Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
Metro Exodus feels like a poor clone of Fallout 3 & 4. The environments, mutants and guns all feel similar, but it just feels lacking in so many ways. I suffered through Metro 1 and 2, hoping I would eventually enjoy them... which I didn't much. With Exodus being so highly praised I was hoping that this might be good, but aside from some minor differences like the size of the environments you're in (it's not really "open world", it's just slightly less linear), it's pretty much the same as the first two games but with significantly worse voice acting and writing.
Pros
- Interesting story, or at least a premise as to why you leave the metro
- Same great environments with lots of detail in them
Cons
- It's the same engine as the Redux versions of 1 and 2, so all the same pitfalls apply. Buggy scripted events, weapons that don't tell you what they do when you find them, and wonky movement
- If you play on a widescreen monitor, the game forces you to play on widescreen. There's no way to play at 16:9 - but all the subtitles and loading screens are all squished as it tries to fit a widescreen into a 16:9 box in the middle
- Unskippable long cutscenes every time you open the game
- Long load times on an SSD
- You can’t adjust system volume while the game is open
- The combat is just as bad as the first two games
- Graphics are good, but feel dated for 2019. I guess that's because it's the same as the 2014 Redux engine
- The "moral points" system for good or bad endings based on whether you stab or knock out bad guys is simplistic and annoying
- Over the top amount of cutscenes and quick time events. Sometimes it's hard to tell if I'm actually in a fight or watching another quicktime event
- The story starts with you getting shot in the face and falling backwards off a cliff... then you get up and carry on as if nothing happened. It's later revealed that your dog tag saved you from the bullet.... right.
- In lots of sections where NPCs have story dialogue, they all talk over the top of each other, which makes it difficult to work out what's going on - like they're not quite timed correctly
- The voice acting and animation of NPCs is terrible. It really reminded me of an amateur play at the theatre
- Although Artyom doesn't talk in either of the two previous games, it feels even weirder in this one because so many people talk to him. There are lots of dialogues where people seem to just pretend that he replied to them and carry on talking to themselves