Metro Exodus Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

Downs

4. The Opening Hour Is Terrible

Metro: Exodus makes an abysmal first impression.

There’s a lot of hoops the game has to jump through in the first hour or two to get these characters out of the metro stations and into the wild. From a story perspective - even if you’ve played the other games - you can feel completely lost, as the sequel tries to get you up to speed after an admittedly stellar opening cutscene.

From here, you’re funnelled from one linear set-piece to the next, as control is completely wrangled away from you and you’re forced into rote combat encounters. It doesn’t help that the game does a pretty poor job of explaining how it works, either, with mechanics having to be felt out for yourself if you miss the quick prompts that introduce them all.

It doesn’t reflect the experience at all, and it might put players off until they get to the game’s proper opening in the first open-world area.