After last year’s E3 reveal, Metro Exodus has been pretty quiet. This year the game is back with a new trailer and a release window of Spring 2019. Following up the good ending of Metro Last Light, Exodus takes a bold new approach to the series with more open world style levels in the snowy Russian north.
After a quick unexpected stop aboard a train, I was let loose to explore the unforgiving world. With minimal bullets, I began my journey. The first mission presented to me was to check out the camped settlers that were the cause behind the train stopping. Right off the bat is where Exodus showed its openness as I didn’t have to fulfill that objective first if I didn’t want to do so. The first thing I noticed was how great the game looked running on Xbox One X. Despite being desolate, the snowy landscape looked amazing. I decided to head under the bridge, find a boat, and head to the waypoint on my map.
My trip across the lake was not very pleasant, as there was some kind of mutant monster swimming under my boat making ominous ripples. Lucky for me, it mostly left me alone. I disembarked the boat and headed towards the waypoint. I found a small destroyed house along the way where I was greeted very abruptly by a mutant who was not pleased to see me (or maybe he was so he could eat me?). This spooked me quite a bit, so naturally I unloaded the few bullets I had on it. After the foe was down (and my nerves were somewhat stable), I began to search around the house. I found a few more bullets, and also used my lighter to burn some cobwebs away that were slowing me down.
I spent the rest of my demo exploring around the area and finding other mutants. In hindsight, I should have been more conservative, because later in the demo when I was trying to clear a rooftop enemy to gain passage to some other survivors, I had quite the time punching mutants to strive. I died. A lot.
Overall, my time with Metro Exodus presented a cold and unforgiving world that will be easy to get lost in. Fans of games that let you lead the way will be in for a treat, with numerous places to explore in each instance of the large world.
