Metro Exodus



Story/Atmosphere
I will judge the game itself not what happened around the whole "e" thing.

Metro game series are already a legendary piece of game history. The 3rd game in this series, Metro Exodus, is more then worthy descendant! It introduces open world, intense and immersive story, a crafting and weapon mod system and wodka!
I will not spoil so much about the story, but forget the dark ones from the past, forget metro tunnels, at least for 90% of the game, and welcome an open world with crazy characters, hungry shrimps and 3 or 4 climate zones. Basically you will enjoy your adventure in all climate zones: swamp and marshes, desert and forest.
You will meet a lot of crazy characters, some easter eggs, especially in the desert level , you will love them and you will spend a lot more time in the train then you wanted :-)
The most important thing in this game was the atomsphere and they did it really very good! You need to be careful all the time, go out in the night for hard missions, check always left and right, save your ammo and materials, check always what your team friends have to say. You will be curious the whole time: can i climb this tower, can i reach this island, can i get this thing etc etc.
Metro Exodus is definitely a master piece in my eyes and worth to play it more then one time!


Technical/Gameplay
You need a good PC to play it in extreme or ultra settings: i7 CPU, at least 1070 GTX and i guess even 16 GB RAM to get 60-100 fps. In my case on extreme settings the 1st huge map was the best in performance, 60-120 fps, almost no drops to 30. The 2nd and 3rd huge maps were not so good optimized, 2nd map was like constant 40-50 fps, 3rd was like 60. But overall the graphic quality was very good BUT some textures were wishy-washy, even if you go near them, but i think it was simply not possible to make all textures ultra sharp, cause imagine how long it would take to design a big ultra sharp metro world.
I played with Russian audio synchro and English subtitles, but you could see at least in 1st levels that the lip synchro is not fitting in millisecond range. Later it was ok or maybe you get used to it.
The crafting or weapon mod system is one of the highlights in this game: You need to search for new mods and materials and deconstruct or replace all enemy weapons. Weapons getting dirty with time and it's really crucial in the middle of fight to have clean weapons not to get weapon jaming. Imagine you play on Ranger Hardcore difficulty, your weapon get jamed and you are dead cause 3 cicimores reached you in this time.
Last advice: play it in Ranger Hardcore mode, if not on 1st run then on 2nd, this is the true way to play a Metro game! I still need to play it on 2nd run :-)


This rating system is my personal opinion and not to be intended to replace a professional rating system in any way!
Rating (% * X / 100, sum of all as final rating X/10)


My personal rating is

Conclusion
Brilliant game, more then worthy descendant of Metro 2033 and Last Light! Metro feeling in an open world, a thrilling story, unforgettable characters and passion for collection of materials :-)


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Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation



Story/Atmosphere
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation is still in Early Access but will be fully released in lesser then 1 week.

Demon apocalypse happend, the hellgates are open, demons are invading the country. You start your survival on a camping site with your friends and need to fight the strange enemy. You realize that you are in trouble and need to find a secure place to plan next moves. So far the spoiler-free story and yes there is a story campaign with animated intro sequence and an option to play sandbox game.

You are progressing from one mission to next mission and the difficulty rises, but of course you should be prepared. If you rush in the campaign you will loose. You need to build a strong base to defend yourself from demon waves, recruit or rescue new people, craft new weapons and research new stuff.

The mixture of all this is what makes Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation a superb game. It's the "one more move, one more day, one more new item" effect which we know from other good games. "Judgment" conveys the atmosphere of demonic apocalypse in an interesting style: cities are burning, bodies and blood are everywhere and you are looting strange things.


Technical/Gameplay
As you start a new game you can decide whether you want to play a story or a sandbox game. In tutorial you will be taught how to survive and then you are on your own. In a sandbox game you simply start without any story.

Interesting point is that as you start new game there is a "map seed" generated for this random map, means if another user starts the game with the same seed number one can play the same map/game. You can customize your three starting characters to a certain degree: you can modify clothes etc and roll/dice for skills till you are happy. Each character has skills like "hobo" etc, means for example "awareness" is decreased by -20%.
Awareness is important in this game, as it is increasing every day. I think that at 50% or more filled awareness progression enemies can attack your base anytime and the more survivers you get, the faster is rises. You can reduce it with buildings, patrols and skills.

The most time you will be in your base, researching a lot of stuff like new weapons, talismans etc, crafting them, building new structures and train your people. But sooner or later you need to go out and scavange for new stuff. On a very huge map you are moving with your squad to points of interest and enter locations. You can either fight all enemies and auto-collect all stuff or simply scavange the stuff. You can also autoresolve all fights, in this way it's faster to loot simply too many locations, maybe there are like over 300 locations, if not more?

A small negative point, the game is locked to 60 fps, but more then 60 are not really necessary.
During the whole 20 hours of playtime i had no crashes, i could save at any timepoint (except in fight maps) and the difficulty was rising in a reasonable way.

If you like survival RPGs or simply RPGs, then definitely grab this game and you will have many hours of fun and joy!
Demon apocalypse survival kit not included :-)


This rating system is my personal opinion and not to be intended to replace a professional rating system in any way!
Rating (% out of 100% * X out of 10, sum of all as final rating X/10)


My personal rating is

Conclusion
That's how a nice survival game should be: rescue people, train them (RPG elements), craft stuff and build all sorts of buildings in your own base, crush the becoming stronger enemy and bury your comrades just to gain the essence.


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