Recent reviews by Capt_Blakhelm

Sam's Story offers an opportunity to learn more about the sole American soldier from Artyom's team from the main game. Sam amicably splinters from the group to seek out his only wish after the main story of Metro Exodus.

For the most part, the game plays almost exactly like the main game - a semi open area with a few main objectives and a few "side objectives" for extra loot. The only new weapon is a modified assault rifle which can shoot incendiary rounds like the Tikhar from the main game. You no longer have a "home base" where you can switch weapons, so if you want different weapons, you must procure them from enemies. You also don't get a silent option - no Steel Ball gun, no Crossbow or weapons supressors at all - so your only form of silence is melee kills. It JUST might be possible I missed a silent option from weapon caches, but i found it strange you don't at least get a silent option early on the critical path.

Similar to my experience with The Two Colonel's DLC, there is another major bug. At least in this case, I'm able to reach the end, but without spoiling the DLC for you, the player is given a choice in the final moment - but I could never cause the alternate ending. I'll cover this further in a spoiler section, but it represents ANOTHER MAJOR BUG that other players have reported and has gone unfixed for multiple years. At the issue seems less reported than the bug from the other DLC.

Sam's Story won't give you alot of playtime, but it will give more time to exist in the world of Metro Exodus and learn stories about arguably more interesting characters than in the main game. I can't call Sam's Story a must buy, but I can't call it's a bad purchase, especially if you get it from a sale or bundle.

SPOILERS: This section is about the final cutscene and choice in the game. At the end, the player is given a choice to destroy the submarine or not destroy it. For some reason, this option did not appear for me when it was supposed to. There was no prompt to make a choice. I find it both strange and infuriating that the only moment where the UI for selecting a choice in "dialog moments" was the final moment of the final DLC. Other players have reported the same issue. IT IS possible that the choice is removed by not completing a side mission of re-arming all the traps for an NPC. Some players with the issue reported they rearmed all the traps and still had the issue Assuming this side quest is the culprit, it doesn't make sense why it affects the ending. This NPC mentions they had a hard time escaping since the traps weren't restored, but he still gives you the optoin to make a choice before the game's final sequence - so it not clear and unreasonable to not being able to "Press Left" instead of right at the end.

Why would I say such a thing about a DLC with a positive rating? Because of a bug that causes a major, near impassable soft lock.

Halfway through the chapter, you reach an in-game cutscene that cuts to black..and then never comes back. You can open the pause menu maybe, but that is it. The game is attempting to play back a lengthy cutscene that you eventually get control back over, but you might as well be playing with a blindfold ear muffs, and no input. This issue plagued many other PC players and it isn't clear what is the cause. Metro Exodus is literally one of the reasons I finally pulled the trigger on buying an expensive custom gaming PC with a RTX 4080 GPU ,an Intel i9 14900K and 64GB of RAM so I wouldn't have to put up with the weird technical issues PC games give you for not having the right hardware.

The fix: A minor solution is to turn on V-Sync (which i usually turn off in most games). Doing so allowed subtitles of dialog to play back, but nothing else. No sound. No Visuals. Wait long enough, and eventually the General NPC will repeat himself, signaling your player character is stuck next to an NPC repeating dialog, so you can finally quick save, since you can't save during cutscenes.

The actual fix: I've tried a variety of solutions from users on Reddit and Steam Forums. It was clear it was likely related to video problems, and no amount of changing settings like resolution, DirectX Version, or preset did the trick. Even changing to my second monitor didn't do the trick. Even changing it to my THIRD MONITOR which uses DVI instead of DP or HDMI (but it is using an adapter) fixed it. However, changing the resolution to 1440x1080 on the third monitor that uses DVI input gave me sound and visuals back and then I could reload the game back on my main monitor and even correct the resolution and other video options.

This is such a strange requirement to fix a video issue - a video issue for a DLC for a game that is 5 years old by now and still experienced by a selection of players. I even read somewhere that Deep Silver may release a remaster/new port of the game which would be insane to do and not fix a critical bug of it's DLC.


