Metal Garden

A short and sweet experience. The movement feels pretty good and the enemies are dynamic enough to fight for how long the game lasts. The environment is striking and just escapes overstaying its welcome. My only real complaint is that the large nature of the maps can make traversal a bit tedious if you are looking carefully for secrets, but again, it is a short game so even these stretches of exploration aren't too long. I'd probably wait for a sale since I beat it in about two hours. But the benefit of it being so short is that it isn't heavy to replay it again on a harder difficulty or with the special modifiers that you can apply. Might be fun to see how fast you can run through and beat it. Solid gameplay that is fitting for a game of its length.

First dive into what seems to be an established 'megastructure' genre and I can only say positive things about it. I loved how vast, looming and impossible the whole atmosphere is. Every wall is miles tall and every hint of freedom is eons away. This mixed with the gloomy grey colour palette, perfectly gives off the impression that any civilisation that lived here would much rather die trying to escape. The small lore dumps were interesting, and while I'm not a huge fan of games just spewing their worldbuilding through logs, they weren't too overwhelming. Plus, one of my favourite details was how a warning HUD appeared after probing the soldier's memory, hinting at your own character's cyberware/nature. The movement system is effortlessly fun and engaging, and the map really compliments your abilities in sprinting and double jumping, sometimes testing them. Its floaty nature keeps your constant pace flowing, and you never really feel particularly faster or slower than usual. Despite the architecture feeling 'impossible', my parkour abilities never made it feel unreachable. The combat (at least on the regular difficulty) was relatively easy, and didn't provide much stress until the end. It definitely still required some critical thinking, and sometimes it was the smarter move just to avoid enemies, which I liked. Each weapon was unique, and the jump from one to the next felt heavy and rewarding. Maybe I'll revisit the game at some point with the harder difficulty and some of the modifiers. The only disappointment was the ending, which I just didn't see coming. I honestly expected to carry on exploring the depths of the world for another hour or so. Regardless, I really enjoyed getting briefly immersed in such a desolate wasteland. I'd give Metal Garden a 8/10 :)