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Metal

Metal Hellsinger studio closing as part of Funcom layoffs

by admin October 6, 2025

The Outsiders (AKA Funcom Stockholm) – responsible for Metal Hellsingers and Metal Hellsingers VR – has been impacted by layoffs. As a result, the studio will be closing. The studio consisted of roughly 60 staff according to the official Funcom website.

Through a social media statement posted by The Outsiders founder David Goldfarb, the closure was announced. It reads: “I have not had much time to process the news but all of us at The Outsiders and Funcom Stockholm have been affected by the layoffs at Funcom and our 10 year old studio will be closing.

“Many of us had survived a near-death studio experience years back when Darkborn was cancelled and because of the team’s loyalty and refusal to quit, Metal: Hellslinger was born. It will always be a high point for me personally and I will be forever grateful we got to make it and for the wonderful team and partnerships that made it happen.”

Watch the Metal Hellsinger launch trailer here!Watch on YouTube

Goldfarb stated the studio hoped to create something even better, and that the impacted developers want to try to “continue on in some new form”. He then requested help, be it through business leads, placement for affected employees, and more.

This comes shortly after Funcom announced layoffs last week, as the studio declared its intention to focus on Dune: Awakening’s ongoing live service support. The full scope of how many employees have been laid off across the full repertoire of Funcom offices remains unclear.

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October 6, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 Is Still Coming, But What’s In It?

by admin September 28, 2025

In late 2023, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 brought most of the early games in the franchise to modern consoles. Since then, fans have clamored for Konami to complete the collection of games with Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2. Now, the producer behind Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has confirmed that Vol. 2 is still in the works, but declined to confirm any titles included in it.

During a presentation at the Tokyo Game Show, Metal Gear Solid producer Noriaki Okamura fielded a question about the next installment of the MGS Master Collection. X user Kuwabara357 shared a fan translation (via Video Games Chronicle), which essentially said that Vol. 2 is moving forward, but the team isn’t ready to share any information about it yet.

SCOOP MGSVOL.2❗️ : On the METAL GEAR PRODUCTION HOTLINE, Noriaki Okamura briefly mentioned MGS Master Collection Vol.2. and according to him, it will take a little more time.
Here is a translation of his statement: “It has certainly taken quite a while now. Since we called the… pic.twitter.com/JUccwXkJJ2

— Outsider Snake (@Kuwabara357) September 25, 2025

The most-anticipated possibility for the collection is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which has never been released outside of the PS3. The first Master Collection excluded Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a 2010 PlayStation Portable game that had previously been remastered in 2011 for the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. One of the series’ other portable games, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, was also excluded from the Master Collection Vol. 1.

It’s possible that the Master Collection Vol. 2 could include those games and both parts of Metal Gear Solid 5, Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain. But without confirmation from Konami, we can only speculate.

In the meantime, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater’s Fox Hunt multiplayer mode will launch on October 30. MGS Delta producer Yuji Korekado has previously hinted that there may be more remakes in the franchise’s future. But if there are new MGS games being made, Okamura and Korekado expressed a desire to step aside and let a new generation of developers make the title.

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September 28, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will finally be getting its online Fox Hunt mode next month

by admin September 27, 2025

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will finally be getting Fox Hunt – it’s online PvP mode – on the 30th October.

This mode, absent from the launch version of the game, will be available to owners of the game across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. This online mode is a competitive “hide-and-seek” style PvP mode where players have to find and take each other out using any tools they can find.

Up to 12-players can take part in a match at any one time, though according to the official Konami press release crossplay is still not supported.

Here’s the launch trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake EaterWatch on YouTube

There are two available game modes: Survival Capture and Survival Intrude. The first is a capture the flag style mode where players must secure a dwindling number of cute green Kerotan, and the latter a battle royale style mode where players must battle over a shrinking play area.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has proven popular, selling over a million copies on its launch day earlier this month. Since its launch the game has received a variety of patches to improve stability and performance, some good news for those who were waiting to give it a try.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is itself a fantastic recreation of the original game. In Eurogamer’s review it’s described as “an achievement for the development team behind Delta too, some of whom were original staff from the Metal Gear Solid 3 team. The legend of Metal Gear Solid 3 has been brought back to life thanks to their efforts, and the experience of playing it has put me in a position I could not have foreseen just a few years ago.”

