The underlying gameplay is Severed Steel is incredibly strong. The movement options are great, the shooting is punchy, and it never got boring through the kinetic albeit brief campaign. I'm fine with the length because any longer would either get too difficult or start to lose its enjoyment. The difficulty is all about slo-motion and ammo management. When you're shooting bad guys in the head in slo-mo it's some of the most satisfying gameplay you can imagine (especially when you're sliding, diving, wall-running at the same time), but the second you run out of slo-mo or ammo you're basically dead. The guns are borderline unsuable in normal speed, but thankfully the movement helps in getting away. You also get an arm cannon early on which helps to counter certain enemy types, provide some much needed backup shots, and there's some fun interactions to be had with the environment. Most levels are pretty fun and well-designed although they're quite samey (either shoot this, kill everyone, etc.), and I did get tilted quite a few times (probably my fault but there are some tricky moments where dying feels essential to understand the layout, similar to Hotline Miami or Superhot). There's one boss fight at the end, but it's nothing special. I know there's a level designer, but I think after 4 hours or so I'm ready to move on. Also the music is great overall, really fits well with the look of the game. There's some nitpicks I have (nothing dealbreaking), but a solid experience overall, even more so that Epic was giving this out for free. If you're paying, I'd say it's worth it if you like fast moving and slow shooting with a bit of challenge.

I’ve long had this dream game in my head of a free flowing parkour fps arena shooter that has so much style to it. Little did I know that someone had already just recently done it. To me, this is as close to a perfect parkour fps game as you can get. From the extremely open ended combat that allows for so much experimentation, constant weapon swapping to encourage aggression, varied and packed levels, and so much love poured into it; it’s amazing. My only gripe is that I wish the story was better told. While it has hints of something going on; I could barely follow what was happening. Still, with gameplay this good, it really doesn’t need to worry. Can’t recommend this game enough.

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.

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.

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.

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.

¿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.

Severed Steel is a single-player first-person shooter developed by Greylock Studio and released in 2021.

Almost without any background story you're given a short campaign which can be completed in only 3 hours (6 chapters). But what you're gonna experience in those 3 hours is pure non-stop action, thrill and fun from the beginning till the end. Shooting, jumping, double-jumping, combination of jumping and wall kicking (to reach great heights), backflips, wall running, sliding, diving, kicking doors and kicking enemies while stealing their weapons or weapons from already fallen enemies and while doing that, having the ability to slow-down time to adjust your aim to have almost all enemies killed by headshots. One hand is used to hold weapons, but you don't have the other one, instead in the other hand, you're soon given a plasma cannon which is mainly used to create alternative routes through the map since the enviroment is destructible. Since you don't have the other hand to reload weapons, after using all the bullets you have to find a new weapon (or steal from enemies), or before that, you can throw your empty weapon to stun an enemy.
The amount of weapons in the game is huge, you're hardly gonna pick up the same weapon twice and every weapon is fun to use, especially shotguns and snipers.
Other than weapons, the game has also a great amount of different enemy types, but one big flaw, only one boss fight. What they could have also done is to put smaller boss fights in the end of each chapter, instead of just one great boss fight.
But what to do after those 3 hours of campaign? Well, the developers soon gave the information to players that new content will be released in the future, after the game was released. In the time of writing, after finishing the campaign you have: Campaign+ (which is same as the campaign but enemies deal double damage), few additional smaller Bonus Campaigns/Levels made by the developers and community, Firefight (score attack game mode), Rogue Steel (game mode with rogue-lite elements and additional challenges) and a Level Editor (in Beta).

All in all, a magnificent game with non-stop action. Even though it offers a short campaign with only one boss fight, with newly added game modes, the game has great replay value, offering at least twice as much play time than what you would experience with the base campaign.
A game that after you pick it up, is hard to let it go.

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.