence in the name of piecemeal content drops.
Beyond that, it's a game in which you'll often leave people alive because they appear to be, well, people, even when bluntly labelled "THUG", "TRIBAL" or "BANDIT" in dialogue, and even - or perhaps especially - when committing obscenities. Metro harbours plenty of anomalous mutants, unhinged sorts and predatory animals who can be gunned down with impunity. The writing can also be very clumsy, not least because Artyom only speaks during (lengthy) load-break voiceovers, which means you sometimes feel like a post-apocalyptic Lassie. "What's that Artyom? You say Anna's fallen down the hole into the underground biowaste disposal plant?" But the game's wealth of incidental overheard chatter is good at making you question those dialogue labels, thinking about the grayzone between stranger and enemy.
Besides clownish rants about rape and pillage, you'll hear bandits grumble about their leader's decisions, joke about lazy friends, muse about the lives they nearly led, comment on the weather. Far to the east there's a forest tribe who are undergoing an existential crisis about whether killing can be justified in self-defence: while sneaking around their encampment, you'll overhear arguments about whether to actively hunt intruders or just chase them away. In the Caspian Sea, oilmen turned false prophets have enslaved the surrounding tribes: their followers are fanatical and armed to the teeth, but they are still victims of exploitation, and if you're surgical, there are ways you might spare them.
Stealth is valuable, here, not just because it's more economical or less risky, but because it allows you to get close to these lives, pull the two sides of Metro Exodus together. While touring a treehouse settlement at night I encountered a sentry sitting at a small table, lost in thought. On the table there were books, dented crockery, faded pictures of children - a small, candlelit circle of belongings and memories. I spent a few moments looming over the man, the kill/stun HUD prompts framing the back of his head, thinking about Artyom's own bedside table back on the train, with its sunflower-pattern linoleum and typewriter, and about the miles of hungry emptiness all around us. It doesn't take much to suggest that a fictional construct might have an inner life, a value apart from its value as a pleasing hazard or an inconveniently mobile collection of resources. It's a bit of an indictment of games, or at least of blockbuster action games, that this feeling has become a novelty. We need more experiences like Metro Exodus that know how to resist empty bloodshed and kindle such closeness, finding the warmth in the wasteland.
Hopefully that pleases almost everyone. If not, tell all in cutting abrasive comment form! Has any flesh biscuit any fleshy opinions on this informations? Thoughts on seeing Metro through to its (final?) conclusion? I suppose I should go back and actually try and complete Last Light this time, while hoping it doesn't glitch trap my save file as a barrier to progression again.