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September 27, 2025 0 comments

Commanders oversee battleships as they cross the waves

Product Reviews

Tiny Metal 2 is the third game in the turn-based strategy series, and it just so happens to be taking after my favorite Advance Wars

by admin September 26, 2025

2001’s Advance Wars is a perfect little game: Compact yet tactically rich, a purposefully limited but versatile library of units like top-heavy tanks and chonky bombers smashing together in rock-paper-scissors shoot-outs. The only wildcard, each commanding officer’s slow-charging heroic power, can swing the tide of a battle but is still relatively tame—like gaining a couple extra tiles of range on artillery strikes for one pivotal turn. Give a small team of brilliant game designers the remit to make chess with toy soldiers, and I think this is what they would come up with. And yet it is not my favorite Advance Wars.

My favorite, Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the Nintendo DS, is more the Chess 2 of strategy games. More units, more powers, combining those wildcard bursts in ways that drag matches out into dizzying swingy battles like games of Risk where someone’s turning in their bonus cards every freaking turn. Forget perfect: I loved the bombast of Dual Strike being messily over-the-top, and on a visit to indie studio Area 35’s Tokyo office ahead of TGS this week I immediately clocked that its new entry in the Tiny Metal series takes after my one true love.

Six years after Tiny Metal: Full Metal Rumble, the confusingly named Tiny Metal 2 puts you in control of two factions at once so you can combine their strengths. Even better, you can now do it in co-op, with one player taking command of each team.

The more immediately obvious upgrade in Tiny Metal 2 if you’re not the specific type of weirdo still carrying a torch for Dual Strike 20 years later is that it looks much, much nicer than the first couple games, which traded out Advance Wars’ charming 2D style for a swag-less low poly 3D. Tiny Metal 2 is less Unity asset store and more comic booky. It’s missing the polished sheen of a 2025 Nintendo game, but stylish enough to make a nice first impression.

(Image credit: Area 35)

Tactically it feels like there’s a bit more going on here too. The fundamentals borrowed wholesale from Advance Wars are all still here: you capture buildings with infantry to earn resources and manufacture new troops; tanks can brush off machine gun fire but are susceptible to a heavy blast of artillery; submarines are death for other ships though easy to sink once they break the surface. But a focus fire mechanic makes the order of your orders matter much more.

At first I merrily threw my troops into the fray one at a time, each attack on an enemy earning them a bit of damaging retaliatory fire. Then I realized I could give a couple weaker units a command to focus on an enemy and wait for a combined strike, so that when I rolled in with a heavy mech to trigger the team-up attack the enemy would be toast before it could hit back.

(Image credit: Area 34)

Tiny Metal 2 also lets you choose what direction units are facing and makes attacks from the sides or rear potentially more effective, though the extra step this adds to controlling each unit—and the number of possible attacks you have to try on an enemy to find the optimal one—is maybe more fiddly than this kind of light strategy game really benefits from. The UI is already working hard to convey strengths and weaknesses for each unit against other types, but some sort of visual front/back/side armor rating would cut out some of the tedium of fretting over each and every move.

The much nicer art and the promise of co-op team-ups that lean into melding the commander powers of each are more appealing to me than those niggles are concerning, though. Even with Nintendo recently returning to the Advance War series for the first time in decades in the form of a cute but quite limited remake, this remains an oddly rare form of snackable strategy game. Tiny Metal 2 seems to have enough ideas of its own to finally help propel it out of “We have Advance Wars at home” territory.

It’s on Steam now, and out sometime next year.

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September 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Metal Gear Solid Delta’s Fox Hunt Mode Launching In October, No Microtransactions Or Cross-Play

by admin September 25, 2025

As part of Konami’s Tokyo Game Show briefing today, the company announced that Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater’s Fox Hunt multiplayer mode will launch on October 30.

Fox Hunt, which was previously announced, is an evolution of Metal Gear Online. The mode puts players into “cat-and-mouse encounters” as players must sneak around and survive.

