Metal Mind [Review]
Become a robot to kill robots in order to save robots.
Image credit: Whirllaxy Limited / 2P Games
In Metal Mind from Whirllaxy Limited and 2P Games, you’ll blast your way through robots in your quest to liberate robots. It doesn’t make much sense when you think about it, but let’s just run with it. You play as robot in this top down shooter roguelite with a gameplay loop that will be familiar to fans of the genre. Leave the hub to start a run. Survive as long as you can while finding a wide variety of items. Die and lose everything except for the hard currency that you’ll use to buy permanent incremental upgrades. Rinse, repeat. Unfortunately, the game’s additional systems don’t do much to help it stand out.
Levels are made up of a randomly arranged map of standard rooms, ending with a boss room. The game is a twin-stick shooter, so you can move freely while firing in any direction to kill all the enemies and move forward. You can equip two weapons and swap between them. All have infinite ammo but have different rates at which they overheat. This functions just like a reload would in other similar games as a means to balance rates of fire and strength; you have to decide when to manually vent steam or risk overheating and having to wait for the weapon to cool completely.
Image credit: Whirllaxy Limited / 2P Games
Your bot is made up of a body, actuator, and core; all three can be found during runs to customize your build. The body determines your health and provides a special ability that consumes energy. The core is your power source for that energy, and the actuator is your lower half that governs movement. The system is fine on paper, but there’s a key portion that sours it for me—the actuator sacrifices your dash ability. My expectation is a standard limited dash or dodge that I can use to avoid damage and I was frustrated that equipping most actuators means giving this up. One will anchor you to the ground, another will ram enemies, or zoom uncontrollably across the screen. It’s great to give players a second special ability, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of the dodge.
Metal Mind makes some questionable UI/UX choices. On the Switch controller, the plus button both closes menu screens (the shop, equipment, etc) and opens the pause menu. This actually led me to a game breaking bug caused by the pause menu opening over the equipment menu where I couldn’t exit either. Menu layouts make some things hard to read; it took me a couple runs to actually spot the prices on the permanent upgrades. A lack of a loading indicator when starting up the game on Switch made me think it had crashed. There’s just a black screen for a solid 30-45 seconds before the first logo appears.
Image credit: Whirllaxy Limited / 2P Games
Regarding the upgrades, the game has a major pacing issue. It took me more that two hours of play time to be able to purchase a single point in a permanent upgrade. I got bored and frustrated because the hard currency is awarded so slowly that I felt that I wasn’t making progress. Metal Mind also has a system for temporary upgrades that you’ll lose at the end of a run, but they’re all very incremental stat upgrades that would feel more appropriate as permanent upgrades; they’re subtle enough that I couldn’t quickly feel their effects, so it’s frustrating to lose them every run. Not to mention that the UI to buy them is very clunky.
The game confusingly has three separate currencies. One is the hard currency, another is the currency you can use in shops during a run, and the third is used in an upgrade menu for the temporary upgrades. The latter two could have easily been collapsed into one.
Image credit: Whirllaxy Limited / 2P Games
The game’s graphics are in a pixel art style that’s well executed. Visual effects tie together well with the satisfying physical enemy pushback from your bullets’ impacts. However, the visuals and juicy sensory feedback weren’t enough to keep me engaged. The game just doesn’t feel very good to play. Coupled with how long it was taking to earn any permanent upgrades at all, it caused the game quickly become boring and I began to lose interest.
Unfortunately Metal Mind doesn’t do anything to stick out in its crowded genre. Even the body customization mechanic isn’t unique; it was used nearly identically in 2016 game NeuroVoider. The bottom line is other games in the genre have employed the formula much more successfully and it pales in comparison to juggernauts like Enter the Gungeon, or even the more recent efforts like Juicy Realm.
Metal Mind is available now on PC (Steam, Epic), Xbox One / Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
Overall Score: 3/10
Played on: Nintendo Switch
