Reikon Games’ Metal Eden caught my attention months ago when the game was first revealed. Their previous outing, RUINER, was a breath of fresh air amidst all the games launching that year. A fast-paced, top-down action shooter with some of the best art and music, immediately becoming one of my favorite games.
Ahead of its launch, Reikon Games released a demo, giving everyone a small taste of what to expect. After playing the demo, which is a mix of 2016 Doom’s fast-paced shootout arenas, and 2020 Ghostrunner’s movements and agility, it is safe to say that I’m amped up to try the full game.
A Near Distant Future Where Machine Takes Over
You take on the role of Aska, a fast, nimble, battle droid known by the name Hyper Unit. Aska gets tasked by their creator to save a human colony city called Moebius. A strange anomaly called Erosion overruns the colony, taking control of the automated defense systems and putting every human trapped inside in danger.
Essentially, you control Aska, save the human colony, and eliminate enemies in Metal Eden, which is a pretty straightforward objective. There’s not much to bite into the story as such for now. The demo has barely any story outside of the general outline of what is happening.
Whatever is in the demo caught my attention because I am a big fan of sci-fi and cyberpunk settings, coupled with brutalist and futurist structural designs. Every piece of weaponry, structure, and even enemy has this look that made me feel intrigued, and at times, stop and think about how they were built. If that is something the final game focuses on, I think I’ll be overjoyed to play it, as world-building is always a welcome addition to games.
The demo includes a tutorial level getting players up and running with the general game mechanics, and another level where Aska is tasked with reaching an orbital elevator. Setting the story aside, the gameplay really makes Metal Eden what it is: a fast-paced sci-fi extravaganza. Reikon took the best parts of RUINER and added them into the first-person shooter arena, making players feel invincible while getting sufficient challenges.
You won’t get an opportunity to stand around and catch a breather while stuck fighting the enemies. You’ll constantly keep moving, jumping, and shooting enemies, flaunting the movement and fluidity of Metal Eden. It slowly becomes a rhythmic exercise, one which might compel some players to take videos of and create cool montages.
It gave me a sense of adrenaline rush that I last experienced playing Ghostrunner and Doom: Eternal. Enemies constantly chased me around, trying to kill Aska by any means possible. Unfortunately, I was just better than them, jumping around, strafing, and shooting whenever I got the chance.
The combat is balanced for a no-nonsense shooting experience. Thankfully, the guns contribute to that, which are great to use, and each shot feels satisfying. Metal Eden also gets how to make a great Shotgun, which is undoubtedly one of my favorite weapons from the demo. The weight of each shot, coupled with the fantastic sound design, is extremely satisfying.
To make the general combat exciting, Metal Eden also introduces a system called Core Ripping, which is this game’s version of Glory Kills without the violence and gore. In every fight, Aska can rip cores off of enemies, briefly letting her either empower herself to take out stronger enemies using melee or throw the cores like a grenade.
Core Ripping slowly becomes an important system when the stronger enemies start spawning. Initially, I didn’t pay much mind to it. However, I started appreciating this system when the enemies started pouring in. The split-second decision of whether you want to take out three smaller enemies or empower and take out the armor of a stronger enemy frankly adds tons of depth to my gameplay.
It didn’t just make me mindlessly parkour and shoot around enemies, but rather plan each of my moves methodically. That made the general gameplay of Metal Eden exhilarating, making it stand apart from other fast-paced shooters.
The Performance Woes Raise Eyebrows
It is worth mentioning that the Metal Eden demo did have some performance issues on my Ryzen 5600 and RX 7600XT system. For starters, it runs better than any Unreal Engine 5 game, but it comes with lighting artifacts you’d get from upscaling, making the game look unpleasant with grainy lights scattered around the structures. Furthermore, there were performance dips at certain sections of the game when hordes of enemies attack you.
However, outside of the performance problems, Metal Eden is possibly a title worth keeping an eye out for in September. It unfortunately launches right before Hollow Knight Silksong, which is one of the highly anticipated titles of this year. Still, Metal Eden should get itself a dedicated player base of players who enjoy fast-paced first-person sci-fi shooters.
It will be worth watching whether the performance issues will get ironed out or not for its launch on September 2, 2025, but this is one game to keep an eye out for if you love to achievement/trophy hunt in video games. Metal Eden will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
