2035. The political struggle for control of the Moscow Metro, where ten thousand survivors from the 2013 nuclear war that ended the old world live with their descendants, has stabilised with an uneasy peace. For Artyom, the hero of the battle at D6, it's an opportunity to follow his dream of finding out what's happened in the world beyond the city limits. The discovery of anomalous radio signals and the capture of an armoured steam train, the Aurora, gives Artyom and his friends their chance to abandon the closed-in world of the Metro for the open skies of the world beyond...and their own, unique dangers.
Metro: Exodus is the third game in the Metro series of video games, developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and based on the novels by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky (currently living outside of Russia due to his opinions of the current political situation). It was preceded by Metro 2033 (2010) and Metro: Last Light (2013), with remastered versions of both games later released as Metro Redux. Metro: Exodus is something a mild reset of the series, removing detailed references to the events of the first two games in favour of the story at hand, and a new gameplay format.
The basics of the game are more or less unchanged. You play Artyom, a survivor of the nuclear war who has learned the hard way how to survive in the Metro. The game is ostensibly a first-person shooter, though mild survival and crafting mechanics are present and there is a strong focus on stealth. An opening section in Moscow is very much linear business as usual, until you and your allies (many of them recurring from the first two games) find a train heading out of the city and realise you can escape to the open countryside, and find out what the hell happened to the rest of the world.
From here the game adopts a structure more akin to the original Far Cry, with sequential, large and open-ish maps with a primary objective but various sub-objectives you can explore along the way, and with freedom of action in how you approach each mission. You can rush each area by doing the main objective ASAP, but going off the beaten path to explore side-areas will reveal more loot, upgrades, lore and subplots. As with the first two games there is a hidden moral metre, and behaving in a more moral and enlightened way (minimising kills, sparing surrendering enemies etc) will open up new branches in the storyline. Allies you may drive away by adopting a murder-hobo mentality will instead stay on, and provide more support in later missions.
This new approach is refreshing, allowing the introduction of open-world elements without going full open-world with a single massive map on which the whole game takes place and the main storyline takes a back seat for hours or tens of hours at a time. This structure instead allows for a degree of exploration and freedom but not too long before you have to progress the main story, which is quite enjoyable.
This is basically the Road Trip from Hell, made the worse because you don't have full control over your route (you need to stay on the rails, obviously) and even a minor setback can have massive consequences. The Russian rail services ceased to exist twenty-two years before the game takes place, so if a mudslide has washed half a kilometre of track into the Volga, you're screwed and have to go back and find another route (and hope that is passable). But it is fun, as you can repair to the train between missions and chat to other characters, building up relationships and following subplots. The characters in the Metro series have always been a lot of fun and catching up with them here is enjoyable. The main exception is Anna, Artyom's previous girlfriend turned wife, who was a formidable fighter with a sharp sense of humour in previous games and here is a bit too squeeing over Artyom, which feels odd.
Exploration is a lot of fun, with your growing equipment collection allowing for better exploration and detection of possible supplies. Some of the maps provide you with vehicles for exploration, including boats and buggies, which are an enjoyable change of pace. Each map, separated sometimes by thousands of kilometres from the last one, has its own set of characters and factions, making the game sometimes feel like an episodic road trip TV show, which is enjoyable. Making sure you close off the subplots in each region before moving on can be a bit hit-and-miss, and the game sometimes can be unclear on what you should or should not be doing. I had a rather limited experience on the Caspian Sea level, for example, by inadvertently killing what turned out to be a major NPC during an early scuffle, closing off a bunch of options for resolving that particular crisis more peacefully.
Combat remains solid, and mostly unchanged from prior games. Weapon selection is solid and a frontal assault is usually possible as long as you don't get swamped by superior numbers (and can re-arm quickly). Stealth is more more satisfying, however, with silent knife throws, critical takedowns and silenced weapons all providing excellent opportunities for stealth operatives. Lethal and non-lethal options are available in most cases, and going for the non-lethal approach can result in enemies letting you live in thanks rather than trying to kill you later on. There are granular outcomes to your choices in the game that are not immediately obvious, meaning you find yourself considering your options more carefully in a more traditional cartoon sandbox where mass violence is always rewarded positively.
The game does struggle reconciling its linear past with its new, more freeform present. The Volga and Caspian levels are huge and open to explore, but the ultra-linear Taiga level, a corridor pretending to be an open riverbank, is a little weird, and feels designed to shuffle you between cutscenes. The game feels better when it's fully embracing the open-world or when it places you in tight confines once again; a late-game visit to another Russian city with a Metro feels pleasingly nostalgic rather than irritating by snatching the open world away again. A greater irritation is that cutscenes do tend to go on a bit too long, and sometimes repeat information that is redundant. The English-language voice acting can also be a bit of a mixed bag, and hardcore veterans of the series may find the decision to completely ignore some major story and lore ramifications from the first two games a bit odd. Newcomers will be completely at ease, though.
