METAL EDEN

My first instinct when the arena locked and the mech swarm dropped in was to stop moving, and Metal Eden punished me for it inside two seconds. That is the clearest possible statement of intent from Reikon Games: stop, die; move, survive. The studio earned its reputation with the brutal top-down shooter Ruiner, and here they have rebuilt that same design philosophy in full first-person, set loose inside Moebius, a derelict orbital city overrun by rogue AI, a hostile faction called the Engineers, and enough neon to light a small continent. You play as ASKA, a Hyper Unit - a disposable combat android with regenerative powers and a movement kit that reads like a parkour wish list. Wall-running, grappling hook swings, jetpack dashes, double jumps, and a bullet-time slowdown ability are all on the table, and they all feel sharp. The core combat loop adds a wrinkle that makes Metal Eden stand out from its genre inspirations: the Core Ripping system. After dealing enough damage to an enemy you can yank its Core out with a Gravity Beam, then make a split-second call - consume it to restore health and charge a shield-shattering Super Punch, or throw it as an explosive into the next cluster of hostiles. It is a risk-reward engine that keeps your brain engaged even when your hands are already on autopilot. On top of that, weapon hot-swapping is essential: the seven guns in ASKA's arsenal each run on an overheat or ammo system, so cycling between the starting SMG, the meaty shotgun, energy lancers, and the rest before any one weapon cools down is the kind of rhythm the game actively rewards. Dust collected across levels feeds into an upgrade shop where weapon mods - charge lasers, homing projectiles, altered firing modes - and a skill tree keep the loadout feeling fresh across the eight-level campaign. The rough edges are real and worth naming. The Armored Ramball transformation, where ASKA rolls into a spherical combat form, draws criticism from practically every review that exists, and that criticism is fair. It handles differently enough to cause genuine muscle-memory confusion mid-fight, and its best use cases - boosting across terrain, avoiding lava sections - feel like padding rather than a genuine addition to the combat identity. The narrative has the same issue: Moebius has a genuinely interesting premise (human consciousness stored in Cores, a city-sized trap floating above a resource planet), but the delivery is almost entirely a voice in your ear monologuing through sci-fi jargon while you wall-run. The dialogue becomes background noise by level three for most players, and ASKA herself is a thin protagonist despite carrying every cutscene. Critics also flagged frame rate inconsistency on some hardware configurations, so PC players should check benchmarks against their rig before committing. What Metal Eden does exceptionally well, though, is gunfeel and movement cohesion. The moment-to-moment sensation of slingshotting across an arena, ripping a core mid-flight, and detonating it into a group of armored Internal Defence Corps troops is the kind of thing that makes you replay the encounter just to feel it again. The campaign runs roughly seven to eight hours, which sits right at the line between lean and thin depending on how much you value replay. Three difficulty settings - Normal, Hard, and Brutal - give replayability some teeth; Brutal is genuinely punishing in the Doom Eternal spirit. The soundtrack from Sonic Mayhem, veterans of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Mass Effect 3, keeps the energy where it needs to be throughout. Players who want a focused, skill-testing single-player FPS with a strong mechanical identity and do not need a rich story to stay engaged will finish Metal Eden wanting a sequel. Fans of Ghostrunner's traversal, Doom Eternal's combat loop, or Titanfall 2's movement systems have the most to gain here.

Alex · Scout Team

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