Metro Exodus review

I’ve always felt that the Metro series has an unbelievably good game in there somewhere. It’s established a great post-apocalyptic world and has several memorable moments throughout the first two games. But, it’s never quite reached the heights of a classic, the shooting has always been a little lacklustre, and at times the game’s felt overly linear. Metro Exodus looks to address some of the issues of its predecessors and has characteristically mixed success with it.

This time around Artyom has ventured out of the underground to discover there is human life above ground. Despite everything he thought he knew, there are places scattered about war-torn Russia where communities are, well, not exactly thriving, but doing alright considering everything. So after nabbing a beautiful steam locomotive named the Aurora, he, his wife Anna and the rest of the Order venture out beyond the confines of Moscow to find a new place to live.

It’s a surprisingly simple story setup, given the more supernatural narratives the Metro series is known for. There’s not some otherworldly being to seek out, no ghosts or quite as many voices in Artyom’s head. This stuff is all there if you go and look for it, but at its core, Metro Exodus is more concerned with the survival of the inhabitants of the Aurora and the troubles they face along the way.

The crew of your newly acquired train are an oddly compelling bunch. Their voice acting isn’t the most impressive, nor are their personalities unique enough to make them massively distinct from one another, and yet the camaraderie they share as they face a new world is kind of infectious. They waste little time arguing, are quick to help each other out and just seem to genuinely like each other. This at its best in the good ending of the game, and it’s a little bit heartwarming.

There are a few issues with your crew, but not all are personal to them. They tend to all speak at once. This might be an attempt by the developers to make conversations seem more realistic. People often speak over each other in real life, or all at once if something bad happens. However, when you add in the ambient noise of the Aurora clicking along the tracks, the blazing furnace that powers it and six or seven folks trying to speak at once, it just sounds a bit of a mess.

But on top of that, our protagonist, Artyom, offers absolutely nothing to conversations except the odd hand gesture. Being a silent protagonist was fine in the first two games. Artyom was often alone or partnered with someone who spoke to him as they completed a mission. But in this game, he’s often asked questions and responds by either waving his hands about or staring at them blankly.

There are parts of the story where his wife Anna isn’t feeling so great, and he responds by patting her on the back like she’s a dog that’s learned a new trick or simply stares at her while she’s in agony. It might not seem as jarring if he didn’t speak during loading screens, but even then, in a game that focuses on a small community, it feels like Artyom should be talking by this point.

When he’s not stunned into silence by simple questions, he’s out exploring Russia. This is where the game has seen the biggest shift. Whilst the earlier games were often set in tunnels through the Metro with occasional forays above ground, Exodus flips that on its head, spending more time above ground and in different climates.

Throughout the game, you’ll head to different areas, from deserts to swamps, and enjoy all four of the seasons. That’s right. It’s not just snow and sub-zero temperatures any more. Metro Exodus likes to mix things up, you see, and it applies this to the level structure as well as location.

The first area you stop in is a little open world, where you’ll be able to venture off the beaten path in search of materials for crafting ammo and medkits or find upgrades for your weapons and gear. It brings a more scavenger-like feel to a game that totally suits the struggle to survive shtick Metro has always been into.

However, once you move on from the swamps, you’ll find a more linear level, where you’ll fight your way through a group of bad lads in tighter corridors, which is more reminiscent of the older Metros. And this is sort of the pattern it follows for the duration of the game, mixing up smaller open worlds you can take your time to explore with more linear action, or stealth if you’re that way inclined, focused sections.

Whether or not this is a bad thing will depend on your tolerance for either a linear or open world. For me, the linear levels are often more enjoyable thanks to their faster-paced nature, and it’s what the series is known for. Meanwhile, though the open world parts have their moments, they can be a little frustrating. This is because the linear levels see you fighting against humans, whereas the open world has tonnes more mutants. These are a lot more irksome to fight because of the game’s less than stellar shooting.

As has been the case throughout the whole series, at this stage, Metro’s shooting mechanics are a little cumbersome, which is particularly noticeable against weird creatures. The mutated denizens of the Metro world range from overgrown shrimp to crazed wolves. They all move erratically, which only serves to expose how unwieldy the shooting is. Even with the sensitivity ramped up to full, it feels like it takes Artyom an age to aim his sights on a foe and even then, it will inexplicably miss.

It’s perfectly serviceable, particularly against humans who move much more predictably, but it’s nothing to write home about. The best part about your guns in Metro is the attention to detail with the various attachments you can acquire. In Exodus, Artyom comes equipped with one of the largest backpacks in gaming history, only recently bested by the male protagonist in Pokemon Shield/Sword. With this, he can swap out sights, grips, stocks and other gun-related words that escape my memory.

The cobbled-together look these guns possess after a little tinkering is fantastic. It gives that DIY vibe you’d expect from weapons that have been desperately thrown together during a fight for survival. With all the various options available to you, it also makes it truly feel like your own weapon as you stare at the Frankenstein-like shotgun you’ve mashed together with pride.

This love for detail extends to other areas of the game too. When you’re nearby to factions you’ve interacted with before, they’ll talk about Artyom and discuss his actions in previous encounters. One example came after I was escaping a crazed cult, giving both barrels to anyone who dared block my escape route until one gentleman threw his hands in the air in surrender. I may love a good shotgun blast, but I’m no monster, so I let him live. I knocked him out and took his stuff, though. Fine, I’m a bit of a monster, alright?

Anyway, when I was next sneaking about in the presence of these cultists, they discussed the events pretty much exactly as they unfolded and added that Artyom wasn’t completely beyond redemption because he showed mercy. They did condemn him for killing people in the first place, though. It’s cool to hear them discuss these events alongside hearing their opinion of your approach. It leaves you feeling like you’ve made a genuine impact on the region.

