There's not a ton of complexity as to how Severed Steel operates and some elements need fine-tuning, but I can't help but appreciate how much the game accomplishes with surprisingly little. I'm a fan of the simple and effective UI; your aiming reticle is surrounded by two bars that convey how much ammo and slo-mo time is left (so these gauges are always near the center of attention) and the flashing light on your gun also changes color (from light neon colors to yellow to red) so you're constantly keyed in on when you'll need to pick up a gun early or engage/disengage when running low on supplies. Enemies stand out from the environment thanks to the cel-shaded enemy outlines, and upon death emit a distinct explosion sound-effect so there's no ambiguity when quickly rifling through targets during firefights or when picking off enemies from afar. Guns feel great to aim and fire in slow-mo, mainly because there's very noticeable recoil when firing in real-time; the contrast really helps sell the necessity of the feature. I also love Severed Steel's kick as both a form of attack and traversal; the obvious purpose is your primary melee attack while holding a gun if you don't want to expend your limited magazine to finish off an enemy as well as kicking open doors, but it can also be used to quickly ascend up walls or kick off of grounded/aerial enemies if your double jump isn't enough. The same goes for the arm cannon; you can fire holes into any surface if you don't feel like hunting down stairs/doorways for objectives, but it also provides a nice desperation option to instantly eliminate shielded enemies or drop heavy grunts down to another floor if you find yourself without a weapon.

Despite the appealing core gameplay, Severed Steel can often feel a bit repetitive. Enemy variety feels lacking since the player is usually approaching enemies in a similar manner (that is, entering slo-mo while using stunts to efficiently dispatch foes while firing into their heads/backsides), and I would have liked to see enemies that had to be specifically eliminated using the arm cannon or melee as mix-ups. The Rogue Steel mode does touch upon this with random enemy buffs that force such approaches, but at times I feel like this mode prefers to lengthen combat by overwhelming the player with excess enemies with more health. I do think the game could have also leaned a bit more into its parkour elements with additional stages that focused upon traversal and dodging/quickly disposing of enemies, as there were only a couple of timed story missions that necessitated a rush to the end. Finally, I have to agree with HotPocketHPE that the slo-mo gauge is unbalanced; you'll practically never run out of bullet time as long as you're staying in stunt mode (super easy since there are floors and walls aplenty to slide and wallrun), though this is again addressed from playing Rogue Steel via the "Rebalanced Bullet-Time" unlockable modifier. Even with these gripes however, Severed Steel is a pretty easy recommendation considering how content-rich the game is from its many different modes and extra campaign/workshop levels to tinker with. It was an absolute steal at 80% off on the Steam Spring Sale, and I can't wait to see how Greylock Studio iterates and improves upon their already fantastic formula.

Holy shit. I can’t believe this random find was this good. Never heard if it before, saw it on a list of ‘boomer shooters’ and went for it cuz I like those a lot. Like Prodeus last year, where I began falling into trances of listening to Nine Inch Nails and playing this, I’ve been falling into multiple trances playing this. Mostly Phil Collins and Hole.

Level design us perf, score system’s addicting, and at the current point I’m playing it the game’s received a million updates of bonus shit. I’ve never been a sandbox game-y person. I love my imm-sims and my open world-ers, but specifically because those give me a good sense of direction. With this? I open it, click some random bullshit, and try to open my mind to whatever unique vibe it makes.

Did you know if you set your arm cannon to a cutting laser, and set it so using the cannon propels you, it becomes a giant painful grappling hook? I’ve been loving that.

Also you can set the protag’s hair to grey so she looks like a cool older lady. Teehee.

I'm super bad at these kinds of games, but Severed Steel takes the mechanical-prestige begging-for-a-speedrun format and makes it bombastic enough to hold anyone's attention regardless of skill level. It's short, sweet, and doesn't ask you to play longer than you want to, but provides a few interesting reasons to go back - namely the Rogue Steel mode that adds a few arcadey touches to the main game that feel like the developers' excuse to keep experimenting with the format in a way that feels cohesive outside of the campaign.
I do feel a little bit like my enjoyment of any given level hinged more on how hard the soundtrack went than anything else, and I think that speaks to how integral the music is to this experience. There's some great stuff here, but when the beat dies down too much I start to lose some of the adrenaline and my flow breaks.

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.

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.

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

I was playing Trepang2 when THIS was just sitting there? Shame on me for this one.

Incredibly fast-paced slow-mo gunfights with a cool girl protagonist with drum'n'bass music. Frankly, I have no one to blame but myself for not seeing the signs that I'd like this. Cooking much more than Trepang2 in terms of FEAR-style action, with much better arena design, weapons, movement, basically everything except framing. Severed Steel has a pretty superfluous excuse of a plot, whereas Trepang2 at least gave you SOMETHING to work with.

Actually, what is with indie games and being incapable of any sincerity beyond "metaphor for mental illness"? It feels like shit like this, Ultrakill and My Friend Pedro are more interested in being coolly detached to form an emotional core around literally anything. The reason FEAR is so cool isn't just because it has incredible action: it is grounded in its own tangible reality. the Point Man doing amazing, superhuman shit is given more gravity because we have a frame of reference for what normal is, we hear reactions from people about how unstoppable you are, and there is a PLOT with CHARACTERS that every gunfight serves to further. FEAR takes its psychic supersoldier plot deadly serious and it makes every incredible gunfight feel more real in that world. Artifice is important and I'm sick of these games deciding that they are too cool for it.

Comparing this to FEAR on more fundamental levels will also be very bad for it: arena design is way too loud and busy, meaning enemies have to be highlighted to make them visible amongst the backdrop. Whereas Replica soldiers stand out so dramatically in the office complexes of FEAR that no such bells and whistles are necessary.

One thing it NAILS is the destruction of the arenas, though. You can fuck these levels up, and if you are making a slow-mo action shooter, you better be looking at FEAR or Max Payne 3 to see how much a room can be blown apart by a hail of bullets.

I really like what is cooking here. I think this team is significantly more skilled than their contemporaries at action shooters, and the one-arm no reload design is brilliant in how it makes you never worry about anything but the shooting, so the pace is slick as hell. I would love these devs to take another critical look at FEAR and realize its color pallet is not a flaw, but a deliberate design choice. I want to see it expanded into something more substantial, as there is something good here even though I can only call it a dry run at this point.

I read curse's killer review and my reaction was "oh I gotta pick this up immediately"

1. What a soundscape...that music...with those gun fx...with all those dumbos' walkie-talkie distorted screams and panicked one-liners (SHIT!!!)...not to mention that music...

2. The visual design of these levels is so incredibly my jam—lay my body to rest in these hallowed halls

3. I didn't realize how much your bullet time gauge restores on kills and went through almost half of the game severely underutilizing it, sweating and swearing at how hard each level was (and still loving every second). Then after I had that forehead slap moment it felt like I'd ascended to divinity

4. I heap mountains of praise on the idea of 1 gun = 1 magazine, and when you’re out of ammo automatically nicking guns off the ground (or sidearms right out of enemies’ holsters!)

oh and before I forget: holy god that music!

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.

Lightning fast FPS where you are always on the move, running, double jumping, sliding, diving, slowing down time, and shooting holes through walls to keep your momentum. When you are in the rhythm it is a zen like experience, the most satisfying part being the instant swapping of guns. When you are low on ammo the game automatically picks up a gun at your feet or falling from the enemy you just killed, so the action is fast frantic and nonstop. There are some very light story elements but you are really here for the combat which is so highly polished I couldn't put it down.

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.

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.

¿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.