#Metro exodus trainer megagames review series

For QTEs, there are the choices of rapid tapping, holding down, or just pressing the required button. Am I about to head down into a little bunker? I’d best make sure to craft some more air filters, in case I end up needing them.Īccessibility options are somewhat limited but nonetheless present. I find myself taking all of these factors into account when interacting with the world: Is there a lot of mud here? I’ll be sure not to sprint through it, kicking up dirt onto all of my equipment. It’s organic, and eventually it becomes second nature. I have to replace its filters as they start to deteriorate, lest I choke on the toxic air in pockets of radioactivity. Much like my guns, my gas mask can get dirty, and I have to wipe it clean if it becomes difficult to see.

There’s a lot of busy work like this in Metro Exodus. This is my Kalash: There are many like it, but this one is mine. Moreover, this need for maintenance coupled with the plethora of attachments you use to customize them gives every gun a sense of ownership. They collect dirt as you traverse through dust and mud and require cleaning at workbenches, but it never feels tedious. You could stealthily approach the building on foot, or you could ascend a nearby radio tower occupied by bandits and use the zipline at its peak to reach the rendezvous location in a speedier (and cooler) fashion. One mission has Artyom and some of his squad infiltrate a dock to steal a tugboat. I’m given plenty of approaches to the different encounters I run into. The world isn’t fully open, but compared to the corridors of the metro, it isn’t linear either. Taiga is a lush forest region home to an unusual tribe and beasts. It operates under the tyrannical thumb of a Mad Max-style oil baron and his legion of thugs roaming the wastes in shoddily repaired cars and trucks. The Caspian Sea is a lake dried out into a desert. The Volga River is a swampland home to villagers who worship a giant mutated shrimp. But it takes on a mood unexpected of the franchise’s genre: warm, relaxed, and nonviolent.ĤA Games took this opportunity to explore a range of different post-apocalyptic environments that move with the seasons over the game’s yearlong timeline. It’s functionally and aesthetically a train. Between locations, I can roam about its carriages, catch up with its crewmates, maintain my gear, and partake in little activities like playing the guitar or smoking newspaper cigarettes. The locations you visit, varied in their look and feel, become planets.Īs I explore unique and visually captivating miniature open worlds that constitute the “levels” of Metro Exodus, my train becomes a place of refuge. Aptly named the Aurora by its crew, the train becomes your ship à la the Normandy in Mass Effect.

To leap out of its confines and into that unknown world feels like jumping into a space cruiser and departing the planet earth.

#Metro exodus trainer megagames review series

After a series of revelations resulting from this, he and his comrades from the Order hijack a train and set out into the rest of the Russian Wastelands, leaving behind the brutal wars of the Communist Red Line, Capitalist Hansa, and Fascist Fourth Reich, chasing potential survivors and finding a new place to call home.įor Artyom and for the world of Metro, the underground became normality, and the outside of its tunnels atop the crumbling skyscrapers became alien. So what happens when the series takes a step outside, hops on a train heading out of the tunnels, and goes above ground and into the heart of Russia?Īrtyom, hardened Ranger and inhabitant of the Metro, is searching for radio signals on the surface of Moscow following the events of Metro: Last Light. That element of survival against the odds in a dangerous environment, rarely going outside into the irradiated city ruins, is inseparable from the franchise. After nuclear war ravages Moscow in 2013, survivors who flee to the underground tunnels of the Metro system form their own independent states and societies, all in a bid to keep on living. The Metro series so far has been defined by its claustrophobic setting and worldview.