It’s things like this that make me love Metro even though its gameplay places it as a fairly mediocre title. The shooting leaves a lot to be desired which makes fighting some enemy types a pain, and whilst attempting to mix up the level types is admirable, it doesn’t always work. But all the smaller details, like the autosave indicator showing the distance you’ve travelled from the Metro and getting to know and love the crew that accompanies your journey aboard the Aurora makes it a far more enjoyable time than it otherwise would be.

7/10

Homefront: The Revolution review

Homefront: The Revolution seemed destined to be dead on arrival. If it even arrived at all. After changing developers and game engine a couple of times, it’s fair to say it had a tumultuous development, and I suppose it’s a miracle it ever saw the light of day. Naturally, this rocky development journey led the internet hordes to write the game off as terrible before seeing the starting menu. It’s at this point I’d like to say Homefront is a cracking game, but sadly it’s not.

It’s more thematically linked to the original Homefront than being a direct sequel. Homefront was a generic, linear first-person shooter. Whereas Homefront: The Revolution has loftier ambitions, attempting to be a sort of urban Far Cry in a bombed-out version of Philadelphia. You will be capturing outposts, upgrading your guns and character attributes like your ammo capacity. The Far Cry influence is there for all to see.

The plot deals with North Korea taking over America through some sneaky use of technology. Walker, leader of the resistance, has been captured, so it’s up to you and your resistance buddies to find a way to get him back because apparently there’s no way the uprising could ever happen without him. This is ironic, considering you seem perfectly capable of inspiring the masses through your actions in the game.

However, it does serve to make you feel like you’re genuinely part of a resistance. You’re often poorly equipped with cobbled-together weaponry that looks delightfully DIY, often relying on hit-and-run tactics rather than a sustained gunfight – a certain way to get yourself killed. It makes you feel like you’re attempting to operate from underground, making a difference when you can instead of fighting a whole army on your lonesome.

On your journey of civilian liberation, you’ll find yourself knocking around two different area types for the most part – Red Zones and Yellow Zones. Red Zones are where the resistance is strongest, with gun caches and traps scattered about the place. Here the North Koreans have a shoot-on-sight policy, so if you’re spotted rummaging amongst the rubble, you can expect a squadron of soldiers on your position fairly sharpish. Yellow Zones are the more interesting of the two as this is where you can promote your uprising better.

This is because you can gain a great sense of satisfaction from inspiring the populace to rise up. Once you’ve filled the ‘hearts and mind’ bar to 100%, you’ll see a cutscene of civilians overthrowing their oppressors, and it does genuinely feel like you’ve made a small but vital difference. Getting this bar to 100% is a little tedious though, you’ll often find yourself sabotaging enemy equipment or switching on radios to the resistance broadcast, which quickly starts to feel like a grind once it becomes a mission objective for the umpteenth time.

Homefront’s version of Far Cry’s radio towers, which resemble intricately designed bombed-out buildings, are the more enjoyable part of these liberation quests. They essentially act as puzzles that have you navigate through various places to reach your goal. This will see you looking for blue paint that indicates the way to go before making your way up these buildings. It’s certainly a lot more enjoyable and varied than climbing up a vertical radio tower, that’s for sure.

But, while Homefront has done wonders in terms of atmosphere and setting, the gameplay and general performance do their best to undo all of this good work and largely succeed. The framerate on the PS4 is pretty poor, with outdoor areas dipping low enough that playing the game feels like a real chore. On top of this, every time the game autosaves, it will freeze for a few seconds like it’s trying to comprehend how a fire could start at a Sea Parks. It makes the game hard to play for more than a few hours at a time simply because it can just become too frustrating.

It’s not just optimisation issues either. The AI in the game sometimes behaves in a variety of bizarre and reasonably hilarious ways. Sometimes they will start running around in circles because their pathfinding has been interrupted or leap into a fire and be too stubborn to admit they’re burning alive. There’s a mission where one of your fellow resistance members stands in the middle of a gunfight, looking slightly perturbed that people keep shooting at him, despite his obvious imperviousness to bullets. It’s the kind of thing that you encounter in most games from time to time, but the frequency here is alarming, and it certainly kills the atmosphere they were going for.

But it doesn’t stop there. In the Red Zones, there are motorbikes scattered about the place. Their intended use is for you to zip around the map completing outposts, but the problem is they’re awful and often get stuck on invisible terrain, making them harder to drive than they already are. The video game staple of running people down is completely ruined by it. Yes, you can kill a man by running them over with your bike, but you’ll clip through their body and only hear their sounds of anguish before feeling the need to turn around to check you did get them. I found running more effective in the end.

The gunplay is also lacklustre, which is a shame given how much thought went into the weapons. Each weapon can be modified, with scopes and grips that you can switch on the fly. Furthermore, they all have the option of being converted into a different weapon. For example, the pistol can become a sub-machine gun, and the pump-action shotgun can become automatic. You can do this whenever you choose, and it helps support the mentality of ‘make the most of what you have’ a resistance is likely to have.

But for the most part, the guns have no kick. The aiming feels loose, and you’ll find yourself sighing as your assault rifle’s bullets sail past an enemy the reticule is clearly on. Now you could say this might be deliberate to force you to choose your moments more carefully and whatnot, but to be honest, if you say your game is a first-person shooter, the shooting needs to be better than this.

It might surprise some people to discover that Homefront: The Revolution ever got released at all, and with the current state of the PS4 version, I can’t understand why it was. It has some good ideas and is even enjoyable at times, but the myriad of performance issues and frequently questionable gameplay make me wonder why the game was released now. I guess the developers were fed up with it. I know I am.

4/10