Metro Exodus (Download) (PC)

Metro Exodus hat bereits in der Urversion mit Raytracing eine gute Beleuchtung. Die PC Enhanced Edition legt die Messlatte aber nochmal locker ein paar Stufen höher.

Zur generellen Performance ohne Raytracing sei gesagt, dass Metro Exodus erfreulich flüssig läuft: Mit einer Geforce GTX 1060 und einer Radeon RX 580 erreichen wir in 1080p mit Ultra-Details noch 50 fps, eine Radeon VII schafft in 1440p über 70 fps und in 4K noch um die 40 fps - das ist allerdings nur auf dem Niveau einer Gefore RTX 2070.

Metro Exodus ist grafisch ein teils spektakuläres Spiel geworden. Ab und zu kann man auch das eigentliche Spiel vergessen und genießt einfach die wunderschöne Schneelandschaft. Nicht nur optisch bietet der dritte Teil viel, die PC-Version kommt noch mit zahlreichen Nvidia-Features daher. HairWorks und PhysX machen von diesen optisch aber nur einen kleinen Unterschied.

Dies ist das Ende der Tage: Echte Endzeit in einem geschickten Mix aus linear und offen, erzählerisch stark und spielerisch ausgereift.

With the graphics card gone through, all that is left is this conclusion. Quickly reviewing the Minimum and Maximum Acceptable Qualities I decided on, none of the options for Quality seemed wasted, with Low being an acceptable minimum and Extreme offering improvements over Ultra. The RTX ray-tracing does have an impact on the visuals, but I am left unimpressed by it as I spotted some artifacts with it.

Does Metro Exodus make it worth returning to this post-apocalyptic Russia? If you are a fan of the previous games, as I admittedly am, I certainly think it is. It has the Metro gameplay I have enjoyed over the years, and the storytelling too, with some changes and additions both to improve upon the proven formula and to bring the experience to a broader world.

There have always been shades of gray in the Metro franchise, but until now the darker shades dominated its emotional and moral landscapes. Metro Exodus is more of an overcast spring afternoon. On my journey aboard the Aurora, I encounter pockets of humanity that have already lost hope. But on this train, beside my friends and family, there's still hope yet.

On the topic of RTX, Metro Exodus shows us exactly what is possible using Ray Tracing, delivering lighting that far exceeds that is available without Nvidia's RTX graphics card, adding a lot to the game's atmosphere, but at a high hardware cost.

Far from just another map-clearing game, Metro's first above-ground outing is an atmospheric, characterful voyage across a ruined Russia.

Narrative hiccups aside, Metro Exodus is great, a hugely enjoyable adventure that manages to balance dynamic survival with a strong narrative drive and throws in some cracking gunfights to boot. It delivers almost exactly what I hoped for, and surprised me here and there as well. Thoroughly recommended.

So there we have it, the new GPU crushing render weapon that is Metro Exodus. Few games punish graphics cards quite as much as this game did. Keep in mind that maxing this game out on a flagship i9-9900K with a 2080 Ti with all the bells and whistles turned on resulted in around 30 FPS. People are going to be benchmarking this game for a few years under the phrase “Can It Run Exodus” and I don’t blame them.

Overall Metro looks like it might be one of the biggest successes this year. Gameplay is excellent, graphics are top-notch, all the latest technologies are supported. Personally I'll play it using RTX enabled, on my 1600p monitor, with DLSS disabled because I prefer crispness over the extra FPS.