I’m standing amidst a jumble of abandoned cars on a crumbling highway. Most of the surrounding skyscrapers, fallen into severe disrepair, no longer kiss the heavens as they once did.

At my feet is a manhole cover, which I open, and I promptly climb down a ladder into the inky black. I click on my lighter to reveal an old sewer with skeletal remains strewn about.

Making my way through the underground chambers, I arrive in the old Metro. Near the entrance lies the corpse of a nightmarish beast with the likeness of a grizzly bear.

As I walk past, the creature abruptly pounces, and I realize too late that it is alive as ever. I find myself in a fight for my life.

This is my first experience with Metro Exodus, by 4A Games. It is the most atmospheric game I have ever played. The amount of detail, lighting and sound effects are effectively deployed to deliberately immerse the player in each setting. This artistry is just one of the many strengths of the game.

The player takes on the persona of a soldier named Artyom, whose ambition is to find other survivors of the Last War outside of his isolated home of the Moscow Metro, which is home to many survivors.

The people of the Metro disapprove of his expeditions to find survivors; they believe the Metro is the last human settlement, and his trips to the surface often leave him injured. They have to use valuable medical supplies to keep him alive.

His biggest critic is the Commander, leader of the Metro’s soldiers and father of Artyom’s wife, Anna, who worries about her husband and as a result tags along with him on one of his expeditions despite her own criticisms of his behavior. It is on this trip that they do find other survivors—a surface militia that kidnaps the pair.

They fight their way out of the militia base, and with the help of a defector, escape with the militia’s precious locomotive.

The three train thieves think they are in the clear when the vehicle is boarded by, surprisingly, the Commander and his men.

As it turns out, the Last War persists through conventional warfare. The “militia” was actually a battalion of the Russian military, and the Commander secretly answered to them.

As the Commander and his men would rather not execute their own, all people on the train become fugitives and take a road trip (er, rail trip) to the country’s new capital to try and get things sorted out.

The game’s realistic art does it no disservice, and although I am in no position to judge the graphical quality due to my choice of platform, the props and details in the environment make every moment intriguing.

In the game’s cutscenes, facial animations shine with a wide range of digitally-created expressions that are nowhere near uncanny. Dialogue is well-written, and the voice acting is performed convincingly and often with profound enthusiasm.

Unlike other post-apocalyptic games such as Fallout, Metro Exodus is a linear game. However, each level is a mini-open world, simulating ecosystems comprised of horrific supermutants, the landscape dotted with fortresses housing the real monsters: humans.

While the player always has a main objective to work towards, the game also provides side objectives (including the aforementioned fortresses), with safe houses for some relief from the dangerous wasteland.

The moment to moment gameplay isn’t all about spraying bullets at anything that dare cross your path. You’ll find yourself seeking a careful position and conserving each pull of the trigger. After all, ammunition is hard to come by, as well as the materials used to craft them, so firing without prejudice can leave you rather unprepared later on.

This is why the game also gives you the option of stealth. Sticking to the shadows, the player can avoid enemies entirely, or use old tin cans and throwing knives to silently divert or dispatch them. The gameplay of Metro Exodus isn’t so much run-and-gun as it is picking your fights, and when you do pick your fights, trying your hardest to make sure you come out unscathed, without wasting a bullet.

Metro Exodus paints a magnificent picture of a world that the player can feel emanating in every facet of its design. You explore a world in which decaying ruins stand as monuments to humanity’s vast infrastructure, and their array of technological miracles rust in the dirt.

Meanwhile, nature not only reclaims but thrives, consisting of beasts born out of the radioactive curse humanity inflicted. As a survivor, your worry is not bills and paychecks but bullets and the clicking of your geiger counter. It is this intense experience that makes it easy to grant Metro Exodus a rating of 94/100.