Post by WickedCrustacean on Jul 3, 2023 12:17:26 GMT -5
Back in mid 2000s, the Ukranian company GSC Game World developed a trio of first person shooters, STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat, which had very interesting open worlds and advanced AI, and featured a post apocalyptic setting at the site of the nuclear disaster. Some of the GSC Game World employees left the company and formed a different studio, 4A Games, which has been developing Metro games since 2010s.
The Metro franchise is based on a series of sci-fi novels by a Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, which describe a post-apocalyptic Russia, where after a global nuclear war, survivors live in underground subway tunnels in Moscow, struggling to survive in harsh conditions, and dealing with conflicts between newly formed factions. I played the first two games in the series earlier this year, and they were a mix of good and bad. The production values were top notch, beautiful graphics, nice physics, a lot of animations and quality writing, dialogue and cut scenes. But the games were very linear, like a post-apoc version of Call of Duty, where you go from cut scene to cut scene via linear action sequences.
Metro Exodus is the latest game in the franchise, and fortunately, the studio seems to have taken criticism of the earlier games to heart, and turned it from a linear shooter into a sprawling pseudo-open world structure. Without giving too many spoilers, the game takes your group of Rangers from the underground tunnels of Moscow into the wider expanses of post-nuclear Russia. The train that you take serves as the hub between levels, a place where you catch up with your fellow Rangers, your wife, and other fellow travelers in between the missions. The levels (stop-overs for the train in different parts of Russia) vary between being fairly open (Volga, Caspian Sea) and more linear (Yamantau, Taiga, Dead City). The former is where the game really shines and becomes a masterpiece, while the latter revert to the inferior corridor gameplay of the earlier games in the franchise.
The plot is actually quite good. The general gist of it is that your father-in-law leads an elite order of Rangers for which you are the top soldier, and all of you (you, him, your wife-his daughter, your fellow Rangers) get caught up in some events that cause all of you to leave Moscow and set out to search for a decent place to live in the harsh post-apocalyptic world. Along the way, you pick up other stragglers who join your group and become important parts of it.
The game does an amazing job of fleshing out this feeling of being a part of a real group of people struggling to survive. These are not just some NPCs or weapon/quest dispensers. They are people with real personalities and bonds, when you return from a hard mission, they run out to greet you, they play guitars and sing songs, and take care of each other, which really touched me in ways that first person shooters generally do not. In addition to that, the final part of the game does an amazing job (in my humble opinion) with one of the best romantic stories in video games, dark as it is, and the story of an important character dying while the two people closest to them set out against all odds for one last desperate mission to save them. I really can't think of any first person shooter (and few games in other genres) that have touched me this way.
The game is absolutely beautiful, with levels set in different looking places, from the frozen snow covered swamps of the Volga river to the sandy dried out shores of the Caspian Sea, to the heavily wooded tundra of Siberia. It's one of the best games to utilize ray tracing, and all other kinds of new technologies, and the final product is a treat for the eyes. Likewise, the game has great music and sound effects, the only issue I experienced was during dialogue, it had this weird stereo thing where if you turn toward an NPC, their dialogue would be really loud but if you turn away a bit, it would get too quiet.
In terms of basic gameplay, the game is somewhere between a shooter, a stealth game, and a horror game. You get a lot of weapons, and can modify them with all sorts of extensions, but on harder difficulty settings, going all gung ho can get you killed very quickly. Enemies have two characteristics which encourage stealth: when they are in relaxed state, a single headshot will take them out, but once alerted, they become bullet sponges, and also, many enemies once alerted have very herky jerky movement animations, making it hard to hit them. So there is a lot of incentive to kill them from stealth. Once you make a lot of noise and start shooting (without a silencer), you can easily get 30-40 enemies get alerted all around and start shooting you from a mile away like aimbots.
Stealth is also not perfect. It is both an interesting but also a frustrating system. Everything is factored in, like the amount of light outside (sneaking at night is much more effective), how much noise you make (crouching makes you quieter), how quickly you move, etc. But sometimes enemies will just spot you when they have no business doing so, and that can be rather annoying.
While most enemies are either humans or regular mutants, occasionally you will also go up against massive mutated bears, Yetis, giant fish, etc. Those fights can be interesting or annoying, based on your point of view. Another source of annoyance can be its insistence on difficult challenges, such as needing to replace air filters for your gas mask in certain areas, batteries dying for your flashlight, limited ammo, etc.