The other downside is that some people don't like the DLC much. It is extremely linear in comparison to the full game and because of the DLC's linearity and length, you'd arguably get the best value out of this by simply watching somebody else play it to completion. A new "Gameplay type" (I'm using this term to avoid spoilers) requires you to reload and repressurize your weapon very often. Sometimes you may feel you might be in the clear, just to be attacked by a worm you didn't quite see. The first segment of the game is an odd mix of kinda awesome and kinda annoying.

Like every Metro game I've played so far, I've had a fairly good time trekking though a radiated, post apocalyptic Russia, dealing with post-war factions, mutated beasts, traps, anomalies, and radiation while trying to complete the narrative of Artyom's journey in relation to Moscow's Metro/Train network. The decision to make Metro Exodus feature larger areas, giving it a more open-world vibe, makes it feel almost like a post-nuclear war Russian FarCry spin off, almost akin to something like Blood Dragon in comparative scope, or maybe more like a significantly more streamlined (and thus, infinitely less buggy) serious variant of a Fallout FPS. It feels a bit wrong to directly compare Metro to Fallout 3 or FarCry 4, but there are certain similarities that are hard to avoid simply because of the similar genres, settings, and systems such as encampents of enemy factions and the looting of resources to craft ammo, supplies, gear upgrades and maintain said gear.

One of the annoyances of the open world design is making the exploration of radiated areas more annoying - you're always in need of scrap and cleaning supplies to loot from the environment and enemies, meaning it is worth taking your time to check every nook and cranny for them, especially when you need to move slowly and quietly to not alarm potential enemies that you need to drain your ammo (and thus, your weapon and armor maintenance), but unlike the previous Metro games, filters allowing you to breathe in hazard zones are infrequent and do not last very long, forcing you to kinda rush things or else risk choking to death. To be fair, there was only two points in the game where this was a true problem for me, and you are able to craft filters on the fly IF you have enough resources to do so. However, there was one section in the mid/late game where I had little filter time left and not an exact, clear destination of where I had to go, which required I turned on the electricity. I searched the entire area, dealing with lurking giant mutant Shrimp like monsters, ravenous wolf or rat like critters, non-traversable bodies of water, poisonous snakes, and toxic gas/spore emitting mushroom/polyp things all while in the darkness of mystery of an unknown area and some strange man (Admiral) shouting at me from the inside of a building for defending myself from all these horrors ... with a silenced weapon that he shouldn't or should barely hear. This felt like a bug, as enemy NPCs often don't hear me silent sniping their comrades in the rest of the game, but this one scripted guy can. I cleared the area out and turned on the local generator with less than a minute to spare on my last filter .. but I still wasn't done or safe. The objective is to get on the elevator to the 2nd floor of the building and it still didn't work. Through all my exploration, I apparently walked right by the power switches that blended in with all the other random mechanical stuff you see on walls of buildings in the game. With my many deaths and restarts thanks to running out of filter time, I did finally find said switch due to pure luck, despite passing it multiple times before. turned it on and rode the elevator up to the next segment. While this moment was thrilling, it was extremely annoying to not know what I needed to do despite not having this problem in the rest of the game prior and constantly dying, feeling as if I had no recourse to complete the game and being stuck completely because suddenly filters only lasts one minute instead of the 3-5 they previously did in the game. I was about 70% deep into my playthrough and it was starting to feel like I couldn't finish the game.

My 2nd annoyance with Metro Exodus is Artyom's lack of speech. He isn't a true mute, like other "silent protagonist" games like Half-Like or The Legend of Zelda, he can clearly speak to himself in load screens. But in numerous occasions, whether in person OR BY FREAKING RADIO, NPCs will talk to Artyom to have a conversation and Artyom is just a stone, with not even a response of a "Yes", "No", laugh, grumble, moan, or even a nod or headshake. As the Brits say, this is taking the piss. Even in an ending cutscene where his team asks for a speech, it feels as if he monologing as he always does in load screens, and you never see him animate as if he is talking - which is a strange design choice because this is not a budget or skill/talent issue from the developer - they just decided to NEVER show you Artyom talking.