Fox Hunt supports online matches with up to 12 players, and there will be two modes. The first of these is called Survival Capture, and it’s described as a “tense, multi-phase mission” where players must capture Kerotan frogs. The number of frogs decreases as the match continues.

The second mode is called Survival Intrude and it has players attempting to capture and hold zones, with the number of zones decreasing as the match plays out.

Players deploy with an AT-CAMO suit that allows them to camouflage themselves in different environments to blend in. Players also get an ability called Naked Sense, which detects nearby enemies and items.

Fox Hunt does not support cross-platform multiplayer, but players can creative private matches with friends on the same platform. Fox Hunt does not include any microtransactions.

GameSpot’s Metal Gear Solid: Delta Snake Eater review scored the game a 9/10. “It successfully modernizes visuals, tweaks game design, and updates controls so that the game sits comfortably alongside its action game contemporaries,” reviewer Tamoor Hussain said.

Metal Gear Solid: Delta Snake Eater is currently on sale at GameSpot sister site Fanatical.

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September 25, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Metal Gear Solid 5’s Official Strategy Guide Is Still Available 10 Years Later

by admin September 25, 2025

Metal Gear fans are likely busy working their way through the recent Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater remake, but those looking to add a unique piece to their Metal Gear merch collection back at Mother Base should take a quick detour to procure the official Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain strategy guide. Not only is it–surprisingly–still available at Amazon nearly a decade after it first launched, it’s also discounted to $19.70 (was $25).

This a cool piece of official merch for the final game in the Metal Gear series–though if you haven’t played the game it’s based on yet, you can also grab The Phantom Pain and its standalone prequel chapter, Ground Zeroes, for just $23 on PlayStation or PC with the Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience.

$19.70 (was $25)

This paperback guide sits at 368 pages, offering an in-depth look at everything you’d ever need to know about The Phantom Pain. From detailed mission walkthroughs to diagrams and analysis of the game’s many systems, the guide leaves no stone unturned. It also comes with a story recap–so even if you’ve lost track of what’s happening in the convoluted MGS universe, you should be able to dive into MGS V without any trouble.

As an added bonus, it comes with a poster that offers a detailed look at the world map.

The guide was published by Piggback, a company that’s published guides for Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Cyberpunk 2077, and other high-profile games. It’s also from the same team that previously worked on guides for other Metal Gear Solid titles–so it’s all but guaranteed to offer an accurate, in-depth look at MGS V.

A Collector’s Edition of the guide was also released, but is out of print. This version includes a few exclusive goodies like a lithograph by Yoji Shinkawa and an art gallery. It’s hard to come by, but new and used copies occasionally surface from third-party resellers on Amazon.

Of course, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is the title stealing the spotlight right now. Our review gave it a superb 9/10, as it does a wonderful job of remastering one of the best PS2 games for modern audiences. If you’re interested in picking it up, the Tactical Edition is available for $68 at multiple online retailers (was $70). This is essentially the standard physical edition of the game, but it includes some extra DLC. PC players can also purchase the Steam version for just $52.38 (was $70) at Fanatical. Die-hard fans can also grab the $200 physical Collector’s Edition, which is still in stock at Amazon. It includes the base game, bonus DLC content, and a selection of collectibles like a diorama display of Snake sneaking through the forest, embroidered patches, and an exclusive metal case for the game.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Deals

If you started with The Phantom Pain or Delta and want to work through the earlier entries in the series, you’ll want to check out the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1.

This collection includes Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty HD, and the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater HD, plus the original MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and animated Metal Gear Solid graphic novels. The physical edition is available for $30 (was $60) on Switch, Xbox, and PS5, or you can grab it digitally on consoles and PC. The Steam version is available at Fanatical for $45 (was $60).

