At first glance, this top-down, shadow-hopping approach looks like a nostalgic stealth game designed to evoke the boxy underground environments of the first Metal Gear Solid. But it’s really just a complex single-player fighting game with stealth elements. It’s closer in design to Sifu’s kung-fu brawler than to any of Solid Snake’s various mischief-making. And while this mix of influences intrigues me, it can also feel like a layer cake of awkwardly clashing flavors. Like that very pretty but questionable cake, Raw Metal feels a little underbaked.
You’re a sneaky person infiltrating a sci-fi mine. Who, what, when, and why aren’t the substantial questions (Raw Metal doesn’t have much in the way of plot motivations – but more on that later). Here, it’s all about the “how.” In keeping with the tradition of stealth, sticking to the shadows keeps you out of the sight of enemies. Crouching will keep you peaceful. Cameras will slowly pan from one side of the room to the other. And tiptoeing directly behind enemies will grant you a sneak attack.
The catch is that sneak attacks don’t kill the target outright. This isn’t a game about silently breaking necks. Instead, sneaking a hit on unsuspecting enemies will halve their health in the next fight. And any enemies that catch you off guard will require a more solemn beating to take down. The overall goal is to semi-sneak through floor after floor of these enemies, descending deeper into the mines via the same elevator. Get off at floor -1, beat up a few guys, get the keycard, return to the elevator, go to floor -2. And so on.
The fights themselves feel confused, claustrophobic, the camera dropping right next to you in a Yakuza-like manner (often too close for comfort, your own body or that of your enemies making it tough to tell what’s going on). It’s tough to judge spacing and stance at times, especially if you’re unfortunate enough to provoke three enemies at once (which you quickly learn to avoid). This isn’t the kind of game where enemies “take turns” attacking you. Their baton strikes or stun guns come out whenever they want. As a result, dodging and parrying don’t always feel reliable. Trying to single out one enemy and prioritize them can be tricky.
You’re pummeling yourself with a ton of lithe punches, ponderous punches, lithe kicks, and ponderous kicks. A uncomplicated combo will send your opponent flying, and another ponderous attack while they’re in the air will send them flying across the battlefield like a bag of dried beans. If they crash into a wall, you have even more chances to inflict additional pain on their dazed head. It plays out a lot like a fighting game, with wall-slamming and juggling reminiscent of arcade beat-em-ups or 3D extravaganzas like For Honor. Whether that fighting flavor pairs well with the underlying flavors of Solid Snake sneaker is up to your palate. (Me? I really like fish and chips. I really like ice cream. I don’t want to eat them together.)
Your delicate body makes even seemingly uncomplicated fights complex. Our hero can only withstand a few blows before he’s knocked out. You automatically regain all of your health after each fight (a subtly clever decision I often appreciate in games). But despite this mercy, death comes quickly, and when restarting the game means returning to the main menu to start over from the first floor, it can make minor stumbles frustrating.
This will either be a cause for grumpiness or a nice wake-up call for Sifu fans. For me, it’s the former. Punishing fights would be easier to stomach if they could always be avoided—something Metal Gear previews have suggested. But that’s misleading. A stealth-only approach doesn’t really seem feasible. For example, running away when you’re spotted just doesn’t feel shrewd (you just draw more attention). And complex bosses are mandatory. It becomes painfully clear that mastering combat is a necessary part of the game, and I’m not buying it. The parry window is narrow, the combat space is confined, the camera often ruins the fight. And that’s before you get to the spongy bosses that barely budge from your many blows.
In other stealth games, there are options and approaches to direct conflict whenever it breaks out, so that getting caught often elicits a nervous chuckle. You can run, hide, land a punch or two, then run away, dive into water, into vents, into cardboard boxes, escape onto rooftops, kick a pile of fruit at the market to ponderous down your pursuers, the list goes on. Here, the stealth elements are, intentionally or not, secondary to the combat. Enemies run as swift as you do and quickly corner you. While getting caught isn’t an instant defeat, it is an instant boxing match that you have to play out.
In other words, I had a tough time figuring out what the game really wanted to be. While it does a good job of explaining its specific features (your equipment, your attacks), it doesn’t do a great job of explaining its philosophy and overall design ideas. For example, it’s not a roguelike, but it does play like one at times. You can return to the surface at any point using an elevator, and you can sort of “collect” items for later playthroughs. But at no point does the game tell you that this is part of the whole story. It’s only through the patient process of playing the same early floors over and over that you understand what the game expects of you as a player.
That repetition isn’t helped by the sameness of the levels themselves, which are mostly a jumble of boxy rooms with no apparent purpose beyond breaking line of sight. The floors have the same layout every time (there’s no procedural generation here), meaning it’s more about mastering familiar spaces, learning optimal routes and best practices. At times, it strangely reminded me more of Hotline Miami than Metal Gear Solid. There’s none of the same urgency and risk, but like Hotline Miami, it becomes a game about finding the perfect order in which to dispatch guards.
There are gadgets that can support with this: a noisemaker to distract enemies, a concussion grenade to knock them back for a moment, a stun gun to disable cameras, an electromagnet to freeze enemies in place. But the most ingenious of them all is the “tear gas” grenade that transports guards to another random room. There’s a delicious sense of satisfaction in knocking an enemy out of an already crowded fight, evening the odds.
But that’s the only gadget I’ve ever been excited to employ. When it comes to crunch, the taser, electromagnet, and concussion grenade more or less fill the same role – they all give you a brief respite in slightly different ways. That lack of excitement extends to wearable gear with bonuses. You can find gloves that boost the effect of concussion grenades. Helmets that slightly boost the chance of finding certain items. But again, I’ve never felt like any of them changed the way I approach running in any significant way.
One thing the game has in abundance is style. From the grim industrial color scheme to the Persona-style menus, it can be a very stylish thing. The combat animations are effective in more ways than the obvious. Every final knockout in a brawl is accompanied by a jazzy silhouette of your character taking down your opponent one last time as that rag doll flies through the air, a substantial word being sprayed across the background. “NICE,” the game shouts in text. “DAMN,” it announces. And perhaps with a knowing wink to the industry at enormous: “EXPLORABLE.”
But for all the style, I found myself lacking motivation. You go deeper and deeper into these futuristic mines. But… why? Narrative-wise, there’s chatter. Boss monologues to listen to and audio diaries to find. And while it does develop a bit, there’s no early hook that kept me going. Sifu had a basic revenge plot that kept you going from the get-go. Raw metal? Are there… bad guys doing bad things?
And I’m going back to that Sifu comparison on purpose. Because Sifu was so composed and unyielding, I put it aside long before I got to the end. And it’s the same with Raw Metal. I don’t have the patience to fight through three more floors, die to a boss, and then repeat the process. I know there are more disciplined boxers who will definitely have that patience and determination. But like a certain himbo in a bandana, I’d rather hide than fight.
On one hand, Raw Metal is confusing to someone like me who has certain expectations of the genre (one of my favorite elements of the stealth genre—the chase, the hide-and-seek—is largely invalidated), but it’s also clear that the designers played with the basic tenets of their inspirations enough to create something distinct. As a mishmash of influences, I respect the courage and work it takes to combine previously unrelated concepts, even if it ends up being a crude amalgamation of ideas that don’t quite hold together.
This review is based on the version of the game provided by the developers at Team Crucible.