My only other major complaint with the game was with the implementation of the ending. The rest of this discussion is a spoiler, so for the sake of the review Metro Exodus doesn't require playing the previous games, but understanding them gives you context to the current story and you should be familiar with the genre and overall play style of the Metro games before deciding to purchase Metro Exodus and being able to enjoy it fully.

[/spoiler] THIS IS MAJOR SPOILERS: There are two endings: One where the player character survives and another where he doesn't. That is NOT what I have a problem with. The ending you get is based on your karmic actions in the game - which sidequests you completed and which people you did not kill, as many factions and characters are deemed innocent despite being roadblocks to your objective. Also, having endings based on your "good or bad moral choices" is NOT what I have a problem with. What I have a problem with it doesn't feel like your actions are the cause of your death in the Bad Ending.

In the good Ending, Artyom wakes up safe and sound thanks to his team's attempt to save his life via blood transfusion and is given time to rest. In the bad Ending, Artyom wakes up in some sort of hell or purgatory version of the Train, along with Commander Miller and various other men of which I believe are dead friends and acquaintances of Artyom from the current and previous games. It made no sense how killing or NOT killing certain NPCs that have NOTHING TO DO with your health, recovery, or survival is the reason why Artyom lives or dies in the end. The ending makes Metro Exodus feel like it is JUDGING you for being a killer (which is your job) instead of showing why killing so many people caused him not to survive. This is what killed an otherwise great and emotional closure to Artyom's story for me. [/spoiler]

For some reason, I already had Generation Zero in my library, and after buying the DLC bundle on Humble Bundle, I decided to give it a try. I'm always looking for another FPS I can sink my teeth into.

And lord was doing that a mistake.

First off, the said DLC are effectively various weapons and tools that would immediately outclass the gear you would get in the early game, invalidating the gradual ramp up in gear quality you'd find in any open world/rpg style "Looting" game. I made the "smart" decision to avoid the DLC content I paid good money for outside of cosmetics.

The first hour of the game is a bit strange - your character(s) are a group of college kids celebrating at some sort of lake/boat party, before your boat is suddenly shot for unknown reason. The game intro explains the post Cold War era Sweden decided to train and arm their civilians in preparedness for a national war or crisis. You leave your burning boat after docking to the nearest land and end up close to a house - an abandoned house with destroyed robots, blood splatters and dead cops. Your silent protaganist character has seemingly nothing to say about the carnage or the fact that the first thing you should do is loot the property and bodies for healing and weaponry. The game mostly becomes a series of events of exploring a building or settlement, looting said location, killing enemy robots from an unknown source (likely an enemy state, or Sweden's own military units being compromised and used against them), and continuing on to the next mission or settlement.

Generation Zero at is a decent little romp that plays like a combination of State of Decay, Farcry, and Horizon: Zero Dawn to varying degrees: Mainly by being a PVE loot/crafting first person shooter with various A to B mission on an island nation. I put a few hours in before deciding to go multiplayer, which only works by matchmaking. I was loaded into a room with players multiple levels above me and I decided I'll mess with multiplayer the next day. What ensued that day was one of the worst MP experiences I dealt with - A room with a player that kicked me without communication, a second room with an Away From Keyboard (AFK) player, a third room with a level 10000 player in which when I joked about them cheating, got salty and kicked me. These last two were the only two available for a time - being forced to join an AFK room or a salty player that repeatedly kicked me on the instant I joined because I joked about their cheating. I lucked up on a fourth room that seemingly had a full 4 player squad... except the game became stuck on Joining Session, requiring me to use ALT + F4 as the only way to escape the screen after waiting for 5 minutes, when joining a game typically take seconds. Stuck between joining these terrible rooms, I did finally join a playable room...that caused the game to crash when I attempted fast travel to the other players. After more trial and error connecting to viable hosts, I finally got into a room I could play in. I play not longer than a minute before I got an "Connection to Server was lost". An absolute MESS of an experience, that is definitely not worth your time to try and join rando's if you're reading this.

