METRO EXODUS

Apocalypse now? Only two months to go…

“IT TAKES PLACE ACROSS ONE YEAR, SHIFTING MOOD WITH EACH SEASON.”

Format PS4 ETA 22 Feb Pub Deep Silver Dev 4A Games

Underwhelmed by Fallout 76? Need a dose of solo post-apocalyptic survival? Metro Exodus is your sci-fi saviour in tattered leathers.

Like past games in the series, Exodus looks like an FPS but plays like an RPG. If you go into it with the mindset of a Call Of Duty veteran you’ll burn through resources, attract the attention of a mutant bear, and upset the locals. Basically, you’ll be rat food.

Freed from Moscow’s tunnels, Artyom and his group are taking a train across Russia looking for a safe place to settle. The game takes place across one year, shifting mood with each season.

Survival is the key, and much of your time spent in Exodus’ small open world maps will revolve around scavenging for gear to craft into ammo, items, and traps, and to upgrade your weapons.

How you approach a choke point – be it an enemy camp or a pack of wild animals – is down to you. In our hands-on we need to bypass a bandit camp. On our first play we run in, guns blazing. Second time around we stealthily stalk through the camp picking off enemies, and free a captive we’d missed on our first run. On our third attempt we discover a waterlogged cave, and while it’s littered with traps, it takes us past the camp and we skirt danger. This is just one camp in a map layered with such moments; each can be tackled in different ways and rewards you with new loot and hidden objectives if you have the time, and desire, to try.

PACK IT IN

The fact you can now open your backpack and modify weapons and gear on the go influences your decision making. Needing to take out a band of enemies holed up in an abandoned school building we open our pack, deconstruct one weapon, and rebuild it as a silenced, air-powered pistol.

Freedom comes in other ways, whether that’s choosing which NPCs to align with or missions to tackle, or just scouring the world for story clues and narrative hooks to dig into. Perhaps you’ll meet someone in need of help; what you do next won’t affect the narrative but it will open up new avenues of the world to explore.

There’s a reassuring honesty to playing Exodus. Perhaps it’s the blend of Fallout and BioShock, or its stubborn focus on singleplayer narrative. Either way, you need to get on track with this one.