This article originally ran under a different banner/website in March of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! As a horror connoisseur, the Metro series has always intrigued me. I always heard about its signature claustrophobic atmosphere that seeps into the tunnels of the Metro like a toxic gas. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the proper time to dedicate to the series. Then, on the Microsoft E3 stage, I saw the trailer for the next iteration in the Metro series. WELL, NO MORE, I thought!!! I will remedy my crime to the Metro series by playing their newest title: Metro Exodus.
Our story begins with our protagonist, Artyom Alekseyevich Chyornjy, trying to make contact with the outside world following the nuclear bombing that created a society that lived in the Moscow Metro. Upon discovering the remains of the Russian government was purposely cutting off Moscow from the rest of the world, Artyom, his wife Anna, her commander father, and their squadron of Spartan warriors steal a train they name the Aurora. They venture through post-apocalyptic Russia in search of a new home.
The Aurora first arrives in the Volga, a frozen marshland, where the crew is greeted by a cult damming electricity and worshipping a fish. After rescuing a nurse and her child from the cult, Artyom is given a shopping list of tasks and tossed out into ice stricken sandbox. It was then I realized, maybe it was not the best idea to go from Marvel’s Spider-Man’s sandbox to Metro Exodus’s sandbox.
While I enjoyed swinging around and fighting crimes in Marvel’s Spider-Man, I can’t say the Metro Exodus sandbox has anything noteworthy to offer. Getting around these sandboxes isn’t all that exhilarating. No web sling, no super jumps, no flying, just slowly trudging around, getting stuck on dying plants and debris. Each step slowly draining the excitement for my new adventure. Along with on foot travel, you sometimes get a vehicle like a car or a boat, which doesn’t control all that well. I remember trying to navigate the world in this boat, but I ran into a giant fish monster, that had to have been the cult’s God. Without warning, he flipped over my boat and drowned me. There seemed to be no way to combat this other than trying to get your boat to your destination as fast as possible. Frankly, the whole time traversing this empty map I couldn’t help being fatigued and tired of Metro Exodus.
The combat also doesn’t reward you for venturing off the beaten path. While some of the guns are fun to shot, they often don’t seem to do much to the packs of beasts roaming the wildlands. Often I found myself sneaking around both the wildlife and the occasional bandit camps that you can stumble upon. These camps often show off the unpolished nature of the stealth system. Enemies don’t have any inductors on whether they see you or not, and once they do spot you, everyone will know where your hiding. ALSO, THOU SHALL NOT INCORPORATE STEALTH INTO THINE GAME WITHOUT ALLOWING THE PLAYER TO PEAK AROUND WALLS. Outlast came out six years ago and perfected being able to peek around walls. I consider this the standard now, and if you can’t add it to your game, then don’t do stealth.
On top of subpar stealth to add to the open-world checklist, we have crafting to tack on. Not even crafting that allows you to create wacky weapons like We Happy Few. You can collect metal and chemicals to create medkits or filters. Both items you will need. You are only informed that you are injured by a small patch of blood indicted at the top of your screen. You’ll never know how much more damage you can take, so might as well pour all your resources into crafting medkits and filters. The filters are needed for your gas mask. Rather than have to deal with hunger and thirst meters, the game will nag you about keeping your gas mask in top shape. It will cry to put it on when the air isn’t safe. It will cry when you need to change filters. It will cry when there is a crack in your mask.
Finally, the cherry on top of this mediocre open-world cake is the map. I don’t normally complain about the game’s map, as long as, I can know where to go it is satisfactory to me. This map is not up to the task. The map doesn’t properly communicate where things are and the right way to go. I know, I got turned around while tackling my task list. I even had a moment where I thought I was at a story mission location, only to find out I was at a side mission location. There is no way to map a waypoint on your map, and your compass only points you to story missions. So if you are trying to do side missions look forward to constantly bringing up your map. Frankly, We Happy Few had a better map and that’s a game you don’t want to be negatively compared too.
I was honestly, about to quit Metro Exodus early on, but I ran into something that intrigued me. Anna had gotten lost in a maze-like corridor and of course, I was tasked with rescuing her. Upon locating her, I determined I needed to venture through the maze to reach a switch that would get us out. So I pressed on into a maze of metal fencing, eerie sounds echoing off the brick walls, and soon mutants were crawling out the walls. I was nervously ducking around corners, utilizing the space to create distance. At that moment, I realized I was having fun. This was the Metro experience I had hoped for. Upon escaping the hellish maze, I decided I had to trek through all open-world guff to get to these claustrophobic tense moments, and I was able to locate them. I found half-sunken warehouses that had me running from mutants on scaffolding. I found a bunker full of humans who became cannibals that chased me down hallways. I found abandoned satellite facilities home to a mutant race of spiders, some large and some small enough to scurry around my arm. I realized I didn’t hate Metro Exodus, I hate open-world games.
I find the word Exodus symbolic to this game. Artyom wants so badly to escape life in the Metro. To be free in the open wildlands, free of the claustrophobic tension, free of the monsters clawing at the Metro’s doors. It almost feels similar to a gamer’s desire for every game to be open-world, but as Artyom and friends soon realize, sometimes the grass isn’t always greener in the open-world games. For me, Metro Exodus is at its best when it is being a Metro game. When I am running down tunnels trying to keep mutant spiders off my back, the game becomes a smooth locomotive ride. As soon as I am kicked out into the open world, where I am constantly checking my map, the game comes to a screeching halt. If I could cut out the open-world slog, Metro Exodus, and just go from linear experience to linear experience, it would be a much more enjoyable game.
For me, Metro Exodus will be an example of when a game is not being true to itself. The open-world doesn’t seem innovative or groundbreaking. It strikes as trend-chasing. Sure it makes sense that Artyom wants to get out and explore the world, but to me, all it does is make me question whether or not if this is how the game’s inspiration, the novel Metro 2033, played out. The whole Russian isolation doesn’t seem genuine, and when you’re not true to yourself, people will call you out on it. Maybe the developers felt the pressure to do something different, but if that’s the case, they created something that doesn’t feel like Metro. I say that as someone who hasn’t played the Metro games. All Metro Exodus encourages me to do is pick up the studio’s previous works and Dmitry Glukhovsky’s influential novel, Metro 2033. It does not encourage me to keep exploring their dead open worlds.
