One of the best single-player first-person shooters of the generation, Metro Exodus is an ideal match for Google’s Stadia platform. Developer 4A Games not only has a pedigree for excellent multi-platform releases, it’s also exhibited strong support in the past for Linux – the underlying platform on which Stadia is based. The question is, just how has 4A chosen to make use of the system’s Intel-based CPU and 10.7 teraflop GPU and is the expectedly superior level of performance we expect delivered by Google’s cloud-based servers?
Let’s cut to the chase – there’s one thing above all others that I respect about this version: the coreimage quality. Stadia pushes a native 3840×2160 in every shot I’ve tested – no small feat given the demanding nature of the engine. And while I can’t 100 per cent rule out dynamic resolution scaling, it’s been very consistent at that top number – I can’t fault it. So in this respect, it’s a key improvement over the last Stadia title I tested – Final Fantasy 15 – which operated at just 1080p. The bottom line is that if you’re using Stadia with Chromecast Ultra and you have the Pro subscription, you are getting 4K and Metro Exodus does look stunning.
The pay-off for a narrative-focused game like Metro Exodus is clear. From the pulse of specular highlights in its damp metro tunnels to the crisp snowy overground, everything pops that much more. The story gets propelled to a greater height this way. Certainly much more so than PS4 Pro’s 1440p delivery, it puts Stadia essentially on the same level as Xbox One X. Sadly, there’s no quality or performance modes at all in the settings. You just have options for motion blur intensity, and that’s it. It’s is a one-size fits all approach which, again like FF15, means you’ve got to be onboard with the developer’s choices. This is well pitched though. In a multiplayer FPS, yes, it may have been better to priority to aim for a higher frame-rate – seeing as we’re stuck at 30fps here. But in this case, it works. You can expect a supremely sharp presentation all round.
One factor that holds Stadia back from matching Xbox One X quality is video encoding quality. Generally speaking, the streaming is top notch in most games – when it works – but Metro Exodus is unique by design. It takes on a much darker colour palette than most titles, with lots of trawling through dark spaces. And the blunt truth is that, as a result, the darker points of the image show more compression artefacts. Google’s encoder works to minimise the size of each frame by pruning back quality on low contrast areas – which makes sense. But detail in dark areas is an issue with any bandwidth-constrained video encoder, creating obvious bands between points of shade. And therefore, in comparison with Xbox One X’s uncompressed video output, it does start to undo the positives of rendering at 4K.
This is the nature of the beast really – and nothing that can be held against the developer. At the rendering level, Metro Exodus looks as great as ever it did on consoles: It’s simply producing a type of video content that doesn’t always compress easily. Equally, the use of snow particles, and potentially film grain, gives the encoder more challenges, even in the light of day. There’s a lot of per-pixel data being added in post and 4A’s signature high frequency texture detail is a lot for the video encoder to handle. It’s not a deal-breaker at all, but shows up more readily than other games I’ve tried. With that being said though, the core settings used on Stadia hold up well. What we’re looking at here is parity with Xbox One X across the board.