Metal Eden’s grapple hook carries an otherwise thin shooter

Metal Eden wastes no time on setup. Reikon Games drops you into Moebius as Aska, a Hyper Unit with regenerative powers, sent on a one-way trip to pull human minds out of a city that has turned on itself. Deep Silver shipped it on 2 September 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows. It is a first-person shooter built around a single nasty idea: the thing you came to save is also the thing you rip out of your enemies.

Trailer, via METAL EDEN.

Hijacking Cores From the Engineers

The Core is the whole game. Millions of people fled an uninhabitable Earth by uploading their minds into devices meant for later resurrection. Those Cores went to Moebius, a monolithic city floating above the planet Vulcan, built by corporations to strip the planet. Then rogue AI and a group called the Engineers took over. Aska’s job is to secure the Cores and fight the robots guarding them.

The best mechanic follows from that. You hijack a Core out of an enemy and kill it instantly. The Core then works as a grenade or as fuel — consumed to boost health and trigger the super-punch. Armoured enemies hide their Core behind plating that breaks under enough damage or one super-punch. It is a clean loop: kill, take, spend.

Ball Mode and the Dust Vials

Mobility carries the rest. A jet pack hovers. A grapple hooks rails. Aska wall-jumps. Later unlocks include Ball Mode, which rolls you at high speed and damages whatever you hit, plus a bullet time ability you trigger at will. Vials of dust scattered through levels buy weapon attachments. Body modules pulled from hacked drones upgrade Aska’s Core, and a skill tree handles the rest. Nexus, Aska’s creator, talks to you remotely the whole way.

Here is what matters, ranked:

1. The hijack-and-throw Core system, which gives every fight a resource decision.
2. Ball Mode, the one unlock that changes how you read a room.
3. The dust economy and skill tree, which are competent but forgettable.
4. Nexus, a voice in your ear that never becomes a character.

A Shooter That Knows Its One Trick

Metal Eden is not trying to be more than it is. The cybernetic warfare is fast, the Core mechanic is genuinely good, and the Engineers give the shooting a face to aim at. What holds it back is everything around that core idea. The upgrades are standard, the dust vials are busywork, and Nexus never lands as anything but exposition.

It sits at 7.3/10 on Metacritic, and that feels right. Metal Eden is a sharp, short, confident shooter with one excellent hook and not much else to say. Worth your time if the hook grabs you.

FPS · game review · Metal Eden · PS5 · Reikon Games · Xbox Series X/S