But I'M NOT DONE! I decided to continue my original save and play as a host myself. I attempt the "High Value Target" mission - I follow the map marker...nothing is at the map marker. Something feels wrong, I do a cursory google search. High Value Target is bugged for many players, and supposedly hotfixed, but the same bug reported still exist in my game, and has been bugged for years according to posts on Reddit, Steam Forums, and the official game forums. I decide to skip said mission. A player joined. then immediately left. I played own my own for a good half hour or so, before reaching the hardest encounter I faced - an 8-12 robot fighting gauntlet where a small encounter turned into a big encounter fighting a heavily armored, 1 story high walking mech at my back side, along with a bunch of crawling "Grunt" style enemies and a couple of flyers. I used my sniping skills, prone position, and healing, trying to take out the bots one by one - even being downed once, and self reviving with an adrenaline shot, repositioning myself on the giant boulder I'm perched on, with no cover, only avoiding shots because I was prone at angle the bots couldn't shoot up at (By the way, these bots aren't super intelligent either). I gradually finish them off single handedly - then 2 players finally decide to show up in my game, right after I didn't need them anymore. Them joining didn't make things better, they both ran off and did their own thing the world before eventually leaving after barely chatting (the 2nd player not saying a word). I go about my business, completing my missions. Eventually another player joins me and even asks if it's ok to join my game - I suppose it is common for people to kick/not allow other players in their room - i asked the player if that is the case after he thanked me for letting him join... but he never responded afterwards, Again, doing his own thing in the open world before suddenly leaving. Day 2 of mutliplayer is an absolute bust.

Day 3. I decide to focus on my missons, but eventually to decide to let my room be open. A player joins me at a bunker, and even follows me around a bit. We kill some bots and such, and eventually they leave. At some point, Generation Z crashes. Fine whatever, not the first time this has happened. I play little bit more - game crashes again. Ugh, ok whatever, reload. Play again, make some progress, get on the dirtbike game crashes AGAIN! This is probably the 6th or 7th crash I've had in my experience in a game that honestly isn't great enough to reload just to do basic tasks. Too many crashes. Too many design oddities. Too awful online experience.

Steam: Would you recommend this game to other players? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
I do not recommend wasting money or time on this. This all said, my 12 hr playtime reflects about 8-10 hrs of RELATIVE enjoyment of exploring an archipelago of Sweden, looting containers, running missions and shooting components off robots. There's bones for a good game here, but with a poor online experience in 2024 and the developer announcing a Final update coming, despite the game being crash prone and buggy to this day five years after release. playing Generation Zero is an excersize in frustration and whelming.

I like Boomer Shooters
I like Metroidvanias

But I dont like having to return back to previous stages and recomplete them as if I never completed them, all over again to make a little progress because I have a new ability to move further in it. Imagine if in the original Doom, everytime you beat a couple maps, you'd have to go back to one of the previous 3 maps and start it all over again as if you never completed it, all enemies and items respawned and doors reclosed because you now have ability to jump or swim somewhere you couldn't before. I find it irritating to run through the same fights and redeplete your ammo again and again just to make a little bit of progress.

I'm sure the game is ok enough for some people, but once i noticed retreading gameplay loop, I lost interest very quickly.

A pretty solid Doom-like Boomer shooter - A cross between the art design of Doom 2016 and level sizes of Doom 1. A pretty straight forward game but with not too many surprises - stages are separated by a Super Mario World style world map and some will require returning back to after you get upgrades from the later stages. I might argue that is one of the worst aspects of Prodeus - about 6 hours in and I have a good selection of weapons but the gameplay has largely remained the same since I have yet to be able to get enough ore fragments and game progression to get any new mechanics like dash boots and double jumping. There are short trial levels built around speedrunning with a specific weapon, but honestly, you don't need to go fast unless you want to - no medals, no looming threat, no timer - just follow the path and shoot the targets and do it the fastest if you want to make the leaderboards.