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1

It’s worth noting that while the Master Collection will get you most of the games in the series in a single package, it’s missing the rest of the mainline series–including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain plus standalone prequel chapter Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes–not to mention the many Metal Gear spinoffs like Metal Gear: Survive and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Those entries will show up in an ostensible future Master Collection Volume–or even as additional remakes similar to Delta–but Konami has not announced any plans for those just yet.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience

Unfortunately, as it stands, it’s hard to play several of those entries; the PS3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4 and PSP-exclusive Peace Walker are not currently available on modern consoles or PC. But as mentioned above, you can at least grab the latest game in the mainline series, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, plus Ground Zeroes and a bunch of DLC content through the Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience. You can grab it for $23 on PS4, or on PC via Fanatical. Note that if you’re jumping into MGSV without playing the others, you’ll be missing out on the rest of the story–but it is widely considered to have the best gameplay of the series, so it’s still worth grabbing if you’re looking for more tactical espionage action after wrapping up Delta or the Master Collection.

While the mainline series tells the winding–and sometimes incomprehensible–story of the legendary soldier Big Boss, his cloned son Solid Snake, and the shadowy organization known as the La Li Lu Le Lo The Patriots, the series has also seen several spinoffs over the years. Most of these are non-canon like Metal Gear: Survive–or semi-canon, as in the case of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops–others are considered part of the official Metal Gear timeline, such as 2013’s Metal Gear Rising Revengeance developed by Platinum Games. Rising set at the end of the series timeline, and players once again control Metal Gear Solid 2’s protagonist, Raiden, who has returned to his cyborg ninja form from Metal Gear Solid 4. Unlike the rest of the series, Rising is a character action game, rather than a stealth game, but it’s well-regarded by fans and easily available on PC. You can get the Steam version for just $23 (was $30) at Fanatical.

More Metal Gear Games

Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 official novelizations

For a different take on the Metal Gear Solid saga, you can check out the official novelizations for Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The books retell the events of the first two Metal Gear Solid games and were written by Raymond Benson, who has also authored several official James Bond novels.

It’s worth noting that Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima’s latest project, Death Stranding, also received an official, two-part novelization. While there are similarities in visual design language, detailed world-building techniques, and even gameplay elements between Death Stranding and Metal Gear, Death Stranding leans more heavily into overt sci-fi elements. Nevertheless, it’s worth checking out if you’re looking for more reading material based on Kojima’s works. Both volumes are available in paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon.

Speaking of which, Kojima also wrote a nonfiction book in 2021, titled The Creative Gene, which compiles his memoirs and essays on creativity, game design, art, and more. While it won’t answer lingering questions about Metal Gear lore, it offers insight into his creative process and details important events from his life. The paperback edition is available for $17.87 (was $23) at Amazon.

More Metal Gear Solid & Hideo Kojima Books

Disclosure: GameSpot and Fanatical are both owned by Fandom.

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September 25, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

“Here comes the feeling” promises Kojima in latest maddening tease for Metal Gear-like Physint

by admin September 23, 2025

Dear Hideo Kojima, you’d better give us a proper update on your new Metal Gear-style action-espionage game-movie wotsit Physint soon, because for every hour that passes, I think of another unbearable title pun.

I’m not very Physinterested in Physint right now, a game defined by what it Physisn’t. Perhaps I’d be more Physinto it if Kojima Productions would share a proper outline and explore the Physintricacies. But this is Hideo Kojima, a man of *grunts, strains* Sphysint-like enigma. Still, at least we now know that Don Lee from Train To Busan is in the stealthy film-o-game, together with Charlee Fraser from Furiosa and Minami Hamabe from Godzilla Minus One.

In a livestream last night, Kojima discussed working with 3Lateral to model each performer’s face. He shared some early renders of Hamabe in-engine. Yep, sure looks like a face.

Image credit: Push Square / Kojima Productions

He also shared some concept art from Physint, which certainly underlines the Metal Gear connections. There is a man in a flapping coat with a high collar. Or half a flapping coat, anyway. I can’t work out where the coat ends and his utility belt ends. He’s got a lot of weird harness wrapped around his right shoulder. Doubtless, this is Tactical.

Image credit: Kojima Productions

Also, a rifle with a scope and a stock and a silencer. We can expect a mix of sneaky and open firefights, I expect. Behind the man there are tall forbidding buildings with a lonely bird visible against slate clouds. Hang on, the lonely bird is just a stray coffee grain on my laptop screen. Let me wipe it away. Ah, now I feel sad about the missing bird.

Is this sadness the Feeling referred to by the caption “Here Comes the Feeling”? Probably not. When will the Feeling actually arrive? In at least “another five or six years”, Kojima commented in May.

