Reikon is on to something... but didn't quite get there in the end.
Metal Eden piqued my interest back in April, a high-speed, sci-fi FPS that looked to combine the likes of Doom with the traversal of Titanfall. It also marks quite the departure from Reikon Games previous’ title, the top- down, twin-stick shooter Ruiner.
While Metal Eden nails the look and feel it was going for, it ultimately offers up — and at times, shuns or waters down — an overly simple gameplay loop that isn’t able to sustain itself through its 8 short levels.
Players fill the cybernetic shoes of ASKA, an advanced combat droid who is pitted against other combat droids and AI intelligences. Metal Eden‘s story is extremely secondary to its combat loop, and by level two I found myself struggling to engage with its narrative. Despite some highly polished cutscenes between said levels, most of Metal Eden‘s exposition is conveyed through one-sided conversations that generally take place as you ride ziplines or wall-run from one combat encounter to another.
The dialogue in these exchanges is sometimes bland, other times over-the-top, and consistently poorly written. It’s all about telling, with little desire to ever show.
While its writing isn’t its greatest strength, there’s tremendous fun to be had within Metal Eden‘s minute to minute combat. To be successful, ASKA must switch weapons before they overheat or run out of ammo, taking out armour or flesh with each shot. She’ll also need to parkour using wall runs, jumps, grapples, and boosts to escape danger or pick up shields, health, or ammo. Finally, ASKA is able to rip cores from her foes, using them as projectiles or absorbing them to regain health.
When firing on all cylinders, Metal Eden is extremely enjoyable. Things are fast, frenzied, and chaotic; you feel a tremendous sense of power and satisfaction after ripping through enemies. I didn’t experience any framerate drops on PS5, nor PS5 Pro, which is crucial with a title like this.
The problem is, this polished core needs a little refinement. Enemy variation is more of a visual thing than an ability-based one; you can generally get by — especially on Normal difficulty, but also through most of Hard — by punching away armour and using your default weapon to finish someone off.
By the end, ASKA has more weapons than she — or I — knew what to do with. A grenade launcher, a plasma beam, and an SMG are cool and all, but at most I eventually swapped out my punch for a weapon designed to take out armour.
In this sense, Metal Eden feels too simplistic and too repetitive, which meant that I wasn’t really interested in replaying levels despite having fun in combat sequences.
Metal Eden also lacks trust in itself and its core loop, and tries to beef itself up through questionable design decisions. The most egregious is a ball mode that ASKA unlocks relatively early into proceedings. Said ball mode is pretty useless, apart from letting ASKA move a little faster through levels and avoiding lava damage in specific areas. I ignored it wherever possible.
The real problem with the ball mode is that it’s tied to a click of the left stick by default, and I ended up smashing it and turning into a ball at the worst times, mid-combat encounters and desperate to weave, dip, and dodge through levels. Said switching caused so many deaths that I ended up binding the functionality to a command that wasn’t in use (right on the d-pad, if you’re looking to do the same) so I could avoid the issue.
Less offensive is a grenade that unlocks near the end of the game; it was equally as unnecessary as most of the weapons I’d already unlocked, so I didn’t throw a single one in my playthrough.
A final boss — while arguably the game’s weakest — attempts to really blend combat and traversal together. While it ultimately fails, it’s the type of experience I wish Reikon had experimented more with, especially compared to ball mode.
Ultimately, Metal Eden is a close to a great game, but falls flat. It’s short, repetitive, and gets in its own way when it comes to a core combat loop. If you’re on the fence with this one, I’d heartily suggest that you check out demos here on PC, here on Xbox, and here on PlayStation.
Metal Eden heads to Windows PC via Steam, PS5, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X from today, 3 September.
Metal Eden was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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Metal Eden3 September 2025PC PS5 Xbox Series S & X
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