Why You Should Play: Metal Eden

Every time I boot up Steam, my eye catches Metal Eden in my library, and I’m reminded of just how slick of an FPS it is. This cyberpunk adventure is Doom Eternal meets Ghostrunner, and I’m still thinking about it five months after I rolled credits. I fear not enough people have played it, and if you haven’t, you should change that.

As the year comes to a close, we’re highlighting some personal favorite games from our team that we feel you shouldn’t miss. If you’re still looking for the right game to carry you into 2026, and you’ve already hit up our Top 10 Best, we’re hoping one of these recommendations will hit the mark.

Moebius is a cyberpunk city on the verge of imminent destruction, courtesy of a time bomb, and only Aska, a special disposable Hyper Unit android, can save it. Fortunately, her computer brain can be implanted over and over again into cybernetic android bodies, which are equipped with grapples, jetpacks, and limbs that allow Aska to dash and wall-run through any environment. Oh, and it lets Aska carry seven guns, ranging from sniper rifles to shotguns and more, that she deftly uses to mow down anything and anyone in her way. Her journey to defeat Moebius’s massive Engineers, which hold the Cores she desperately needs to save the city, will take you through derelict factories, deserts, mining facilities, and into myriad arenas for some of the best first-person gunplay of 2025. 

Metal Eden wears its Doom Eternal inspiration on its sleeve, turning wave-based arenas into coliseums of destruction, lest you stop moving. Using her jetpack, turbo boosts, ammo, armor, and health pickups scattered around the arena, you’ll need to hold your breath and shoot everything in the room – it all wants to kill you, after all. Pause for a second, and it could spell certain doom. The resulting combat experience is a fast-paced, kinetic, on-the-go shooting gallery that I promise will send adrenaline surging through your veins. 

That high-speed gunplay elasticity carries over into the Ghostrunner-like runs in between arenas, which task you with keeping momentum as you sprint on walls, grapple up to platforms, and jetpack double jump to safety, all while shooting down enemies that threaten your existence. The reward at the end of a linear run through Moebius’ various locales is one of the aforementioned arenas, the perfect zones to try out your latest weapon upgrades. 

There’s more to Metal Eden, like some Metroid Prime-inspired sections and a voice-in-your-comms that’s a bit too present, but ultimately, everything that happens when you aren’t pulling the trigger gets in the way. Fortunately, these sections aren’t as frequent as the parts of Metal Eden that shine, so rest assured, there’s an excellent shootout just minutes away when things feel slow. 

For more of my thoughts, read my Metal Eden review here.