A few months ago, I got to play the demo of Metal Eden and I was reasonably enthusiastic by what I had seen. This was a slick cyberpunk First-Person Shooter with some traversal mechanics. The full release seemed to get delayed, I suspect this was because of the other run-and-gun shooter coming out around that time. It is here now and I am happy to be writing this review.
The player takes control of Aska in a gleaming metal city full of cyborg enemies. Aska has been sent on countless suicide missions to try and save this dying world (as evidenced by the replicant corpses she finds of herself along the way). These missions consist of her making her way through the collapsed pathways, hitching onto light rails, and dropping distances that would kill a normal human being. With colours of blues, reds and oranges, it looks like a city that was once great now falling into a menacing disrepair. Dust lingers in the air and flutters like a glitch in the system, enemies phase into existence and Aska constantly has a sneering narrator in her Heads Up Display – anyone who has seen Akira or Ghost in the Shell will immediately identify the cultural touchstones.
The first level introduces common traversal mechanics: a grappling hook, double jumps, wall running and hovering. All of these are slickly implemented, and Metal Eden is intent on making the player feel cool without using complicated inputs. This makes it exhilarating to boost through the platforming sections without breaking a sweat. Apart from an intense timed section at the end of the game, platforming is mainly a release cap between the shooting sections.
That release cap is necessary as the arena fights can get ferocious. Aska starts out with a machine pistol, it has infinite ammo on a cool down, which has a satisfying ‘brap’ effect as she plugs enemies with bullets. It is effective at shredding the smaller enemies, but as the larger enemies come into combat and have shields, the rest of Aska’s skills are required. The first is a simple melee attack that briefly stuns and causes shields to take more damage. The second ability is that if an enemy doesn’t have a shield Aska can rip their cores through their chests. If cyberpunk-yanking a mechanical enemy’s heart out of them as they crumple in front of you wasn’t cool enough, you can then lob the core/heart at another enemy for a satisfying explosion or absorb it and power up Aska’s punch to strip shields.
Later there are guns that will treat these shields like meat slough after a 14-hour session in a sous vide, but ammo is limited for those, and it requires using the traversal to jump and wall run to grab resupplies while dodging attacks.
All to say, Metal Eden’s core loop of punching through shields, finishing off enemies and then scrambling to find better ground to continue the mech-murder is really satisfying.
The arsenal is large with shotguns, missile-launching pistols, rifles and grenade launchers being slowly added over the course of the 12-hour campaign. These can all be upgraded using “dust” dropped by kills which is also used to unlock new abilities like slowing down time and regenerating your own health when you use the super punch.
This progression becomes a key point to those release cap traversal sections. Nestled in corners and hard to find sections is more dust, and free upgrades, this encourages using these maneuvers for more exploration. On top of this, Metal Eden unlocks a final traversal option in the third level – Aska can transform into a metal ball with lock on missiles and electric shock gun.
This completely breaks up the levels as it then allows for rolling gun fights as a Samus-Morph-Ball. If there is something that Metal Eden is lacking, it isn’t ideas.
If anything, it might be the game’s desire to have all the things that is its undoing. By the end of the game there are a large number of weapons and too many of them are very similar. For example, there is an SMG and an energy rifle, both look very similar and fire similarly but one does good physical damage, while the other is better at stripping shields. The Grenade launcher is cool, but it is possible to attach a grenade launcher to one of the rifles, and leads to this feeling like unnecessary bloat.
More troubling in terms of bloat comes for anyone playing this game on a controller. Slow motion is assigned to pressing left on the D-Pad, which meant that I had to take my thumb off the left stick to get to it, which meant that I found myself rarely using it because of the demands of the game. Metal Eden allows for fully remappable controls, but that meant I had to decide what I wanted to sacrifice – melee, thrown grenade, or throwing a core – nothing felt like it was eligible for relegation. Anyone playing this on PC will be fine, but console players be aware.
Those complaints aside, Metal Eden is a fantastic title, brimming with explosive encounters and dazzling moments of traversal. It is as good as the other big budget run-and-gunner this year.
Conclusion
Metal Eden is a great first-person shooter with tons of great moments. A must buy for those that like a lot of cyber-punk themed violence.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