Prodeus is good, but that's just it. It's just good - not extraordinary, not excellent, not great, just good, but not good enough to motivate me to finish it until the end. The only "Carrot on stick" to keep me going is the items shops that I can't get without more time investment. The inclusion of a level editor is neat, but may not ultimately mean much in the end. A hundred or two maps and a dozen or so custom campaigns, but I've heard no mention of custom levels outside of the game itself - so not alot of people know or care about it it seems. Multiplayer exists, but as of Sept 2024, there is no community to play the game with outside of a Discord channel - so you'd need to do some legwork to get some games going or hop on at the right time.

If you're dying for another gory, future tech Space Marine Boomer Shooter, then you can't go wrong with Prodeus, but you're not missing alot if this is another game in your giant backlog.

It's impressive how quickly and easily Wallpaper Engine has effectively replaced desktop customization software from the likes of Stardock. This is likely due to the Steam Workshop integration, allowing any Steam user to upload animated wallpapers as long as it fits within the content guidelines and rules (and sometimes they don't). Name a major or moderately sized IP or game, and there is probably dozen or more backgrounds for it. Cool animations of Logos, hardware, or various effects. Anime wallpapers out the wazoo, so much so that there is a option to hide Anime content.

Backgrounds can change your Windows color theme, giving your use of Windows more variety when programs are up while the background is swapped. Playlists allow you to set up different lists of backgrounds to cycle through to your liking, though unfortunately, playlists aren't easily transferred between multiple devices and the developer hasn't made progress on that update since a three year old thread in where they wished for said feature in the future. Plenty of options allows you to change the "black bar" color, playback speed, horizontal flip, and stretch type. Some wallpapers allow you to change its position depending on your alignment settings, its volume if it has audio, or colors, speed, or size of elements within the animation itself. Some wallpapers can react to your mouse input or audio output - such as mouse trails, moving eyes, shifting weather effects, or spectrum analyzer style backgrounds. Most of your basic needs for options are covered, though I remember at one point wanting to change an aspect of wallpapers that WE doesn't have (maybe how many times a specific "wallpaper" in a playlist will loop before going to the next one, or maybe Wallpaper rotation, or something else I forgot).

One drawback of a Steam Workshop Supported file base is that if a wallpaper is removed from the Workshop then it will also no longer exist in your your personal Collection. There might ways around this, such as going offline in Steam (or all together on your device), but I don't think keeping a nude wallpaper of Ariel Piperfawn is worth losing out on all the other Steam online functionalities. An ability to use local only content to make your own wallpapers separate from Steam would be a great additional feature, though largely unnecessary due to the sheer amount of options available to you.

Performance will vary per device, but i have regularly used WE while playing games. I would probably consider pausing WE during some fullscreen games not only for performance improvements, but the automatic switching of wallpapers has occasionally caused hangups in games or other programs. Also, I've had mild conflicts with Stardock products like Fences. I'm pretty sure it works well with Window Effects and I could see obvious conflicts with any other programs that directly change your background itself..

Wallpaper Engine does alot for your wallpaper customization for a measly $4. If you want neat animated desktop backgrounds, just get it.

I bought a $4400 computer to play a game that wouldn't work on my $2000 computer

The good news is I feel the Steam Store page for the game aptly describes what it is. I often see a store page, sometimes with videos that hardly show any gameplay and is more concerned with showing off its lore and/or features or I might see that the logo and screenshots evokes features of another game, fooling me into believing it is similar to another and I eventually find out it's not quite what i thought it was.

In my personal opinion, the best way to experience The Exit 8 is near completely blindly (which is something I never say, considering how many games will leave you with buyers' remorse), so if you know nothing about this game and happen to be reading this review, You should only verify if your hardware can properly play the game, in which it can be refunded (provided you play it not too long after buying it). Even so, the game can be finished within the 2 hour return limit by most players (if you figure out what the game is about by then) and even better than that, the game is only $4, which in my experience with the game is worth the price.

