It’s quite the fascinating task to trace Severed Steel’s mechanical identity, as it draws from an array of shooters to form an identity of its own. Of course there’s the bullet time of Max Payne, the emphasis on smooth movement and evasion from Titanfall, and the mission objective structure of SuperHot, and while the arm cannon visually homages Metroid its ability to carve straight through the level architecture is joyfully unique and provides the player with a profound sense of power and freedom. It adds up to being a thrilling experience, evading enemy fire while zipping all around the map and wrecking absolute havoc, although admittedly the fact that avoiding fire is tied to the slow mo mechanic makes the game feel much more slow paced than it actually is. There isn’t much to write home about outside of the gunplay either, with a story that technically exists and a minimalist neon aesthetic that neither quite gels together no matter how high you crank up the settings, but Severed Steel is just plain a good time at its core.

Stilize ve aşırı akıcı FPS aksiyon oyunları son zamanlarda bağımsız oyun piyasasında fazlasıyla çoğaldı. Bu çoğalış galiba Doom serisinin yeni oyunlarıyla oluşmaya başlayıp New Blood Interactive'in oyunlarıyla popülaritesini arşa çıkardı. Bunları neden anlattım. Anlatmamın sebebi aslında bu tür FPS oyunlarının öncülerinin yapamadığı bir şeyi Severed Steel çok güzel şekilde yapıyor. Genel anlamda Doom (2016)'dan örnek vermem gerekirse oyun ilerledikçe size yeni yeni özellikler ile ödüllendiriyor. Bu ödüllendirme ile daha çok çeşitlilik ortaya çıkıyor. Çeşitlilik böyle oyunun sonuna kadar devam edeceğini düşündürürken oyunun bir noktasında tak diye duruyor ve oyunun akıcılığı gitmeye başlıyor. Doom (2016)'da bu akıcılığın gitmesindeki en büyük etmen bu tür bir FPS oyununa göre aşırı uzun olması. Oyunun uzunluğu yüzünden yeni özellikler kazansak bile bir tarafı boş kalıyordu. Severed Steel'de ise bu uzadığı için bunaltıcı olmaya başlama durumu hiç yok. Oyun o kadar rahat, zaman olarak iyi ayarlanmış ve akıcı ki türün diğer oyunlarının arasından sıyrılıp kendini gösteriyor. Severed Steel aksiyon anlamında beni fazlasıyla tatmin etti. İndirimler sırasında almaya tereddüt etsem de aldığım için gram pişman olmadım. John Wick tarzı akıcı bir aksiyon görmek istiyorsanız indirimlerde Severed Steel'i alıp denemelisiniz.

This is a game that hits directly at the nerve and spikes a hypodermic needle straight into an adrenal gland with its frenetic, stressful, and chaotic dance of blissful F.E.A.R. and Mirror's Edge-inspired gameplay. Severed Steel is a highly addictive parkour run-and-gun fps that serves its story straight with an immediacy and embellishing enough narrative to incentivize playing, almost like a deconstruction of an action narrative to an absolute minimal presentation while presenting a motivated aesthetic from the perspective of the protagonist. It's short, sweet, and an immediate cyberpunk game that begs for speed-runs and stacking combos as you wall run while shooting enemies in slo-mo to jump off the wall and perfectly headshot 3 goons as you fly overhead in a rainbow arc only to pick up a weapon mid-air and cap-off 3 more. It's a dream come true and handles as smoothly and gracefully in its John Woo fantasy.

¿Sabéis el meme de "así sería el mundo si..." en el que aparece una imagen idílica de un lugar en el que la naturaleza y la tecnología se dan de la mano, una especie de futuro respirable y esperanzador? Pues así sería el mundo si todos los shooters fueran como Severed Steel. Se le puede hermanar con la intensidad de Doom, la pulcritud de Superhot o incluso la concreción de un Hotline Miami, aunque por encima de todo es una tesis (como ya lo era Vanquish) sobre por qué no hay nada más placentero en los juegos de acción que deslizarse por el suelo a cámara lenta mientras disparas a no sé cuántos enemigos. Un puñado de mecánicas transparentes desde el inicio, unos escenarios lo suficientemente funcionales como para dar juego en los tiroteos, una variedad de armas que da profundidad al asunto pero sin demasiadas florituras, y a funcionar. Y vaya si funciona.

a lot of the levels are designed terribly in the first couple chapters, but it gets better as it goes on. it's a way better game when they focus on more open levels rather than tight corridors and small rooms
the screen can get really messy and annoying with how much shit is going on at once, the extremely bright neon lights do not help with this at all
i really liked the movement and gunplay and how you are invincible whenever you're doing any stunts. it's a fun enough gameplay loop to leave me with a generally positive feeling on the game as a whole despite my complaints
really good atmo d&b soundtrack

This is what Superhot should've been. The 'time only moves with you' idea was charming, but this is so much better and much more dynamic, getting bullet time under control with extreme precision feels great and it has enough variety to back it up. It really nails the movement and aiming mechanics, probably the best-feeling game since Source shooters but with many more movement options which also work well for stunts. And you can play more and more with different modifications - probably the best single player FPS you can play at the moment.

I'm actually genuinely so pissed I somehow missed out on this game back when it released and only just now found out about it, but this is one of the most fluid, fun, and addictive movement shooters I've ever played. The gunplay is super solid with lots of really fun guns to use, the sound design and feedback on all your actions is super crunchy and satisfying, especially once you get in the game flow state and are going for high ranks and it all starts clicking! The main story is very simple and over and done in about 3 hours, but that just means its extremely succinct and replayable, and in a game this mechanically solid and absurdly good feeling and fun to play, I'll be replaying it on NG+ a good many times, and I can tell its roguelike mode & its time trial modes are going to sap my life away, as I'm already beginning to dunk a fair bit of time into them!

