VideoGame A journey through tunnels and wastes
I'm a diehard STALKER fan, so I had gotten -mildly- hyped about the idea of Metro leaving the tunnels and moving into the open, especially after hearing that each level would be a sandbox on its own.
Being the nutcase that I am, I picked the highest possible difficulty for my playthrough. Exodus stays faithful to its predecessors in this regard: ranger hardcore is unforgiving, very rarely allowing you a second mistake. A few shots at most will drop Artyom, if not the first hit outright. On top of it, enemies being very alert and perceptive means you have to play it as a stealth game if you want to make any progress at all. The dearth of ammunition and resources available in this setting also forces you to avoid open combat whenever possible, and much of the fun lies in picking your fights wisely.
Once the game moves out of Moscow and into the wastes, the sandbox part kicks in. Or it would, except that it's no sandbox, it's just large open levels. Exodus assigns objectives to you in a linear fashion, and once you've visited an area and achieved your goal there, very rarely will you be returning there if not on your way elsewhere. This is Metro, not STALKER, however much I want it to be. But except for the fact that almost nothing happens without your intervention, it's not bad news. Exodus is an absolute blast to play and a sight to sore eyes. It rewards exploration and subtlety with goodies you won't find otherwise. You'll find new mods and upgrades fairly frequently, almost always accompanied by a tangible sense of accomplishment.
There are a few situations where sneaking is not an option and you must fight it out, and they're exhilarating. Gunfights in Metro are chaotic, frantic and deadly. Weapons pack a punch: you go down in a few hits, but so do most of your enemies. There is something to suit everyone's tastes here, but after having tried every gun, I would suggest not to give in to the temptation of lugging around a large caliber sniper rifle. There are almost no situations you can't solve with either a Bulldog or a Kalash instead, not to mention a well maintained Tikhar or Helsing.
The atmosphere of this game must be experienced to be believed. One can tell the devs had a hand in STALKER because it evokes the same dread. Rusting machinery, crumbling buildings, and dead cities paint the same picture of a world gone. Exodus reaches its zenith in this regard on Novosibirsk - it goes to long lengths to prove that there is life outside Moscow, but this husk of a metropolis is hell on earth, a feeling that only intensifies the urgency you feel to complete your mission before the place claims your life.
Exodus is one hell of a journey. You're not saving the world, you're out to find a place to live in, somewhere untainted by radiation and your fellow man. Other urgencies crop up as the plot unfolds, but that does not change the soul of the game.
VideoGame Solid game with unparalleled beauty
If you're a Metro fan, this game delivers the same winning formula of previous Metro games: a solid core of stealth and shooter mechanics coupled with gorgeous atmosphere and a compelling story. With the addition of open-world levels to spread things out, the game loses some of the dank and dismal nature of the cramped tunnels of previous games...but that is replaced by more than enough creepiness and awe to make up for it. If you aren't already a Metro fan, a few basic pointers: don't kill needlessly, scavenge everything, and explore as much as you can.
VideoGame Trains Good
The Metro game series is one where I enthusiastically jump in and enjoy the atmosphere, the combat, and pretty much everything else about the post-apocalyptic, subterranean shooter, only to peter out after the first 10 hours and stop playing. Metro Exodus is the only game I've managed to finish of the series, so I can finally fairly review the lot of them.
Metro Exodus figured out that something needed to change. the story of previous titles restricted the game to murky subway tunnels and frozen city ruins, and not a lot else. It doesn't matter how much flavour there is to each station, there's only so much you can see before it starts to look and feel the same. Exodus solves this problem by going open world. The premise is that you and your team of elite soldiers have discovered the possibility of a secret safe place beyond the tunnels of Moscow, and so you all steal a steam locomotive to explore the countryside above ground. This change up makes all the difference.
First and foremost, this is a game about constantly fiddling with things: your gasmask, your guns, your equipment, fuse boxes, gears, maps, random bits of scenery. A great deal of effort has been put in by animators to show you interacting with every last thing. It communicates what an exhausting life it must be in this harsh world, where the air is poisonous, your stuff is knackered, your bullets are dwindling, and everything is broken. Shooting is fun and weighty, though the scavenging can be a bit too fiddly; more often than not, I would accidentally swap guns with that of a corpse's, and then have to squat over them vainly trying to find and pick it back up again. It's not helpful when it happens most often in the middle of a firefight.
Exodus wants me to care about a lot of people: my wife, my perpetually angry looking father-in-law, the other passengers on the train, but I mostly didn't care about them. For me, the real main character was the train itself. It's a beaut! Like everything else in this world, it is patchwork and macho and brutal looking, and I never hesitate to wander up and down the beast, inspecting it whenever the game offered the chance.
The open world maps are also a joy to explore. They are not so large that they become tedious to traverse, and more importantly, they lack the typical copy/pasted, repetitive elements of other open world games. And yet they each are still big enough to suggest a wider world full of unique landmarks to explore.
If you are at all interested in Metro:Exodus, give it a try. Don't feel like you need to play the earlier titles, they are still there if you want to try them after Exodus, but I found it the strongest entry and satisfying enough on its own.