Physint is at least actually “in development”, now, following the release of Death Stranding 2 on console. Kojima decided to make a new game in the vein of Metal Gear following a recent illness. Here’s hoping the next trailer or livestream at least features more legible Tactical apparel. Physint, reveal thyself!

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Perfect Dark reboot leak: fresh info suggests studio saw gap in the market with Metal Gear Solid and Bond absent

by admin September 22, 2025

The now-cancelled Perfect Dark reboot had an “eco sci-fi” aesthetic, an Adrenaline System, and may have been released episodically.

That’s according to internal documentation from a former developer on the project at The Initiative shared with mp1st, revealing new artwork and gameplay details.

The document highlighted an opportunity to capitalise on the secret agent genre, due to the absence of Metal Gear Solid and James Bond 007 during development. Ironically enough, both franchises have since returned.

Perfect Dark – Gameplay Reveal – Xbox Games Showcase 2024Watch on YouTube

This may somewhat point to why Perfect Dark was ultimately cancelled – perhaps this reboot of the N64 classic from Rare wasn’t able to differentiate itself enough.

Still, this newly unearthed documentation – which dates back to a period close to the game’s cancellation this year – hints as to what players could have expected. The creative vision for the reboot aimed to reimagine the franchise while retaining the core DNA of the N64 original, with the HBO series Westworld providing inspiration for giving a classic property fresh themes and concepts.

While several systems are briefly mentioned, only the Adrenaline System is detailed. This would’ve been a resource regenerated over time to provide various abilities like healing and increasing damage dealt, as well as slowing time to aim with precision. Killing multiple enemies in quick succession would have extended this effect.

Until April of this year, the studio was working on a vertical slice (a playable proof-of-concept) that belonged to “Season 1”, suggesting the game would have been released episodically.

Perfect Dark was properly revealed at last year’s Xbox Games Showcase, with in-game footage of protagonist Joanna Dark exploring a futuristic Cairo (above). Later, reports suggested this gameplay was fake, though a designer on the game responded it was in-engine despite “some fake stuff in it”.

The new documentation includes further artwork for the game, including an alternate design for Joanna, as well as various futuristic environments to show off its “eco sci-fi” aesthetic.

Perfect Dark was cancelled back in July, following layoffs across Microsoft. Rare’s Everwild was also cancelled.

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September 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Konami wants our thoughts on what Metal Gear game should get the remake treatment next

by admin September 21, 2025

Konami wants your opinion on which Metal Gear game you think should get the remake treatment next.

In a new survey entitled “Metal Gear – Production Hotline at TGS2025 Post-viewing survey”, the publisher asked a number of questions about how it communicates with fans, but most interestingly, it also polls players for information about which Metal Gear titles they’d like to see “remade”.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Review – A MUD-SLICK CLASSIC REBORN.Watch on YouTube

The options provided on the survey included:

Metal Gear
Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty
Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriot
Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

There was also a text box inviting “other” suggestions, too, so if you’ve a burning desire to see Metal Gear Survive remade, you’ll have to pop it in there (thanks, InsiderGaming).

Expect more at the next Metal Gear Production Hotline livestream, scheduled for 25th September (which just so happens to be the launch date of the next instalment of Konami’s other big franchise, Silent Hill).

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If you’re wondering why Konami’s pondering what Metal Gear Solid game to bring back to life next, it may be useful to know Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater surpassed a million sales across all platforms by its first day on sale.

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September 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Metal Eden Review – Shooting Through The Noise

by admin September 15, 2025

Poland-based studio Reikon Games has only been around since 2014, but in its decade of development, it has made a name for itself creating stylish, action-forward cyberpunk games. Its debut, 2017’s Ruiner, was itself a great isometric shooter, but in hindsight, it was a look toward the studio’s future and its second game: Metal Eden. Like Ruiner, Metal Eden is a futuristic neon-lit shooter set in a cyberpunk dystopia, but this time, from a first-person perspective. It blends excellent first-person gunplay with movement tech that turns the city of Moebius into a parkour playground, and the resulting gameplay is hyper-fast, frantic, and fun. Though its narrative and level design sometimes get in the way of that, the entire package is still a setpiece-filled action romp and one of the year’s best shooters.