I might update this review as that extra playtime goes.

A first person shooter focused around the use of parkour and bullet time to fight through arena style levels.

Making use of double jumps, dives, slides, and wall runs prevents you from getting hit by enemy bullets, you are constantly swapping guns taken from enemies as they run out of ammo, and you have the ability to slide tackle, launch objects into by kicking, throw your weapon at enemies, or can kick and disarm enemies at close range for other methods of attack. Shortly into the campaign you will also unlock a cannon that attaches to your arm with limited ammo that can be recharged by draining power from certain kinds of enemies, this isn't that useful as a weapon but can be used to destroy walls and objective targets.

On the positive side the game offers fast and fluid movement in levels that are destructible allowing you to crash through glass, blow up walls, jump through floors and ceilings you have destroyed, etc. The way you can flip while in dives by aiming in ways that would have you doing sideways rolls and front and backflips is a cool feature. A level editor and a mode where you can replay any of the stages while unlocking cheats, starting weapon options, and different kinds of weapons to attach to your arm instead of the default cannon both adds to the games replayability.

On the negative side the enemies just aren't that interesting or varied and aren't that satisfying to shoot, worse is that all of the SMGs or rifles that shoot full auto feel weak and aren't satisfying to use, even the more unique weapon in the flamethrower is kind of cool with how it leaves flames or damages the environment but offers little differences from anything else when you hit enemies with it. They made the infinite ammo cheat one of the last things you unlock when being able to use some of the more fun guns (high damage pistols, explosive weapons, double barrel shotgun) constantly would have been a big improvement when going through to replay levels. Throwing your empty gun at enemies never looked good or felt satisfying to do and having the thrown weapon option without any ability to throw any kind of more damage equipment or knives/shuriken/etc was disappointing. The level design tends to be fairly uninteresting, the best I can remember was an area with a hedge maze that was kind of cool with the flamethrowers burning parts of it and being able to jump over it and run along the top was kind of cool, and at the very start of one level there was a hospital style gurney that I dived onto and ride for a bit while shooting enemies, it made me hopefully there would be some fun interactable objects like that more often and there never really was.

It's alright, they have the fun movement down but the style of a lot of the maps, enemies, and how the enemies react to getting hit combined with some weak guns leaves more to be desired from the shooting and map design.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1553818020866273282

Toss Ghostrunner, Vanquish and Max Payne 3 in a blender and, mechanically, you get Severed Steel.

Severed Steel is a fast paced and incredibly fluid first person shooter where you can spam a slow motion button. Gyro controls are enabled by default as well! Such a nice touch. I wish more games supported that. Oh and there's also a gun that blows massive holes through wales so there's dynamic destructibility adding a layer of chaos throughout. It's a refreshing no bullshit game with minimal story. There's something there but it's minimal and not worth talking about. And that's fine!

The soundtrack is fire as well, constantly just exuding the vibes I needed for this kind of game. The entire game really has this matter-of-fact energy to it.

Boy was I ever surprised by Severed Steel. A phenomenal game. I thought this would be a lesser Ghostrunner but it's really not going for the same thing at all, and in fact, I think I Severed Steel even more.

Tengo debilidad por cualquier movement shooter, pero servered steel me parece una propuesta bastante única dentro de todos ellos.

Mecánicamente me parece excepcional, te da muchas formas de movimiento, haciendo que no estés parado ni un segundo, además de tener la posibilidad de parar el tiempo, que lo vuelve muy frenético y divertido. Y si por si eso fuera apoco, el cañón que llevas en el brazo te da la posibilidad de agujerear el escenario y cambiarlo a tu antojo , dándole un toque de creatividad a cada batalla que le viene genial.

El diseño de niveles es bueno, dándote la posibilidad de usar sus mecánicas al completo, aunque creo que flojea en los niveles mas extensos , por la propia propuesta del juego, haciendo que se te atraganten un poco dichos niveles debido la facilidad al morir y tener que empezar de nuevo. Tampoco tiene casi progresión pero debido a su corta duración no es muy relevante.

Estéticamente luce bien y me gusta la banda sonora, aunque es algo genérico.

En general me parece un juego muy divertido y aunque es algo corto, creo que este concepto tiene posibilidades de ser explorado con más profundidad en un futuro por el estudio, lo cual me ilusiona a estar atento a cualquier nuevo proyecto del desarrollador.

i always wonder how Mirror's Edge would look like with great shooting mechanics

highly kinetic, the idea of having a hand cannon that lets you destroy walls and find new ways to explore and move during combat is fantastic

very light in terms of anything else, so that's a big bummer

Admittedly the slow motion mechanic makes this game pretty much trivial to complete, but honestly, I don't really care.

This game is fun. 'Cathartic escapism', the title of its last level, is probably the best way to describe it. Almost nothing can stop you - enemies have no collision, doors can be kicked open, and all walls are destructible by the player's arm cannon.

The moment that encapsulated the game for me was when I double-jumped onto another building, blew open the fucking wall with my fucking gun, slid behind the entire enemy barrage and proceeded to slow-mo headshot every enemy in that room.

Nowadays, I mostly play Severed Steel as a podcast game. Doing these stunts, breaking these walls... it's entrancing. Movement shooters tend to be fairly sweaty (which I appreciate!), but I'm actually glad this game goes a different direction.