I tried Crysis several times, and played the multiplayer demo a bunch, and it didn't really click for me, until I played it on the hardest setting and suddenly the game came alive, and it was basically because of the lack of a crosshair and anything that would have made it easier (including the enemies not speaking english anymore). On easier settings it was basically a fancy shooter - something I'm not a big fan of - but on the highest settings it was a really immersive experience.
Hah, yeah I can understand that.
Really there's just a lot more behind every little choice you make, your read on things. I find myself needing to run scenarios a lot. The need to not screw up becomes more real and it makes the game feel more real. You enter a space with active enemies differently when you know that on the other side of that corner entryway may very well be the shotgun blast that kills you immediately, costing you 45 minutes of progress. Now go successfully complete those two other life and death challenges you completed before you died and try to not get detected next time. That's a pretty big incentive for building out your strategy. In metro exodus you almost always have several means at your disposal - most of them situational, with the one you choose coming down to whatever you decide is the best way to manipulate the situation. There's no one dominant strategy, just compromises. I find myself getting a lot more elaborate with my strategies for handling things, read deeper into the mechanics and utilize more of them, because what you have to use is juuuuust enough. You're always at the limits of your firepower, defense options, and ammo. That really does something to how you play a game.
They really amp it up with ME though. It's rough.
Creatures are stronger and deal wicked damage. Plenty of them just one-shotted me at first. It takes attentiveness to deal with them - you can avoid them or at least better position yourself for contact if you're ahead on their behavior, but you have to watch them like you're watching actual animals, in a way, because the signals for different things are slight. You hunt them - do it clean. You have to think it through and react appropriately, focus on keeping control. Know all of your means and place em right to wrangle the chaos. Never get caught engaging in a bad spot. Constant factors playing in as you move across pretty vast spaces at a slow speed. So you have to do it that way. Just traveling from place to place on the map can be a dire friggin endeavor if you don't pretend like you're in bear country and you need to nab about 4 of em without getting mauled by a pack of stinkin bears. Something a little bit like that will happen.
It's similar with humans. You have to read the space and really play your cover like chess because if you get hit once it's a good 50% on you dying right there. If more than one enemy is ready/positioned to shoot you simultaneously, you're laid out.
They're all highly perceptive, too. The very moment a human sees you or hears you, they will just shoot you. You likely won't have a warning that they're about to see you. Often the angles have that point being the exact axis when you are first able to see them. You can execute combos and cut stealth lines through them but you gotta thread the needle to pull it off and if you do get caught...
The threshold between *noticing* and *noticed* is just that paper thin. Unless you manage to toss a knife knowing they're *about* to see you, you're not getting out of it. You have to do some western bar shootout moves. And it is possible but you have to decipher and pull a complex sequence very quickly. You're going to need to deal with multiple combatants right away, one chance at each... at best. Hope you had a cover plan that gets you out in 2 seconds or less. Really! Beasts are slightly less aware (or maybe less concerned.) But lets just say it's highly unlikely you're going to stealthily pluck many of them off. It's almost impossible to engage a single monster without alerting others. You can use it to make an entry at a point of your choosing - lead them, set them up right. But that route requires attention too.
That kinda stuff does make it extremely satisfying to pull off kills, though.
They really make you rough it, too. You're plopped down on these big maps with a lot to traverse through and not a lot to work with along the way. The map is dotted with safehouses where you can rest/wait/heal, service/upgrade your guns, and craft ammo. They take a lot of the workbenches for the weapons part out. You have to go through more stuff before you can clean your guns, or clean upgrades you found before installing them. This makes it easier to lose a gun totally in the middle of place where you might really need it. Maybe you got in a jam and had to sprint across a muddy clearing and through some bushes. In just a few seconds your AK became much closer to useless to you and with just a little use will actually BE useless. Ammo is much scarcer, as is the stuff to make it. And unlike with other difficulties, you can only carry a little bit of materials. So more jam-prone weapons are jamming and spitting bullets like watermelon seeds ~ in every direction but forward. You can't hoard enough to be replenishing much extra in the meantime, you just use what you have in the best way possible when you get that rare workbench spot. You're scraping by and risking basically everything you have on you just to get the stuff you're actually gonna need. Even when you're exploring and looting, it's never mindless. There's always an immediate need and goal behind it that you yourself need to be forming an plotting your way up to, and the process of doing it requires your full attention because you will be constantly navigating high-stakes situations just getting to the places.
Everything is open to you. You can choose what you do and how you do things, but everything has to be so much more deliberate. A dumb choice or lapse in awareness in a seemingly safe moment will kill you even when the obvious danger is simple. No do-overs means you execute with skill and know-how. Approach it with direction. If that fails, you need to quickly change modes on your thinking and adapt as calmly as possible. Find the lever, essentially.
The best way I can describe it... it feels like you're on an epic expedition with dozens and dozens of extra-intense chapters interspersed. Honestly, it's cool how well the gameplay experience meshes with the story concept and theming. Many times, one of those things will be almost arbitrary... as I believe you were referencing with your 'fancy shooter' remark. Metro Exodus has that 'whole package' thing, where it all comes together when you max it out.
Reminds me of PC Halo MCC Reach Invasion! But, then the other day, seemingly out-of-nowhere, I got a "yoink"! I managed to make a kill before another on the same team could finish it, LOL!
Hah, don't know anything about that one but it makes me think back on playing the first 3 halo games through on legendary with friends. If you came in and said you didn't play them on legendary, it was like saying you didn't care for something like drinking water. I haven't played any of those in forever but I remember those being a whole different kind of balls to the wall.
Just heavily sustained nonsense. Meth is what you need. Or the energy of late-teenage testosterone climbing and lots of caffeine. I will say, I don't think the level design and AI in those games gets enough credit. In some ways I'd say it's better than the average for newer shooters.
