Metro Exodus - Sam's Story

Great Expansion with a few hours of roughly linear progression with a few moments in which you can explore a bit. Not enough Checkpoints though which can be really frustrating!!

Invisible walls everywhere, dumb protagonist, sad excuse for a story. It has plenty of bugs, overpowered new gun that is not affected by dirt, few boss fights that almost had me stop playing and crashes. Finishing it was a chore and I can't recommend it to anyone.

First and foremost, this review is specifically for people like me that love the Ranger Hardcore mode and won't play Metro any other way. Here's the thing, this DLC is completely broken on the RH mode. As you may know, for some reason, someone thought it would be a fantastic idea to completely remove manual saving from Exodus' RH mode. Because of this, you must rely entirely on the game's checkpoint system. The checkpoint system in the base game was already pretty bad, but in this DLC it's much worse. If you are playing on RH, you can and will lose hours of progress on death, and will have to do everything you just did over again. And if you get to that same combat encounter and die again (which you probably will, it is RH after all), guess what? Several hours of progress, gone. Here's the thing, I don't mind if I die a lot. In fact, it's what I signed up for. I really enjoy how impactful RH can be, when one stray bullet to the skull is all it takes. I like that. It's specifically what I play the Metro games for (that and the fully diegetic HUD, which is also only available in RH). What I don't like is that after finding an abondoned building, slowly making my way through it, finding resources and equipment, fighting off mutants with the little ammo I have, hastily crafting medpacks and ammo to keep myself alive, and finally making it back out of the building, having gathered what I need ready to move on, I cannot save my game. And this is such an easy issue to fix, manual saving is in the game, just don't turn it off in the RH mode. But this game is nearly 3 years old at time of writing, they haven't fixed it yet, so I doubt they ever will, and it's such a shame. I wish I could love this game. I want to love this game, but I just can't. Naturally, if you do not play on RH, you won't have this issue, and hopefully you'll enjoy this DLC. However, if you do play on RH, don't even bother. The checkpoint problems make this a waste of time and a waste of money.

+ Atmosphere created by the gorgeous graphics, stirring sound effects, and authentic post-apocalyptic world provides immersive, occasionally even tense exploration. + Decent gunplay, combined with the above, leads to the odd bout of weighty violence. - Voiced protagonist is such a knockoff action hero cheese factory that I was begging for a return to the main game’s silent simpleton. - Sam's one-liners aren’t only idiotic on paper, but they’re outright suicidal considering he bellows them in places where being quiet is supposed to be crucial; they perpetually pulled me right out of the gripping world. - When the story takes a break from being predictable or clichéd, it’s only to demonstrate just how patronizingly contrived it can be. - Deceptively linear . . . some points of no return cut me off from fulling exploring an area sooner than expected. There are also invisible walls galore. - The game still refuses to allow you the agency of directly finishing an action set piece. - Most characters are such theatrical half-wits it’s as if they’re proud of it. - Numerous obvious enemy trigger/spawn points - Insipid boss encounters - Uninspired music - Pathetic QTEs - AI ain’t great

Three stars only because it is not standalone, otherwise four.