Tag: Metro Exodus

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METRO EXODUS [Review]: Fallout – The Red Kremlin Edition.

“Reverend” Lauro Rojas
@Cheeky_Basterds

Metro is based on the wildly popular set of books written by Dmitry Glukhovsky published in Russia and later translated for English audiences. Glukhovsky’s vision is a world ravaged by nuclear war, which forces Moscow’s survivors to relocate to underground metro stations for refuge. Metro was such a hot commodity that it spawned sequels, its own universe and a trilogy of games. With Metro Exodus being the newest release of the bunch, this intrepid writer took a trip to the frozen wasteland otherwise known as Mother Russia to take in some sights and sounds…

The player controls Artyom, our protagonist who’s feeling some kind of way after the climatic final level/attack on D6 in Metro: Last Light. We begin on the irradiated surface with an old ham radio in search for a hope that there is civilization beyond Moscow. But to no avail. As Artyom sulks all the way to the underground (aka Metro), he’s accosted by the Watchmen, not of the Alan Moore variation, but rather feral, mutated, blood-thirsty rats the size of humans.

At this point, you’ll get a feel for the combat and what’s to come; obviously our boy Artyom is no pacifist as he proceeds to blow these Master Splinter wannabes away. The gunplay is quick and ferocious as bullets fly and make a cracking, sickening thud on your adversaries. Not only that but the gameplay is refreshing, as you have to monitor your breathing apparatus. If you have a PS4 controller with the built in speaker, it’ll start beeping when it’s time to change. On your wrist is a Geiger counter and a little blue light beams when you are in open danger and at risk of being sought out. After taking a thrashing you meet up with your sworn brothers of the Order, there to rescue you after an unwise attempt to take on a pack of Watchmen.

4A Games’ latest is equal parts survival horror, FPS and stealth. After sinking in 10-plus hours of enjoyable gameplay and story, my favorite aspects though are of the more quiet. While on the Aurora — the lamb on the locomotive — you have these moments with each of your crew; it’s not like a point and click, but more of a conversation you eavesdrop into and tune in to the conversation. Metro Exodus does have its share of thrills. Some missions are linear and others that are sandbox-lite. One thing I could not get over was the graphics; they somehow look a bit outdated and rough around the edges, but that’s just nitpicking an otherwise very sound release. 3.25/5 Bibles.

-Lauro Rojas

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METRO EXODUS [E3 2018]: Don’t Die!

Lance Paul “The Apostle”
@Lance_Paul

Metro Exodus had some big shoes to fill after the can of whoop ass delivered at last year’s E3. So I went into E3 2018 with Deep Silver’s post-apocalyptic survival shooter high on my list. Thankfully, I walked out of this hands-on-demo even more excited for its release.

Metro is an open-space mission world game, that will take you continent spanning while riding on your faithful roving-home-base train, Aurora. Think Snowpiercer. The hands-on demo has you play as Artyom, the star of the game. It starts on the Auroa train when you hit a roadblock that forces you and your partner to venture out into the nuclear apocalyptic wasteland looking for a way forward. From the get, you can tell the gameplay and crafting mechanics have improved drastically. No longer do you need stations to rebuild items; now it all comes ready made in a new backpack one-in-all.

As my hour of game time started I traveled the cesspool of nuclear Russia exploring bombed-out shelters and buildings, fighting off ravenous giant rat/dogs polluted with fallout and surviving near death from both the living and the undead. My demo finally landed me at a boathouse rife with hostiles from both land and sea. To get to this boathouse I had to row across a mini-swamp infested with a giant mutated crawfish that tried to capsize me for dinner. Quite a few times the sheer startle from an unexpected attack had me jumping in my seat surrounded by other press.

Once I had cleared out the boathouse–not an easy accomplishment due to the shear lack of ammo in this world–I freed a woman named Katya and her young daughter. Protecting them while we all escaped across boat docks I was finally attacked by one more much larger mutant crawdaddy who hopped in our escaping boat. Thankfully I survived to be pulled to shore by my missing compatriot and brought back to the roaming basecamp, Aurora. With that my hour was up.

After getting my hands on Exodus, the only downsides I could find were the copious amount of bugs, but those were expected since this is still a working super early beta. 4A Games’ team had me on a Xbox One X development kit running in 4K with no gamepad tuning done. The other issue that compounded the gameplay was the super long load times between deaths, so you know what that meant right? Don’t die! With plenty of time till its 2019 release, Metro Exodus has all the time to be the great it shalt be. 4/5 Mutant Rat/Dogs agree!

-Lance Paul