Edited on: October 14, 2025
Posted on: October 9, 2025
achim1337
Games: 133 Reviews: 2
What a lovely surprise!
Metal Eden was such a nice little surprise for me personally. If you want to break it down to like one sentence, it feels like a mashup of Doom (2016), with some elements from both Doom Eternal & Titanfall 2 sprinkled in. Combat arenas & the general "flow" of combat lean heavily into Doom (2016), while the game also adds the movement options like dash, double jump or wall running from Titanfall 2 and the resource management for ammo, health & armor from Doom Eternal (though not to such extremes as in that game, luckily). Hit feedback feels satisfying and powerful for the most part, especially when using explosive weapons. Level design is very linear, Metal Eden leads you from one battle to the next pretty straight forward. Arenas are broken up by some very minor exploration (like, there are some hallways connecting the combat arenas) where you can find currency to upgrade your weapons, while the combat arenas reward you with upgrade points for your character. While this upgarde system doesn't feel like super deep or anything, it is sufficient and interesting enough (weapon upgrades actually change how weapons work; e.g. you can upgrade your pistol to be a high-powered charged weapon that bounces between multiple enemies). Enemy variety is also sufficient I'd say. They tend to look a bit samey, but there's enough differences between them so that they all have specific roles to play during combat (like, there's your big brutes rushing for melee, there are long distance enemies, flying support units, and so on.). Graphics are really nice too, and there are some stunning vistas in the game. The sound is also good, although I had to get used to characters talking to you over comms what feels like constantly, especially in the beginning of the game. The game is rather short though, but that's fine for me since these shooters tend to stretch out rather quickly, and the 4 to 5 hours you get here are decently paced and a lot of fun. There are also some boss fights throughout the game and the missions at least bring some variety since there are some where you can switch between your default 1st-person view and a faster 3rd-person view where your character transforms into some sort of Metroid-inspired morph ball, allowing for quick traversal of the environments. I don't really have any negatives. The story feels confusing and somewhat... bland? I don't know, it's not an issue for these types of games in my opinion and at least it's somewhat of a novelty compared to "you're the marine killing demons on Mars". TL;DR: If you're a fan of Niu-Doom, give this one a try. It was a lot of fun for me and I'd highly recommend checking it out :) (played through the game on Steam).
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