The last two weeks of 2023 were chaos when it came to video games. On their respective Saturdays I told you about my return to No Man’s Sky, my therapeutic afternoons in PowerWash Simulator and finally about the video games I planned to play during the last days of 2024: Destiny 2, the God of War Ragnarök DLC, perhaps Baldur’s Gate 3… Well, it’s all lies.
While enjoying a well-deserved rest during the last week of 2023, the Norns began to weave a new destiny. They completely ruled out PowerWash Simulator and they put me on a very different path. They began by leading me to update my list of anticipated video games (tremendous excitement awaits me in 2024) and to focus once again on STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl.
I took a look at the official channels, downloaded the entire Press Kit and was looking through all the videos, screenshots, concepts… Needless to say, I’m very excited. So much so that I recently told you about STALKER Anomaly and GAMMA. I looked to my left, where I have the shelf with all my games, and my eyes fell on Metro Exodus. “Did they release two DLCs that I haven’t played? And on top of that, a PS5 version,” I thought while weighing options.
As fate would have it (blessed Norns) the Expansion Pass of Metro Exodus It was discounted in the PS Store to a paltry 6 dollars. Two DLCs, The Two Colonels y Sam’s Storyat the price of a couple of pints of beer and cheaper than a Big Mac. It took me less than a minute to accept the purchase, make the payment and insert the disc into my PS5 to download everything.
Metro Exodus and my hope in second chances
I have never been one to give video games second chances, but 2023 gave me ample proof that returning to sites to reevaluate verdicts is a great idea… at least when it comes to the topic at hand.
The first time I played Metro Exodus was during its release in 2029 and PS4, and suffice to say, it wasn’t a remarkable experience. I finished, uninstalled, and the game has been collecting dust on my shelf until the last week of 2023. I’ve replayed Metro 2033 and Last Light on several occasions over the years, but the third installment has never been very engaging.
There are two reasons why Metro Exodus I didn’t like it: 4A Games spends three towns with the monsters (again) and the hitboxes are very average. We are not talking about the cl assic case of “I hit it, but I am terrible”, but rather a statement based on practical evidence. They are not the worst I have seen, but we are talking about a game in which every bullet is gold.
On the other hand, the franchise Metro It has never stopped causing me true love. It is true that I am fascinated and enjoy each installment as much as anyone, but I deeply dislike that monsters or mutated animals have so much presence… and let’s not talk about bosses in monster form. In this last case we can already talk about bad design in all three deliveries.
Still, I always come back. This time I wanted to give it a more immersive and tactical vibe to resemble it a little bit to the videos of the brainjacket in Anomaly and GAMMA. I chose to touch the settings to reduce the shooting assist, touch brightness and contrast to make the darkness real darkness, disable the HUD crosshair and turn down the music volume… although I should have turned it off completely. The features of the PS5 version did the rest.
After completing the main story for the second time, I came to several conclusions: Metro Exodus It’s very pretty, it’s wild on a graphic and artistic level, the hitboxes are still bad and the Metro franchise would be infinitely better if it left the monsters for specific places/moments. Their value and ability to intimidate would be much greater.
I have always believed that the perfect Metro experience should have human conflicts (social, economic and political) and the nuclear apocalypse as protagonists, and the monsters should be secondary and should completely dispense with bosses.
I want to qualify something. When I say that the nuclear apocalypse should be the protagonist, I am not referring to a narrative level (which it already is), but to a mechanical level. The settings, the world, should be another enemy as fearsome as humans or monsters. I explain myself in a small list:
- The use of the mask and filters It’s fine, although I would add the possibility of finding half-used and worn filters.
- Radiation and its effects They should have more penalty with side effects. Slowing of movement, coughing and noise when breathing (preventing stealth) and even slight loss of life if untreated. This would lead to introducing new objects to alleviate the effects. If you have played The Two Colonels DLC, you know what I’m talking about with “the green thing.”
- Walk through the world of Metro It should be more dangerous. I would add more traps, unstable areas, flooded or covered in gases, landslides, anomalies… Introducing problems to solve, beyond the monsters, would be a great success.
If I’m honest, I’ll do (almost) anything to reduce the monsters, or at least to get rid of the big ones in the form of bosses; and I think that accentuating the dangers of the environment and introducing problems to solve would be good for two reasons: it increases resource management (craftable to solve said problems) and the variety of challenges.
This is not something that came to me in a tantrum with Metro Exodus, I have thought a lot about exchanging opinions with friends and playing the two DLCs for the first time. And precisely these last two have shown me that 4A Games is more than prepared to change Metro in this direction.
The Two Colonels and the environment as an enemy
First I played The Two Colonels. This is a side story during Artyom’s last mission in Metro Exodus. It is told through Colonel Miller and the young Kirill Khlebnikov, son of the protagonist Colonel Khlebnikov. We see what the last days were like at the Novosibirsk stations.
The DLC is 2-3 hours long, its story is great and I don’t mind admitting that the ending brought a few tears to my eyes. Although the most important thing is that it uses the environment as an enemy through Rot, a type of fungus that spreads through the tunnels and has its own defense methods. We must use Colonel Khlebnikov’s flamethrower to burn everything from his defense methods to the nests of some very annoying worms.
Sam’s Story and humans as main enemies
Surely many Metro fans are shaking their heads when reading this: the DLC Sam’s Story It has been the experience that I have enjoyed the most of the entire franchise. In this case, it is an epilogue starring Sam, a former United States Marine who intends to cross the Pacific Ocean to return home. And that’s precisely what the second Exodus DLC is about!
Sam takes us to the ruins of Vladivostok, a port city, which involves a new mapping (open area) with an authentic Metro story. The area is completely controlled by humans and the remaining creatures are grouped in abandoned spots. First positive point: 80% of the confrontations are against bastards armed to the teeth.
Vladivostok had another surprise in store for me: traps bursting at the seams. It’s not a figure of speech. Within the first few minutes, we get new weapons (a gorgeous M1911 and a modified AK) and a metal detector for the wristband. It is important, because it marks weapons with green dots and traps with red dots.
Walking through some areas of Vladivostok was real torture (in a good way). There are exteriors full of mines and interiors full of homemade traps, not to mention snipers, ambushes, and damn mutants running around. After being shot by a sniper, I began to think twice about crossing streets or esplanades calmly or looking through windows as if nothing had happened.
In conclusion: The Two Colonels y Sam’s Story They have shown me that Metro can evolve into something I can love with all my soul. I really enjoyed this second game and managed to kill the STALKER 2 bug for a few days. This was the good decision of 2023. The bad decision of 2024 is that I am now immersed in a gaming crisis: I want more and there is none… at least until GSC Game World deigns to say something. Happy New Year!
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