Metal Eden Review: A Short & Sweet Gaming Delight
▼ Summary
– Metal Eden is a fast-paced sci-fi shooter combining fluid parkour, tight shooting mechanics, and varied combat arenas, drawing inspiration from games like Doom and Ghostrunner.
– The game features a linear campaign with eight levels lasting 20-40 minutes each, offering high replayability for score chasing but feeling disappointingly brief for its price.
– Combat involves switching between projectile and energy weapons to break enemy armor, consuming cores for health and special attacks, and using upgrades that significantly alter weapon abilities.
– Visuals are praised for their strong art direction and minimalist industrial style, though performance suffers from occasional stutters even on console.
– The narrative and dialogue are major weaknesses, described as awkward, hard to follow, and reminiscent of poor translation, undermining an otherwise enjoyable experience.
Metal Eden delivers a thrilling sci-fi adventure that masterfully blends intense shooting mechanics with fluid parkour action. This compact but electrifying experience draws clear inspiration from genre greats while carving out its own identity through unique gameplay twists and striking visual design. Though its brief runtime and narrative shortcomings hold it back from true greatness, the core gameplay provides enough satisfaction to make this journey worthwhile for action enthusiasts.
Developed by the team behind the cult favorite Ruiner, Metal Eden transports players to a distant future where humanity has perfected consciousness transfer into robotic cores. You assume the role of Aska, an advanced android warrior equipped with a regenerative core that allows her to be recreated after each defeat. Stranded on a deserted lunar city, your mission involves battling through hordes of rogue security robots to rescue millions of colonists trapped in storage cores.
The game’s structure follows a linear path through eight distinct levels, each lasting between twenty and forty minutes. While this condensed approach ensures tight pacing and eliminates filler content, the overall experience concludes rather quickly. Many players will reach the credits in a single extended session, which feels somewhat limited given the premium pricing.
Where Metal Eden truly excels is in its moment-to-moment gameplay. The shooting mechanics feel exceptionally polished, with responsive controls, impactful animations, and satisfying audio feedback across a diverse arsenal. Weapons range from conventional machine pistols and shotguns to futuristic energy launchers, each offering distinct tactical advantages. The combat introduces clever mechanics where armored enemies require energy weapons to break their defenses before you can rip out their cores for health regeneration or special attacks.
Movement proves equally impressive, with smooth parkour elements that let you scale walls, leap across gaps, and maintain momentum during combat. The addition of a jet-pack and elemental grenades further expands your tactical options, creating dynamic encounters that reward skillful combination of abilities. Most notably, the game introduces Ball Mode, allowing transformation into a high-speed metal sphere equipped with explosive attacks, an overpowered but immensely enjoyable feature that breaks up standard combat sequences.
Progression systems add substantial depth to the experience. Defeated enemies drop Dust, a currency used to upgrade weapons through two distinct modification paths that dramatically alter their functionality and appearance. Additionally, Aska’s skill tree offers meaningful enhancements that affect combat efficiency, from auto-reloading mechanics to armor regeneration.
Visually, the game impresses with a minimalist industrial aesthetic that emphasizes clean lines and atmospheric lighting. Cutscenes are particularly striking, though occasional performance stutters can disrupt the immersion even on console performance modes. The artistic direction successfully creates a cohesive and engaging sci-fi world, making exploration visually rewarding.
Unfortunately, the narrative elements struggle to match the quality of the gameplay. Dialogue often feels awkward and strangely phrased, reminiscent of poor translation work, which undermines character development and story coherence. While voice acting remains serviceable, the delivery and writing quality frequently distract from an otherwise polished experience.
For players seeking pure action enjoyment, Metal Eden delivers in spades with its refined combat and movement systems. However, those looking for substantial narrative depth or extended gameplay may find the package somewhat lacking. The inclusion of multiple difficulty levels and basic accessibility options like color blindness filters and subtitle customization helps broaden its appeal, but the overall value proposition depends heavily on individual preferences for shorter, action-focused experiences.
This review was conducted on PlayStation 5 using approximately four hours of gameplay, encompassing the complete campaign, weapon upgrades, and skill tree progression on standard difficulty settings.
(Source: TechRadar)