I discovered The Exit 8 from seeing Nextlander, Ezekiel_III and maybe another streamer play the game - which was great for showing me a game I wanted to play, but bad for effectively "answering many of the puzzles" of the game or even the fact that I had to "answer puzzles".

The only scenarios i'll say not to buy this game is if you get any sort of motion sickness or any other maladies from First Person games or if you have negative interest in games that mess with the player. On that last note, the game doesn't have any blood, gore, or serious violence, but does have some mildly unsettling or creepy moments that might make some more sensitive people uncomfortable


(((SPOILER SECTION)))
I'll use the remainder of this review to cover a few notes that I would feel spoil the experience.
-$4 for effectively 1hr or less of gameplay does seem kind of steep, but if you're able to experience The Exit 8 with minimal spoilers, I think the small surprises and reward of figuring out the game makes for it.
- The game immediately loads into the game: No Logos. No Menu. No Tutorial. Literally press play, the screen fades or flickers to black, the game loads and fades into you being in a Japanese passageway with first person control of the character. This is great for the experience if the game works with no issues for you, but bad if you need to chance options. Thankfully, you can press Esc and get to an option menu if you need to change audio or video settings. Personally, the audio settings ere perfect as is and I didn't have to turn any volume down. I also assume the game auto-detects your hardware and tries to set the graphics settings appropriately, as it set mine to High and ran effectively at 60FPS and "Epic" preset would have been sub-30
- It may be worth playing The Exit 8 in the dark, but the majority of the game is played in "Bathed light" so it may not help immersion.
- For the longest time, I was looking for the anomaly that would change the Yellow floor tiles to faces or something as I've seen from streams. In a potentially masterful move, that anomaly was one of the last ones to appear and I got so used to not seeing it that I literally ignored the floor THE ONE TIME I NEEDED TOO, resetting my run. IT makes me wonder if the game was tracking my camera movements (looking at the floor frequently) and deciding to not give me that anomaly until it only had a few ones to pull from. If this was done intentionally by the developer(s), then this is BRILLIANT.
- The Exit 8 MIGHT be able to add more value with a level/script editor or allowing mod/workshop support, but I suppose that feature alone could spoil the experience. Regardless, if the develop doesn't make a sequel with such a feature, I fear a competitor would or at least you'll see similar experiences in games like Garry's Mod.
- Even with my prior knowledge of the game, my Steam time clocks up to about an 1hr. Some of that may have been paused/AFK, but I think most of if it was due to about 2 or 3 runs where I got complacent and missed some anomalies. Some of it was standing still, trying to notice if something was subtly moving or not, but I can't tell if passage way has a time limit or not.
- I could easily return this game since I only played it an hour, but I enjoyed it and wouldn't want to punish the developer despite making a game I enjoyed.

1) Match 2 icons in no less than 3 Perpendicular lines
2) Clear the screen to hear the girl moan and have a layer of clothing magically removed
3) Repeat again to remove another layer of clothing
4) Repeat again to remove the puzzle itself and see entire scene (most of which you can alreaady see by scrolling or zooming in the first place)
5) Get a lazy achievement that says Girl_#

The only complexities to the gameplay is that you can find yourself in a situation that is hard to match out of, but the game will always automatically re-arrange icons in a fashion allowing for another match or two, meaning there is effectively no fail-safe. You don't even need to use the occasional free icon shuffles the game gives you, unless you're just tired of hunting that one, solitary match that will give you progress. You also get a limited amount of match hunts (one per completed stage?. Oh and if you're worried about your parents...er...roommates walking in on your lewd, undress the girl game, you can click a convenient panic button.

Even the developer's Youtube Channel doesn't exactly promote the game, but hosts vids for pre-release development progress, which revealed to me the art is made in a program called Spline. Assuming the artist actually made the art and didnt steal it, the art quality is pretty good, if not one-note: Women of mostly similar body types in a single pose with parts of them that infinitely motion tweens between two states to simulate movement.