Metrocide

About

Metrocide is a single player action game. It was developed by Flat Earth Games and was released on December 15, 2014. It received neutral reviews from players.

Metrocide is a relentless top-down single-player arcade stealth-shooter set in a cyberpunk dystopia where everyone wants you dead. As legendary contract killer T.J. Trench, you’ll have to negotiate a fierce and brutal city replete with gangs, vigilantes, cops and more, taking out the trash one contract at a time. While cop drones circle overhead, you’ll be sticking to the alleyways with a variety…

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Play Modes

Single-Player

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53%

Audience ScoreBased on 135 reviews

gameplay20 positive mentions

grinding6 negative mentions

Unique, challenging top-down stealth shooter with a cyberpunk setting that rewards patience and tactical thinking.
Strong atmospheric design and world-building with a retro GTA-inspired art style and engaging sound effects creating a gritty dystopian feel.
Addictive gameplay loop involving contract assassinations, use of diverse weapons and gadgets, and strategic use of the environment and NPC behaviors.

Poor optimization and technical issues including frequent crashes, especially on certain systems, with no save functionality leading to frustrating progress loss.
Unintuitive controls, awkward aiming mechanics, barebones and limited options menu, and interface problems such as lack of volume controls and poor 4K support.
Repetitive and slow gameplay with simplistic AI, limited mission variety, high difficulty heavily reliant on trial-and-error, and an unfinished feel due to lack of updates and polish.

