Workers Picks
Along with our essential Game of the Year Awards 2021, every member of the PC Gamer workforce is shining a highlight on a sport they liked this yr. We’ll submit new workers picks, alongside our essential awards, all through the remainder of the month.
The previous yr has left me treasured little time for brand spanking new video games. Huge unfinished pile of gamer guilt, toddler, child, home strikes, yadda yadda. I am nonetheless principally taking part in make amends for the massive swathe of nice PC video games I’ve but to play from the previous few years, not to mention holding on prime of all the things that launched in 2021. However Metro Exodus Enhanced Version put the creepy post-apocalyptic shooter again on my radar once more, forcing me to confront the irradiated nightmare of apres bomb Russia as soon as extra.
And I am so glad it did, as a result of I can now see each element the devs packed into it with out having to resort to the drained cliche of the FPS flashlight. And I am with Hitchcock on this; the suspense and horror is extra tangible when you may see what’s coming for you.
However there’s one thing virtually counterintuitive a couple of sport like Metro Exodus—a traditionally gloomy first individual shooter—making a giant deal out of bettering the lighting. With out desirous to sound too ridiculous, all the things 4A Video games has completed with the Enhanced Version has solely improved the darkness.
In a world of remakes and reimaginings, the Enhanced Version is only that, a technically reworked model of the very same Metro Exodus, besides this time with ray tracing as normal and extra totally labored into the gameworld itself. The unique sport, launched again in 2019, launched some type of half-baked world illumination to the 4A Engine half means via growth, however 2021’s Enhanced Version fully replaces all its canned lighting in favour of much more real looking ray traced results.
And it makes the world of distinction. Although you might not suppose so taking part in the sport in isolation, however solely as a result of the world now appears to be like prefer it ought to. Flipping forwards and backwards between the unique and enhanced variations, you may see how artificially darkish the sport was with all of its pre-baked and faked lighting results.
However now, once I’m roaming the deserted sewers and tunnels of Moscow within the early sport, or exploring bunkers across the Volga, I haven’t got to wind up my flashlight to be in with an opportunity of illuminating the bottom two ft in entrance of me. I get to see the gloriously detailed gameworld the builders lovingly created, with the glow of no matter mutated flora is sprouting out of the flooring and wall shedding new gentle on the mutated fauna that’s inevitably out for my blood.
In a fast-paced shooter you do not all the time get to see so much within the coronary heart of the motion, when the bullets are flying and the claws tearing, however in these tense moments earlier than you pull the set off the brand new gentle with which you’ll see your antagonists simply makes all of them the extra actual.
Outdoors, within the baked air of the Caspian Sea, below that solitary glowing orb within the sky, the influence of the lighting adjustments is inevitably much less pronounced. With a single gentle supply doing all of the heavy lifting there may be treasured little distinction between the unique and enhanced editions of the sport. However the element is all within the shadows.
Positive, it is a daring transfer for a two year-old sport to launch an replace that has ray tracing succesful {hardware} at the least requirement—particularly at a time when bagging a model new graphics card with mentioned capabilities is… powerful, to say the least—however as a free improve the Enhanced Version is the one means I need to play Metro Exodus. And I’ve fortunately began my miserable rail journey yet again.
