Metal Eden is a fast-paced boomer-shooter FPS by Reikon Games, the developer of Ruiner. The game made a strong impression when I covered the preview earlier this year. Now that I’ve played through the entirety of Metal Eden, I can confirm that it is an exhilarating, if sort of short and disorienting, blast, and should be on any shooter fan’s radar.

Set in the far future, humanity has stretched its influence to the stars with the advent of Core technology, allowing one’s consciousness to be digitised and transplanted into new, artificial bodies. Set on the planet Vulcan (no, not the one from Star Trek), Metal Eden sees you play as Aska, a powerful cybernetic warrior known as a Hyper Unit who is sent on a mission deep into the city of Moebius to confront the mysterious godlike Engineers who rule the city and rescue the citizens’ Cores. All the while, Aska is confronted by waves of deadly Internal Defence Corps soldiers and guided by Nexus, an enigmatic voice in her head who seems to have his own agenda.

Metal Eden mostly dispenses with lengthy cutscenes to tell its narrative. Instead, its story is mostly told in the form of long, rambling monologues by Nexus and occasionally other characters, which happen during gameplay. Fortunately, this ensures the gameplay isn’t bogged down by pace-killing story sequences. However, it also results in a narrative that is quite incoherent, with Nexus’s lengthy speeches being hard to focus on during pitched shootouts and platforming sequences, and which frequently drift into random topics about the nature of freedom and humanity while throwing disjointed sci-fi terms at the player. It delivers enough clear exposition to sort of explain what Aska’s goal is at any one time, which I guess is enough as far as motivating the gameplay is concerned. That said, many of the specifics of Aska’s past, what Nexus’ goals are, and most of what was going on in the final cutscene are still a blur to me after having finished the game.

Fortunately, Metal Eden has a lot more going on than just its narrative. It’s a boomer shooter, with id Software’s 2016 DOOM reboot seeming to be the main inspiration behind its gameplay. Aska engages in fast-paced first-person shootouts with her opponents, with a large focus on mobility. The player can run on walls and glide in the air, as well as close the distance with a grappling hook. It’s exhilarating stuff, with the grappling hook in particular offering a great degree of freedom in terms of navigating battlefields, and encouraging the player to think in three dimensions due to many arenas having a focus on verticality. Enemies can come at you from above or below in Metal Eden, but fortunately, with your glide, grappling hook and generously-placed bounce pads, you can get them before they get you.

The main unique element to Metal Eden’s gameplay is Core-ripping. If you get close to an unarmoured enemy, you can press a shoulder button to rip their Core out to use as a grenade or absorb for health and a power boost. It’s a handy risk/reward feature that encourages players to make value judgements on the fly regarding offence or defence, with a hefty 30-second recharge time before you can do it again. In particular, most of the game’s more powerful enemies have a layer of armour that must be destroyed, with empowered melee attacks via absorbing Cores initially being the best way to break through it.

This annoyed me in the preview due to it feeling limiting and slowing down the pace of combat. On the plus side, I’m happy to say that it’s not much of a problem in the full game. While dealing with armoured enemies is still a significant element of the combat, Metal Eden gives you energy weapons which focus on armour damage, as well as several relevant upgrades which improve armour penetration and Core-ripping recharge times. As such, the implementation of enemy armour actually ended up feeling like a smart feature which encouraged using the entirety of my varied arsenal rather than something that made the combat unenjoyable.

On the subject of upgrades, you can improve Aska’s abilities with nodes you unlock during missions and via exploration, as well as upgrade your weapons with new firing modes using a currency called Dust you can acquire from defeated enemies. I liked many of Metal Eden’s weapon customisation options a lot, including adding homing missiles to your pistol, a grenade launcher to your SMG and making your bazooka fire sticky bombs.

Metal Eden arsenal is about as big as it needs to be, with the different upgrade paths for each weapon providing a decent amount of customisation. For the sake of variety, there are a decent number of platforming sequences and puzzles, as well as sections where you can transform into an Armored Ramball (think Samus Aran’s Morph Ball mode in Metroid Prime, if it could also shoot lightning and missiles).

True to the cyberpunk aesthetic that Metal Eden is going for, the game’s visuals are overwhelmingly gunmetal grey and somewhat monotonous. I appreciated the missions which deviated from this standard colour palette, such as the trips to the mines below Moebius, which revealed the alien red surface of Vulcan. Metal Eden also feels quite satisfying, with the sound design in particular emphasising the power of your weapons, which possess just enough recoil to give gunning down enemies an enjoyable oomph without interfering with usability.