gameplay
64 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
31%
58%
11%
The gameplay of Metrocide is a challenging top-down stealth shooter with a unique concept that appeals to fans of difficulty and tactical planning, though it suffers from flawed, unintuitive mechanics and repetitive, sometimes frustrating trial-and-error gameplay. While some players find the core gameplay loop addictive and cleverly designed, others criticize its lack of depth, poor controls, and technical issues that hinder overall enjoyment. Despite these flaws, the game offers a compelling mood and fun stealth-based assassination challenges for those willing to invest patience and effort.
- “Unique gameplay is what made me buy this game.”
- “It takes a little while to get a handle on the mechanics but once you do it's incredibly fun and surprisingly open.”
- “Fun stealth-based gameplay that involves carefully planning contract-based assassinations, which are satisfyingly difficult to pull off.”
- “The mechanics do not work as explained, are entirely unpredictable, and fundamentally broken.”
- “A charge up time of a second and a half to fire the basic gun, in a game where it only takes half a second to get spotted and have the cops sicced on you is not an acceptable game mechanic, because it destroys most players' ability to "hit the ground running" as it were, and allow them to gain a little momentum and have fun.”
- “Metrocide doesn't - the gameplay is repetitive and boring as you chase down people and murder them while no one else is looking - more like hitman with worse graphics and gameplay.”
story
21 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
19%
67%
14%
The story is minimal and shallow, primarily revolving around repetitive assassination contracts with little plot development or mission variety. Brief pixelated cutscenes provide some context but do not significantly enhance the gameplay experience. Overall, the narrative serves mainly as a backdrop for the stealth-based contract killings, lacking depth or progression beyond completing missions.
- “This game is a wonderfully brutal and unforgiving story of a contract killer and his escape from the city.”
- “The story is predominantly outlined in a series of very brief pixellated comic-style cutscenes that appear at the beginning of each level.”
- “Funny story time: I was one contract away from graduating to the next sector of the city, when I unlocked the "lure" item at the vending machines.”
- “The plot is nonexistent; apparently the main character perpetually needs to leave whatever area they're currently in, and there are no other mission types that I'm aware of.”
- “Imagine a GTA1 without cars and only one mission type: kill a guy, stay hidden while doing it.”
- “There's no epic plot or wide variety of mission types to do when you get sick of killing randomly selected pedestrians.”
graphics
19 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
16%
68%
16%
The graphics receive mixed feedback, with some appreciating the gritty, pixelated cyberpunk and retro-inspired art style that creates an atmospheric, noir setting, while others criticize the visuals as rough, grainy, and outdated compared to modern standards. Though the minimalistic top-down design suits the game's mood, some users find the graphics unclear or lackluster, detracting from overall enjoyment.
- “The grainy graphics help to create a dirty cyberpunk metropolis that is astonishingly atmospheric for its unpolished sheen.”
- “Metrocide is a gritty top-down trip into the dystopic streets of an open cyberpunk world of stylish minimal visuals with pulp noir flair, the city around you living and breathing with its own unique population.”
- “While the graphics are pixelated the city is designed in such a way as to remind one of Bladerunner.”
- “I really dig the GTA2 inspired art style, but sadly this top-down shooter feels like a rough draft and is hard to recommend.”
- “Horrible controls and horrible graphics make it so cryptic that you don't understand what is going on.”
- “Graphics are also a bust - the original GTA was released in the 1990s. If you release a game today without advancing beyond games from 25 years ago, you should reconsider before launching on Steam.”
atmosphere
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
63%
38%
The game's atmosphere is praised for its gritty, stylized cyberpunk setting, enhanced by grainy graphics and pixel-art that evoke a neon-lit, immersive metropolis reminiscent of Hotline Miami. While many find the environment vibrant and believable, some feel it occasionally lacks a fully dynamic, living world outside the player's actions. Overall, it successfully creates a captivating and atmospheric cyberpunk experience.
- “The grainy graphics help to create a dirty cyberpunk metropolis that is astonishingly atmospheric for its unpolished sheen.”
- “It reminds me greatly of Hotline Miami, with the weapons, top-down view, and its sometimes trippy atmosphere of neon signs and flashing police lights, whilst you run for your life in this great yet daunting game of what the future may come to be known as.”
- “Great job to developers for creating such a believable atmosphere for the audience to get stuck into.”
- “You generate the excitement, but there's no real atmosphere sometimes and it feels like such a wasted opportunity.”
- “It reminds me greatly of Hotline Miami, with the weapons, top-down view, and its sometimes trippy atmosphere of neon signs and flashing police lights, while you run for your life (or usually other people's) in this great yet daunting game of what the future may come to be.”
- “That is how you create a sense of atmosphere—a world that feels alive and breathing even without your character being present to generate excitement. Adding more elements like that would be cool.”
music
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
24%
38%
The game features minimal traditional music, relying instead on ambient city sounds like rain, thunderstorms, and environmental noise to create an immersive, dystopian atmosphere. Sound effects are well-executed, but the lack of a proper soundtrack or notable music tracks is a noticeable absence. Some areas include loud, repetitive sounds, such as a harsh drum solo near nightclubs, which can be intrusive.
- “There's no real music but the noises of the city and the constant sound of rain, along with occasional fictional in-game advertisements, all do a great job of bringing the game world to life.”
- “There's really not much in the way of music to talk about, but the sound effects are well done, which is always nice.”
- “And the music (fitting for the dystopian feel) in the area near some buildings is maybe a bit too loud.”
- “There is no music, except for this god-awful drum solo that plays when you are in the vicinity of certain nightclubs in the game; and when I say 'in the vicinity,' I mean the equivalent of several city blocks.”
- “The game lacks any music or any real human voice-acting, outside of a few sentences broadcast from a 'radio aircraft'.”
- “There is also no soundtrack at all.”
grinding
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding in the game is characterized as tedious and repetitive, involving monotonous tasks like locating hackers and evading cops with little strategic depth. Players find the trial-and-error gameplay and prolonged difficulty artificially prolonged, leading to a lack of engagement and an overall bland experience.
- “The game quickly becomes tedious without adding any strategy.”
- “For people like me that are both time-constrained, impatient, and rule the kingdom of mediocrity, Metrocide might just be a tad too difficult and tedious.”
- “The game really is 'Nintendo hard' because both the difficulty and the length of the game is artificial, and underneath the tedious trial-and-error, sit-around-and-wait gameplay there’s really not a whole lot of depth to it.”
stability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game suffers from significant stability issues, including frequent crashes, freezing, and buggy menus, which severely hinder gameplay. Despite some enjoyable features like fair achievements, the lack of recent patches and persistent glitches suggest it remains unfinished and poorly maintained.
- “No patches or news from July-August 2015, it's buggy and unfinished.”
- “Game started out nice but turned out to be yet another buggy cash grab that has been abandoned.”
- “The menus are buggy, the game is buggy, it crashed the second time I played it, and every time since then it's just been completely screwed up: no reticle showing, cannot shoot weapon, etc. Maybe I could get a positive review if I actually got to play and enjoy the game, but it's just so poorly done that I never even got that far.”
monetization
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users feel that the game's monetization elements, such as in-game advertisements, are repetitive and detract from the overall experience, with some perceiving the game as a buggy cash grab. However, others appreciate the advertisements and ambient sounds for adding to the game's atmosphere, though they desire more variety and content in this aspect.
- “Game started out nice but turned out to be yet another buggy cash grab that has been abandoned.”
- “Like for instance, at one point in the game whilst I was stalking my target, a large hovercraft (blimp?) flew above me and was spouting advertisements for a brothel for men who think their wives are unfaithful.”
- “And the thing that pissed me off more than the nightclubs is the fact that all of the humour in the game (in the form of ironic and facetious advertisements) is masked or washed out by sounds that you've been hearing for the entire game.”
replayability
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
Replayability opinions are mixed: while some players find the game engaging with good replay value, others criticize it as repetitive with limited variety, reducing its long-term appeal. Overall, it offers moderate replay potential depending on player preference.
- “This game is great for playing offline and has tons of good art and really great replay value.”
- “It's a fair price for a good game, and has enough replay value to keep you coming back to try it again.”
- “That is, until I played Metrocide and found out that it is actually a repetitive isometric shooter/stealth game with no variety or replayability to speak of.”
- “The only thing I am worried about is the replayability.”
optimization
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The game has improved significantly in optimization since launch, resolving initial performance issues on many systems. However, some users note it may still require further optimization to run smoothly across a wider variety of hardware configurations.
- “The performance issues the game had at launch are gone (on my machine).”
- “It does need some optimization for the variety of systems in the world, so take this as a warning.”
humor
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is subtle and situational, often emerging from unexpected moments during gameplay, such as unlocking quirky items like the "lure" at just the right time. Players appreciate these lighthearted, incidental touches that add charm without overpowering the experience.