Preview: Metal Eden sees Witcher 3 developers tackle a mechanised Doom

The future is bleak. Steel as far as the eye can see, darkened skies, and hostile robots littering the streets. You are Hyper Unit Aska, and you must rescue what’s left of the citizens of Moebius as it falls to the monstrous mechanical force that’s invading. The best way to do that is with big guns, of course, and that’s what Metal Eden – the new game from former CD Projekt RED and Techland developers – is all about.

This is a fast-paced sci-fi first-person shooter (FPS) where you tear apart enemies at lightning speed while taking advantage of everything you can. If you’ve played the big FPS games of the last decade, there will be some familiar mechanical staples here. There’s a double jump and a small dodge move that can be used in the air, in addition to wall running on select surfaces. That should already give you a solid idea of what you’ll be doing in each encounter: deftly sliding and jumping around a battle arena littered with power ups while detonating the awful metal goblins attacking you.

Enemies approach fast, and in groups, but each have different methods and speeds of traversal, meaning staying mobile and keeping your distance allows you to remain relatively safe as you swap through your arsenal and punch the artificial life out of the beasts that hunt you down. While the setting and wall running mechanics evoke the mobility of Titanfall 2, the moment-to-moment actions feels more like Doom’s 2016 reboot. There is a unique mechanic that’s introduced early on though, and that’s extracting and using cores.

You’re here to save the cores of humanity (a robotic power source) but you can also electromagnetically tear the cores from the chests of hostile enemies to either use them as throwable explosives, or strength boosts. Throwing an explosive does exactly what you’d expect it to, but absorbing a core allows you to use a super punch ability, which will smash the armor off of tougher enemies, making it easier to deal damage or steal their core too.

It’s a solid mechanic, and feels like a smart adaptation of the “glory kill” animation that is synonymous with the modern Doom games. At least, that’s how it would be, if it weren’t victim to what ends up feeling like the most obnoxious cooldown in recent memory. It only takes 30 seconds for you to recharge and rip another core, in fairness, but it feels like an eternity when in the heat of the moment. Luckily, there are a small handful of energy refills that continually spawn in battle arenas, but if there’s only one in your arena, you’ll be running over to it constantly. Armored enemies take a long time to defeat if you don’t super punch their armor away, so smaller enemies continually respawn to give you access to cores.

It’s still early days and there are months before Metal Eden gets a full launch, so there’s plenty of time for minor performance hitches and gameplay balance to change. What’s certain is that Metal Eden is the most interesting Doom-like due this year other than, well, Doom: The Dark Ages. While it has a lot to live up to, Metal Eden is a bold step forward for this team of pedigree developers.