Run, Jump, Gun, REPEAT
Shooters live and die by how they feel in your hands. Metal Eden understands this, and that’s why it works as well as it does. It’s fast, it’s fluid, and it rarely takes its foot off the gas once things get moving. If Doom’s raw brutality ever hooked up with Titanfall’s slick movement system, this would be the child of that union.
From the opening mission, the game throws you into Moebius, a broken city dripping with neon and cyberpunk grit. You play as Aska, a Hyper Unit android tasked with saving human consciousnesses trapped inside enemy Cores. The premise is straightforward, but the gameplay doesn’t waste time with filler; it’s all about velocity and combat. Wall-running, grappling, mid-air dashes, and even transforming into a rolling death ball that shoots lightning all combine into a combat rhythm that feels incredible. The speed here is relentless, and chaining moves together is a lot of fun, but the game does suffer from a repetitiveness later on.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
The Core-ripping mechanic is the star of the show. Pulling enemy power sources out mid-fight, then choosing to throw them as explosives or absorb them for melee boosts, keeps encounters dynamic. It’s Doom’s glory kills reimagined with extra strategy, and when paired with Titanfall-style traversal, the results are pure adrenaline. The faster and riskier you play, the better the game feels.
Visually, Metal Eden impresses on Series X. Its neon lighting, vertical arenas, and crumbling cyberpunk structures look fantastic, and the scale of the environments enhances the feeling of momentum. This isn’t an open-world sandbox though it’s built around tight combat spaces that make every battle feel deliberate and focused. That’s not to say that the player can’t explore though, there are some quieter moments in Metal Eden and in those moments, players can search for collectables and explore the environments.
All that being said, the hyper focused nature of Metal Eden does come at a cost. With only a handful missions, the game clocks in at just a few hours, and by the back half, some encounters start to blur together. The narrative doesn’t do much heavy lifting either, serving more as connective tissue than something memorable. But when you’re in the middle of chaining wall-runs, grapples, and Core rips, the story barely crosses your mind.
Metal Eden doesn’t try to be everything. It isn’t a sprawling open world, and it isn’t a 40-hour epic. What it is, though, is a concentrated shot of kinetic energy. If Doom is the power fantasy and Titanfall is the movement masterclass, Metal Eden is the scrappy cousin that blends the two into something that’s lean, stylish, and just plain fun but repetitive.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