In the world of Metal Eden, Hyper Units are disposable androids capable of inhuman feats thanks to a cyberpowered armor that allows them to dash, grapple, jetpack, and wall-run through just about any environment, and each unit is trained for cybernetic warfare, with a seven-gun arsenal in tow. You play as Aska, a special Hyper Unit tasked with saving the citizens of Moebius from imminent destruction. That leads her through derelict factories, deserts, mining facilities, and into the realms of Engineers, who possess Cores she desperately needs for her mission. It’s a solid foundation for the 7-hour adventure, and a voice-in-your-comms doesn’t let you forget about it, sometimes to the detriment of the game.

While the voice acting is great, when you’re not engaged in multi-wave arena battles, there’s almost always a voice in your ear discussing their motives, their history, and their desires, all through sci-fi jargon that eventually bounced right off of me. Reikon is attempting to tell an enriched narrative, and I enjoy how much the studio focuses on walking players through Aska’s journey to save Moebius, which has been threatened with what is essentially a ticking time bomb; its finale leaves a lot to be desired, but I still found the overall story to be a commendable effort from Reikon. Its biggest flaw, though, is how often it gets in the way of the real star of Metal Eden: the action.

That said, the action was more than enough to pull me through each mission, as I constantly looked forward to the next setpiece, the next weapon, or even the next upgrade station to make my shotgun or grenade launcher more powerful. Metal Eden isn’t stingy with Dust, the currency used to upgrade weapons, found in canisters placed throughout levels or given upon defeating enemies. By the time I finished the game, only one of my seven weapons wasn’t fully upgraded, and I appreciate Reikon allowing me to unlock most of Aska’s potential in the first playthrough. Each weapon, whether it was the standard-issue submachine gun with unlimited ammo but a temperature-related cooldown, the energy weapon that melts enemy armor, or my personal favorite, an assault rifle with a secondary fire option that turns it into a powerful sniper, proved useful in combat. Firefights get so hectic that there were countless encounters where I used every single weapon at my disposal, whether it was a strategic need or because I ran out of ammo for another gun.

Though I always enjoyed the combat, I wish it were more diegetic rather than arena-based. My favorite moments were when Metal Eden channeled another Poland-based studio’s game, Ghostrunner, to turn linear sections into parkour runthroughs where I needed to kill enemies with quick precision to advance and maintain momentum. But most of the combat happened when I entered a large arena, and a random sci-fi voice told me when I finished a wave and when another wave was beginning. These arenas are well-designed, with armor, health, and ammo pickups strategically placed about, and excellent wall-running and grapple opportunities, too, but they still grew dull. It doesn’t help that the runs between these arenas were often the type of combat encounters I actually wanted more of.

Regardless, Aska only became more and more fun to use throughout Metal Eden as I unlocked more of my weapons’ potential and became more comfortable firing them while running on walls or grappling through the air, using my jetpack to extend my airtime. When I fully understood Aska’s set of weaponry and movement tech, and more importantly, how to take advantage of both in combat, each subsequent encounter felt like an extreme dose of adrenaline.

Similar to the narrative’s intrusion into the excellent first-person gameplay, there were a handful of times in Metal Eden where levels went wide, allowing Aska to morph into a ball – yes, it’s very reminiscent of Metroid Prime – where you zap enemies and target them with lock-on missiles. While cool in theory, these sections are easily the worst, and rolling around as a metal ball in no way compares to the excitement of first-person shooting, wall-running, and jetpacking through this dystopia.

Throughout my time in Metal Eden, I couldn’t help but imagine just how good a sequel I hope Reikon makes could be. This is a great start in the FPS genre for the team; its ideas are strong, and with refinement, Aska’s next mission could be as excellent as the Ghostrunner and Doom Eternal adventures it’s clearly inspired by. Though the star of the show – its first-person shooting and movement – is sometimes weighed down by an overreaching narrative and boring morph ball sections, when Metal Eden shines, it’s as bright as the sun that sheds light on Moebius’ dark underbelly.

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September 15, 2025 0 comments