Metal Eden PC review — Nothing but the core experience

Armoured foes manifest all around you, you respond by leaping forward, punching them to open their armour up, and then pump shotgun rounds into them before their armour goes up again. After rinsing and repeating, you rip the core out of their chest, consume it, and then use the power to punch another enemy so hard their armour disintegrates, leaving you to blast them to pieces. All of this occurs at lightning speed in Metal Eden, a single-player first-person shooter from the makers of Ruiner. It brings the visceral goods to the nth degree, but a disappointingly short campaign is all that’s on offer, leaving the game feeling more like an appetiser than a main course.

Metal Eden has nine missions to play through in linear order. You begin with a submachine gun with infinite ammo (that overheats if fired too much in one burst.) Within the first couple of missions, you’ll also have a pistol and shotgun. The rest of your arsenal is rounded out by typical weapons – an energy rifle (which is the best way to remove enemy armour,) a stronger submachine gun that can double as a grenade launcher (because you needed two,) another grenade launcher (because you also needed two for this one as well,) plus an electric cannon that uses the same ammo as the energy rifle. The game’s weapons are punchy and a blast to use.

Much in the vein of Doom Eternal, you hold very little ammo for each weapon and must engage in a core combat loop that sees you constantly restoring your resources. Most of this is built around the aforementioned core system in Metal Eden. You can rip out the core (where the enemy consciousness is stored,) as long as the ability isn’t on cooldown and an enemy’s armour has been destroyed, and this kills an enemy instantly. You can either throw the core to damage your other enemies, forcing them to drop ammo, or consume it to grant yourself some health (and armour, extra damage, and speed, if you’ve got the upgrades.)

Consuming a core always gives you a super punch, however, which destroys an enemy’s armour completely, whereas a normal punch just temporarily bypasses it. Additionally, when your health is low, punching an enemy will also heal you. Metal Eden awards aggression over all else, and the experience of zipping around arenas and carefully using your abilities based on what resources you’re trying to restore is excellent, albeit just as reminiscent of Doom Eternal as it sounds. Similarly, levels have you wall running and platforming to move forward in between arenas.

Metal Eden is a joy to play, as it really nails this sort of gameplay. Levels are incredibly linear, however, even if there is extra currency and occasional upgrades to find upon exploring a bit off the beaten path. Currency is mainly obtained by defeating enemies and it’s used to upgrade your guns. For the most part, these upgrades add an alt-fire to each gun aside from your default. I personally didn’t find much of this all that useful, save for a few select upgrades, such as the blast using built-up energy from the energy rifle, a feature once again ripped directly from Doom. You’ll even get points that let you upgrade a host of features, impacting gameplay in meaningful ways.

Your playstyle can vary quite a bit based on how you decide to build your character. I liked having extra fuel (which gives you dodges and lets you slow down time,) and an upgrade that reduces the cooldowns on the power-ups located in the game’s arenas, such as armour, health, infinite ammo, immediate core ripper cooldown resets, and more. There’s a lot to consider here if you’re playing on hard or above. On normal, you absolutely don’t need to make good use of your kit to stay alive, as the opportunities afforded to you for healing are enough to allow for many mistakes.

The game’s levels are mostly samey, as you wall-run through futuristic industrial areas situated high in the sky. A couple of levels take you to the planet Vulcan, and have you speeding on its red soil using the main character’s ball form. This is an odd inclusion, as you can only use this form in these two levels. It has attacks too, plus you can boost to travel more quickly. I’d say these function more as a change of pace than anything else, but much like the action, it all controls quite well. You’ll find occasional boss battles too, which are well-designed and exciting, albeit not particularly memorable.

Metal Eden‘s a very good movement shooter, to be certain, but on top of feeling probably a little too much like Doom Eternal, it unfortunately reminds me of another similar game, namely Shadow Warrior 3. Just like that, this game is very short, clocking in at around five-to-six hours. And much like that other game at launch, once you beat the campaign, that’s it. There’s no new game plus, no way to go back through the game on higher difficulties with your upgrades, no endless modes, no challenge maps, nothing. I simply don’t understand why a dev would put so much work into making a fun shooter to just give players a short campaign and nothing else. This is just a lesson some don’t seem to want to learn.

I enjoyed my time with this one, but that time was so brief and the complete lack of any attempt to extend the game’s short playtime beyond replaying it on a higher difficulty makes it very hard to recommend at full price. You’ll likely have a few hours of fast, violent fun, only to want more when all is said and done. The core experience here is certainly satisfactory, but a little more effort to supply players with more challenges using the game’s fully upgraded arsenal is not optional, in my opinion. Hopefully, the dev will patch something else in down the line. But for now, this is very barebones despite being frenetic and flashy.