The main game itself is solid, but these days the game also ships with its DLC. The first DLC, The Two Colonels, explains the backstory to a character mentioned but MIA in the main game. It's quite linear and very short, but it does have some interesting gameplay ideas and some great dialogue. The second DLC, Sam's Story, is huge by the standards of most such expansions. It adds the city of Vladivostok to the roster of locations, with your character exploring a fairly large area on foot and by boat, aligning with different factions and searching for vital supplies that will help your ambition of crossing the Pacific Ocean and finding out what happened to America. One of the best maps in the game and some strong NPC characterisation makes this a fine slice of the Metro series.
Overall, Metro: Exodus (****½) is a fine addition to the series. It changes things up at a point when they could have become stale. The gunplay is great, the stealth is excellent and the story is solid, with the subtle way the game handles morality, choice and consequence being refreshing. At around 30 hours (including the DLC), the game gives a solid amount of content without being too stuffed with filler.
The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox S/X, Mac and Linux. A sequel, Metro 2039 which sees a stranger arrive in Moscow, is due for release in 2027.
In 2013, a nuclear war devastated the Earth. The city of Moscow was destroyed by several direct nuclear hits, the few thousand survivors being driven literally underground to seek refuge in the Moscow Metro. Twenty years later several competing factions have arisen, with the Spartan Rangers, the Fourth Reich and the Red Line fighting whilst several independent city-states try to survive in the crossfire. And above their heads, strange creatures have arisen to take control of the surface world.
Originally released in 2010 and 2013, the first two instalments in Ukrainian 4A Studios' Metro series of first-person shooters were accomplished games. Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light told an intriguing story of survival, horror, war, love and loss against a superbly-realised background, provided by Dmitry Glukhovsky's trilogy of source novels (Metro 2033, Metro 2034 and Metro 2035). The developers have form from working on the earlier S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games, although the Metro series eschews those games open-world settings for a much more linear and focused experience.
In 2014 both games were reworked and re-released in "Redux" editions. These editions of the games rework graphics, AI, controls and difficulty to provide a more consistent and linear experience across both games. Minor differences in controls, interfaces and enemies are smoothed out to form what is effectively one large game.
Being the older game, Metro 2033 benefits much more from the upgrade. Graphics, physics and lighting are much-improved and things like the games' stealth system is now more reliable and works better. Best of all is the evening out of the first game's infamously punishing difficulty. The original game's "normal" is now "hard" and a newer, normal difficulty level has been imported from Last Light, which makes ammo easier to find. In contrast, Last Light has inherited 2033's more punishing optional difficulty levels to turn it more into a survival game. The disparity between the two titles is gone and you can now play both as either a hardcore survival shooter or a more relaxed and forgiving action title.
Both games have aged well, and their at-the-time impressive focus on stealth has become all the more impressive. The games don't do a great job of telling you about the stealth system though. Basically, enemies, no matter how tough, can be killed with a single thrown knife as long as you take them unawares. You can also sneak up behind them and knock them out or kill them in close proximity without alerting their friends. If one enemy does spot you, instead of magically letting everyone else know your precise location via telepathy, you do have a narrow window of opportunity to disable them before they can alert other guards, allowing you to recover from serious errors. You can also use muffled weapons to take down enemies, extinguish lights, although causing too much mischief from the shadows can lead to the enemy getting suspicious and switching to a higher alert state.
Both games retain impressive action set pieces and the storytelling remains intriguing. The environmental storytelling, reliance on NPC companions and your status as a silent protagonist all make for positive comparisons with the Half-Life series. However, the games suffer a little from their morality system, which they don't tell you about. Basically, the less mayhem you cause, the more guards you knock out rather than kill, the more you go out of your way to avoid killing (even mutants), the higher your morality score. This unlocks secret endings for both games. For Metro 2033, to be honest, this is a bit pointless as the secret ending is not canon (Last Light starts the "negative" ending from the first game, which is off-putting if you're playing both games together), but for Last Light it's more important because the "secret" ending in Last Light is the canon one and sets up the third game in the series, Metro: Exodus. Unfortunately, some of the high-moral outcomes in Last Light are a bit obtuse, requiring you to uncover secret caches and avoid killing even when it appears fully justified to do so.
These vagaries are minor annoyances, and made up for by the package's impressive amount of side-content. All of Last Light's generous DLC is included, including more missions expanding on background events in Last Light (focusing on various side-characters and their own storylines), a solid single-player survival mode set on an open world map with you scavenging for supplies at a huge library, and a specialist (and punishingly hard) sniper map.
Metro: Redux (****) takes two strong, older games and makes them sharper, better and more enjoyable for modern gamers. The morality and stealth systems feel a bit under-explained, but once you get to grips with them, they enhance an atmospheric and accomplished pair of shooters. The package is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and X-Box One.
