“Up on the surface, the larger, sandbox-style levels relax the leash and let you sniff around with more freedom, finding enemy camps and abandoned houses that can be scoured for precious resources or diary scraps and audio logs which flesh out the fiction. Many story objectives still require you to descend into the sorts of dread-filled subterranea that the Metro series was built upon, and thanks to a generational jump in lighting effects and high-quality ambient audio they feel more ominous and claustrophobic than ever.
These levels are also far more open than what we’ve come to expect from the previous two Metro games, but that’s not to say you won’t spend a considerable amount of time exploring the traditional dank underground corridors. That mobility brings a dazzling variety of settings we’ve never seen in a Metro game: their year-long, cross-continental journey ushers in a seasonal shift as you reach each stop, taking you from snow-blanketed sprawls of urban decay to sand-swept deserts and lush forest settings, each incredibly well-realised and populated by a healthy variety of deadly mutants and pockets of humanity both friendly and hostile.
Picking up two years after the events of Metro: Last Light, the largely self-contained story of Metro Exodus follows the plight of main protagonist Artyom, his wife Ana, and a crew of surviving Spartan Rangers led by Colonel Miller as they set out from nuclear-war-ravaged Moscow in search of safe harbour aboard the train Aurora.
With a storyline that sidesteps the supernatural themes of its predecessors in favour of focussing on a more affecting human experience, and level design that affords you significantly more freedom without giving you too much room to relax, Metro Exodus feels like the full realization of this series’ potential. This is not a run-and-gun experience it’s a stay-low-and-go-slow crawl through some of the most atmospheric and detail-rich settings I’ve ever experienced in a story-driven shooter. The third game, Metro Exodus, successfully brings its lengthy single-player campaign to the post-apocalyptic surface without sacrificing any of the series’ signature tension.In an era where most first-person shooters seem to be intent on constantly upping the tempo, Metro Exodus is refreshing in its demand that you take your time. It turns out that what makes Metro – a series named and known for its dark, subterranean survival-horror atmosphere – work was never really dependent on being underground at all.
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