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Steam is awash with demos for absolute stinkers. But, wade through the dross and you’ll occasionally find an absolute gem. Case in point is Metal Eden, a fast-paced first person shooter that siphons and then cross-pollinates chunky old school Doom-esque gunplay and the sleek physics-defying parkour of Ghostunner. And rather than a poor juxtaposed facsimile of those games, it churns out its own suitably idiosyncratic flavour of sci-fi cybernetic swank and violence soundtracked to four-to-the-floor bangers gnarled by arpeggiated synths.

Set onboard an orbital city called MOEBIUS that’s more concrete high-rise hell than celestial sanctuary, you play as a sort of recyclable cyborg known as a HYPER Unit tasked with facing the ENGINEERS (capitalisation isn’t optional) to find the Architect’s Core and get to the bottom of the shady Metal Eden. Digital human consciousness is stored in compact psyche storage units known as cores. Humans being humans, these cores are naturally used to colonize distant worlds. So, off you pop to play the saviour.
It’s the usual sci-fi word vomit as you’d usually expect from a distant future-set and suitably obnoxious FPS, but I’m buying it. With chunky genre-appropriate weapons, you’ll pummel waves of enemies before wall-running and jet-packing across bottomless chasms, swiping up item pick-ups as you go. There’s a responsive thump and heft to the weapons, both audible and visual. Movement is reactive and buttery to the point where you aren’t so much running as gliding on invisible ice skates but without all the hassle of slipping and sliding. Polygonal precision. Lovely.
It’s the second game from the folks at Reikon Games. You might know them for Ruiner, a twitchy, isometric 2017 action shooter about a wired psychopath out to save his kidnapped brother. Aside from the brutal finishers that festooned its cyberpunk setting with spewy gore, it was a bit of a looker. Seemingly well aware of this, Reikon has ported these over to Metal Eden. I don’t know if it’s the clever lighting work, the oppressive angularity of the monolithic structures, or just the rush of decapitating a mob with a well-timed smack, but it’s gorgeous in a glossy next-gen type of way.
Metal Eden has the same flow state quality as games like Metal: Hellsinger, but a tactical element also comes into play. Ok, I’ll have to melee hit that guy to disable his shield, but there’s a group of darting mobs flanking me from the left, and I’m low on health. What to do? If I leap to that platform, I can rip a core out of a hunchbacked robot gnome, then consume it to Super Punch the shield boy and heal, giving me the minerals to hoover up the rest. Repetition makes you better. There’s no lethal one-hit-you’re-dead mechanic like in Ghostrunner. It’s only slightly more forgiving, though, and well-balanced difficulty makes the moment-to-moment play a perfect blend of tense and satisfying. As a statement of intent, the Metal Eden demo means business.
If you’re looking for something to tide you over until Doom: The Dark Ages, then Metal Eden will do just that and then some. It’s out properly on May 6, 2025. It’s also designed with speed running in mind, as illustrated by the recap and timer at the end of levels. Moreover, Reikon is running a $1000 demo speedrun challenge if you’re feeling it. The best time is just north of 17 minutes as of writing. Get to it Hyper Unit.