If you enjoy games like DOOM 2016 and Ghostrunner you'll probably like Metal Eden enough. If you can get it on sale I'd say it's a fun 6 hours. It seems very inspired by games in this kind of subgenre but it doesn't do any one thing better than said games. In zoomer lingo: the game's mid.

The gameplay is pretty standard. You've got shooting and platforming and neither are particularly deep. There's a skill system but none of the skills felt overly impactful. I didn't feel like much changed when I upgraded and when I got to that screen at a certain point I was just putting points into random skills instead of really trying to make a cool build. I can see the potential for some kind of style meter, where the higher it gets the more damage you do and stuff. It could be flavored differently of course but I feel like that would have really amplified the gameplay and made it more unique. There are weapon upgrades too but a lot of them seem kind of pointless as well. I very rarely used most of them.

The platforming doesn't evolve beyond wall running and using a grappling hook, and there aren't even any sequences where you have to be fast with it. Unlike Ghostrunner, there are invisible walls everywhere. There were so many times I saw something in the distance that looked like it could hold a secret so I would try to get there, but would be met with either an invisible wall or a chasm and THEN an invisible wall so I'd just die. I wish there was more freedom. The platforming can be a little bit clunky too, I fell a number of times due to weird wall detection and other times it would snap me into ledge grabs which was pretty jarring. Even fully upgraded movement doesn't do much for you... it feels like you have just about the same amount of mobility that you do in like, Black Ops 3. Maybe less.

I played on normal difficulty and it wasn't hard at all. The game has lives instead of checkpoints, and by the end of the game I had 12. When you lose all your health (and armor, both of which have pickups littered across the level which respawn with time), you use up a life and recover your health right there on the spot. I'm sure the game would be more unforgiving at harder difficulties, but for a normal playthrough I did find it a bit too easy. That isn't helped by the bad enemy AI, which can't go through doors, can't follow you around corners, and will be completely clueless of your whereabouts if you're too far away. The game has several points where it gives you a long corridor with lots of enemies at the end of it so I would just sit there shooting at them with the unlimited ammo auto-pistol. It took longer, and it was cheesy, but the opportunity presented itself.

It's weird because there are moments like that, but also plenty of moments where the game will lock you in an arena and you have to battle waves of enemies before you can get out. Sometimes it will spawn enemies close to you while you're in exploration mode too, so I don't understand why those cheesier moments existed to begin with.

The graphics seem cool on the surface but the lighting has some serious issues. This game could have 100% gotten away with old fashioned rasterized lighting because none of the light sources are dynamic in any way, shape, or form, but it doesn't seem like that is the case. All the lights have this weird fizzle to them and that makes everything kind of wobble on closer inspection. If you stand still and look at your gun, it looks like it is boiling or being affected by severe water caustics. I can't really show it on video because the effect is a bitrate killer. The lighting was really distracting and it took me out of the experience a lot. You don't notice it in combat because you've got other things to focus on, but when you're walking around it is very visible and it sucks to look at.

Music was alright, there were some moments where I was like "ah yeah this is cool!" but for the most part it seemed lightly generic. The story was really hard to follow... I think I get the gist of it but I still don't know EXACTLY what went on. I would have actually appreciated some logs that explained more because it feels like just the two dudes who talk to you throughout the game don't explain a whole hell of a lot. The initial premise is cool but everything after that I'm like... okay so why are we doing this exactly? What happened?

Also, as a heads up, the game does use some AI-voiced dialogue. It's a robot character with only a handful of lines so I don't really care, it fit in well enough and the studio is obviously pretty small.

Again, if you like these kinds of games, I still think you'll like this one. It just isn't amazing or anything. I think I ended up paying like $17 for it or something like that, I think that's just fine. I enjoyed playing it I guess, but there was a lot missing from it that I've seen done way better elsewhere.

#beardgamereview