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Metro Exodus: Spirit Tracks

I’m about half-way through the main campaign and so far I’m very surprised by what the game is doing. First of all, they ditched the claustrophobic subway tunnels and subway stations that made up the majority of the environments in the first two games, and basically broke them up and scattered them across large open world maps while still maintaining the oppressive and depressing atmosphere. Second, the game is slow, but that’s okay because you’re a scavenger and a survivor, not an overpowered super soldier running and gunning down everything you see moving in order to collect new guns and ammo like an arcade shooter, although ‘easy mode’ lets you do this more freely if you just want to get through the story. Actually, the environments are scarce with ammo which encourage you to explore for scraps to craft ammunition and weapon items. Your guns will jam on you if you don’t regularly clean them.  Also using stealth gameplay to take down enemies in the dark conserves more ammo, so there is benefit in using a safehouse to change the day to night to make sneaking around easier. Sometimes running away is a good strategy and killing monsters in the open world won’t reward you with any items so there is no point in killing everything.  The maps are pretty open with one main objective always clearly marked on your map to progress the story, but taking out your binoculars and searching for high ground to scout out the scenery will add more points of interest on your map for you to explore at your own pace and in any order. If you want to find potential upgrades to your guns or gear, or if you just want to explore the area and diverge from the main quest, the maps are large enough to let you do that, then get back on the story track when you want to move on. There is also transportation in this game. Well, actually, there was a buggy rail car that you used in the first two metro games but they were mostly on a track. Here you have to steal a train car from a rail yard and drive it to another rail yard to attach a passenger car and then join up and connect it to the main engine which takes you to the next map, like Zelda Spirit Tracks, or Bioshock 2 monorail. Within each map, there are alternative forms of transportation, like in the first map, the train yard is flooded, so you have to get around by row boat, the next area in a desert, lets you drive around in a beat up van. 

That’s all I have for now. I think, overall, the developers made a lot of smart decisions in opening the world up to a larger scale while still maintaining a survival theme like Metal Gear V or Far Cry 2. Considering how big Russia is, they can set multiple sequels in these areas while still maintaining it’s survival theme. Oh yeah, there are still pockets of radiation in the world maps so the gas mask is still essential. So, basically it’s like a lot of games: Fallout 4, Metal Gear V, Far Cry 2, Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Dying Light (creatures come out at night), Stalker, Escape from Tarkov. It’s good. Play it! It’s always on sale for like $15 on ‘psn store’.

Side Note: I didn't read the last book 'Metro: 2035' so I'm not sure if the characters ever left the subway. It seems to me that exploring the surface, or traveling away from moscow and into the countryside was a departure from the books, which I think was a good idea in any case.