I've been hesitating for a really long time about playing Metro Exodus, becausw it's *gasp* an open-world game, that annoying fad that made so many potentially great games bloated and clunky. I also think the second game was much weaker than the first. But I finally got it a week ago, and it turns out to not be an open-world game at all. It just has very large outdoor levels. It's still a mostly linear story focused game, it just lets you freely chose the paths you take between sites and the direction from which you try to sneak up on the enemies. It's pretty fantastic.
I'm also really happy that after watching the first announcement trailer, I've only seen two screenshots of a desert before playing this. I have absolutely no idea where anything is going, which is especially nice because that game is basically a long odyssey with the character themselves having no clue what their destination is or what they are looking for. They have to go forward, because they can not go back. And they have no idea what awaits them. And in the first two hours or so, there was pretty much one big bombshell every 10 minutes. Then after the first open region, the game throws every available trick at you to hint that something is wrong and something bad's gonna happen. And it does, in possibly one of my favorite moments of escalation in fiction. The only thing that bugs me a little is that this third game is so very much different from the first in it's environment and atmosphere, but it's still great. Just different.
I was a bit puzzled about the extremely divergent reception the game had in february, but apparently the complaints were primarily about technical issues on PC. Now on PS4 I am having no technical issues, other than ot would be nice if loading times could be a bit shorter. But in what the game actually gives you in gameplay, story, and style, this really is excelent. It's a fantastic game.