In the end, Metro Exodus has various flaws with its gameplay, and at times reverts back to being a corridor game, but in the end, the levels where it does go open, and the beautiful way it conducts its story make it a game absolutely worth experiencing, and gives me hope for this studio's future.
The Metro franchise is based on a series of sci-fi novels by a Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, which describe a post-apocalyptic Russia, where after a global nuclear war, survivors live in underground subway tunnels in Moscow, struggling to survive in harsh conditions, and dealing with conflicts between newly formed factions. I played the first two games in the series earlier this year, and they were a mix of good and bad. The production values were top notch, beautiful graphics, nice physics, a lot of animations and quality writing, dialogue and cut scenes. But the games were very linear, like a post-apoc version of Call of Duty, where you go from cut scene to cut scene via linear action sequences.
Metro Exodus is the latest game in the franchise, and fortunately, the studio seems to have taken criticism of the earlier games to heart, and turned it from a linear shooter into a sprawling pseudo-open world structure. Without giving too many spoilers, the game takes your group of Rangers from the underground tunnels of Moscow into the wider expanses of post-nuclear Russia. The train that you take serves as the hub between levels, a place where you catch up with your fellow Rangers, your wife, and other fellow travelers in between the missions. The levels (stop-overs for the train in different parts of Russia) vary between being fairly open (Volga, Caspian Sea) and more linear (Yamantau, Taiga, Dead City). The former is where the game really shines and becomes a masterpiece, while the latter revert to the inferior corridor gameplay of the earlier games in the franchise.
The plot is actually quite good. The general gist of it is that your father-in-law leads an elite order of Rangers for which you are the top soldier, and all of you (you, him, your wife-his daughter, your fellow Rangers) get caught up in some events that cause all of you to leave Moscow and set out to search for a decent place to live in the harsh post-apocalyptic world. Along the way, you pick up other stragglers who join your group and become important parts of it.
The game does an amazing job of fleshing out this feeling of being a part of a real group of people struggling to survive. These are not just some NPCs or weapon/quest dispensers. They are people with real personalities and bonds, when you return from a hard mission, they run out to greet you, they play guitars and sing songs, and take care of each other, which really touched me in ways that first person shooters generally do not. In addition to that, the final part of the game does an amazing job (in my humble opinion) with one of the best romantic stories in video games, dark as it is, and the story of an important character dying while the two people closest to them set out against all odds for one last desperate mission to save them. I really can't think of any first person shooter (and few games in other genres) that have touched me this way.
The game is absolutely beautiful, with levels set in different looking places, from the frozen snow covered swamps of the Volga river to the sandy dried out shores of the Caspian Sea, to the heavily wooded tundra of Siberia. It's one of the best games to utilize ray tracing, and all other kinds of new technologies, and the final product is a treat for the eyes. Likewise, the game has great music and sound effects, the only issue I experienced was during dialogue, it had this weird stereo thing where if you turn toward an NPC, their dialogue would be really loud but if you turn away a bit, it would get too quiet.
In terms of basic gameplay, the game is somewhere between a shooter, a stealth game, and a horror game. You get a lot of weapons, and can modify them with all sorts of extensions, but on harder difficulty settings, going all gung ho can get you killed very quickly. Enemies have two characteristics which encourage stealth: when they are in relaxed state, a single headshot will take them out, but once alerted, they become bullet sponges, and also, many enemies once alerted have very herky jerky movement animations, making it hard to hit them. So there is a lot of incentive to kill them from stealth. Once you make a lot of noise and start shooting (without a silencer), you can easily get 30-40 enemies get alerted all around and start shooting you from a mile away like aimbots.
Stealth is also not perfect. It is both an interesting but also a frustrating system. Everything is factored in, like the amount of light outside (sneaking at night is much more effective), how much noise you make (crouching makes you quieter), how quickly you move, etc. But sometimes enemies will just spot you when they have no business doing so, and that can be rather annoying.
While most enemies are either humans or regular mutants, occasionally you will also go up against massive mutated bears, Yetis, giant fish, etc. Those fights can be interesting or annoying, based on your point of view. Another source of annoyance can be its insistence on difficult challenges, such as needing to replace air filters for your gas mask in certain areas, batteries dying for your flashlight, limited ammo, etc.
In the end, Metro Exodus has various flaws with its gameplay, and at times reverts back to being a corridor game, but in the end, the levels where it does go open, and the beautiful way it conducts its story make it a game absolutely worth experiencing, and gives me hope for this studio's future.