I wake up in a metallic corridor harassed by little cyborg creatures that effortlessly go splat when I pull the trigger. A voice in my head rambles about death, civilization, and the violent heist I’ve been tasked to help with. After every grisly death, my synthetic body is reborn. A sprawling, AI-controlled city stretches out in front of me, like an ultra-advanced, grimly efficient panopticon situated galaxies away at the end of history. The first hour of Metal Eden feels like a mashup of RoboCop and The Matrix and I dig it.
Anyone who watched The Game Awards 2024 showcase might recall a dizzyingly frenetic and neon-fueled trailer midway through the show that definitely looked like it might be for Bungie’s distinctly stylized sci-fi shooter Marathon. But it was actually for Metal Eden, the upcoming cyberpunk boomer shooter from Reikon Games, best known for the bloody 2017 twin-stick shooter Ruiner. It arrives May 6 on console and PC and I recently played the free demo on PlayStation 5.
Like the prior indie-sized release, Metal Eden is unequivocally metal and not afraid of embracing slick aesthetics and evocative jargon simply because they look and sound really cool. But in some ways it’s a much more ambitious game, not least of all because it’s a first-person shooter in a 3D world with the unmistakable sheen of an Unreal Engine 5 project. The mission design and gameplay feel are fine, and aptly described as Doom crossed with Ghostrunner. But what had me pressing on was the neat worldbuilding and confident style.
You play as an android named Aska trying to break into various facilities and systems underpinning a dystopic autonomous city in the sky called Mobius. The first mission is named after John Milton’s Paradise Lost. A stat screen includes rad sci-fi splash art. The main combat loop revolves around ripping out enemy cores and then using them as grenades or consuming them for various buffs. The synth soundtrack and streamlined levels keep propelling you toward the next weird lore beat.
Mostly I just love the dreamlike images Metal Eden conjures in my head of a hyper-violent, metallically vibrant heat death at the end of human civilization long after AI has colonized the cosmos and the lines between computer and consciousness have become indistinguishable. It’s a vivid backdrop against which to smash, shoot, and kill lots of fleshy machines. Metal Eden might not win GOTY but it’s sill occupying a surprising amount of my headspace the day after, like a haunting dream that’s eerily hard to shake.
I’m much more skeptical of how the rest of the run-and-gun package will come together. My initial impression is it all feels a bit shallow and under-baked. Not quite enough enemies or attack variety, and despite the rapid pace the platforming beats and arena encounters feel streched a bit thin. It’s hard to say how much Reikon’s reportedly deep staff cuts last year may have played a part in that, or if it’s party due to the prioritization of the sleek presentation, which looks quite expensive compared to the more old-school visuals in most of the finely-tuned lo-fi boomer shooters we’ve gotten in recent years.
A robust but not overwhelming skill tree promises some neat buildcrafting further into the game, and at the right price and the right runtime Metal Eden has the potential to be a killer sci-fi shooter vignette. I’m certainly pulling for the full game to live up to the promise of its infectious cyberpunk vibes.
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