A great story driven, slow-paced and realistic FPS that knows how to tell a compelling and intriguing story.
A great journey alongside well fleshed out characters, that surpasses its predecessors not only in scope of the environments, but in aspects of gameplay mechanics as well.



The Metro Series is based on the novels of Dmitri Glukhovsky.
It is clear to me that the writers of this game took the origin of the story very seriously. You can tell that they didn't want to just insert a story into the game just because - they want the player to care about it as well. The characters themselves, as well as the dialogue alongside pretty much everything else is written so well , you can really tell that they treat their source material with outmost respect.
While Artyom is mostly silent (except for loading screen dialogue/diary entries), his role as a passive protagonist isn't as bad as I orgininally thought it was going to be. Rather than just getting told what to do by every NPC, he has moments where the plot is developed through his actions - or rather through the actions of the player.
This is outstandingly done by the "karma" system of the game, which means the story will follow a different path, depending on the players choices. You can choose whether to mercilessly kill everything that stands in your path or carefully approach the situations given by the game and respect its virtual residents however primitive you might think they are.
These choices are done not by merely pressing a button, as in "Would you like to be bad? Y/N", rather it's done through action - or even the lack thereof.
This way it doesn't just feel like Artyom defines the story that is told, but that the player is pushing the plot forwards.

In short, a beautifully told storyline with interesting characters.


Let's get to the juicy stuff. It's a FPS so naturally you'd expect a fair size of shootin' action. While that is true (and it's good shooting, we'll get to that in a bit) it's not the only thing you do and depending on how you play, might even play a rather subelemental role.
The levels that the players find themselves in are not a linear row of corridors, which was a point of criticism of the predecessors (2033, Last Light), but are big, open and fully explorable areas that differ wildly throughout the game's journey. You get the usual dark and atmospheric metro tunnels, as expected, but you'll also get desert areas, swamps, citys, forests, etc. It's a huge step up in scope when compared to the previous titles.
These levels aren't just big for the sake of being big often the case with some open world titles but are carefully crafted to

1. peak your interest by clever game design
   
2. motivate you to explore the world, a big part of the gameplay mechanics
   
3. gives you crucial freedom in deciding what aspect you'd like to tackle first - or at all

The game is a realistic apocalypse; you're not running and gunning, spamming the "E" key to pick up loot.
I played on hardcore and every mistake I made was punished accordingly.

Stood out on the open with no cover? - Shot down in seconds.
Forgot to clean my weapon and it jammed, causing me to get overrun by monsters? - That's on me.
Took too many shots and now I got no ammo? - Crafting stations are plenty, ya dummy.

Your guns are heavy and feel powerful, while avoiding pinpoint accuracy and unnecessarily big magazines. there are mag attachments to increase your mag size though, while still maintaining believability.

Doing maintenance on your guns is crucial if you don't want the aforementioned gun jamming to happen to you.
Another mechanic to further immerse you in the apocalypse.

Metro: Exodus is not without flaws though:

- While guns have a natural inaccuracy to them and it's mostly fine, sometimes you'll just get these critical misses.
Your crosshair is right on target but your knife throw still misses.
- Minor bugs here and there, such as a buggy POV driving a car. These are mostly rare and minor inconveniences though.


If you care about story, have played the previous titles, enjoy a slow paced FPS based on immersing you into the beautifully crafted world and its environments:

It's a no brainer, this game will provide many blessed game hours.