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.

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.

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.

As much as I loved this game, I don't have a whole lot to say about it, other than it is really good. I have tried writing a long ass review that goes in depth into why its so great, but every time I would write draft I just felt silly trying to describe how this game functions. It is one of those games that you really just have to play to witness its greatness. The one thing I will specially note is that the arm canon is one of the coolest and most versatile tools I have ever seen in a game, letting you blow up and break apart entire sections of levels; it's like Red Faction or Bad Company of crack cocaine. There is not a greater feeling of getting the drop on a group of enemies or cheesing your way to an objective because you decided to blow a hole through the floor, wall, or ceiling. I will say that if you aren't a fan of this type of "Woo Shooter" FPS game, you probably won't like it; but if you are, it is seriously one of the best games out there.

Severed Steel is a pretty solid shooter all around. Think what did it for me was how good the movement felt, with the ability to jump and dodge around reminding me a lot of Max Payne (also helps you have on demand bullet time). The guns also felt pretty rock solid with the constant switching shaking things up pretty often (though I never got used to the cannon except when needed for progression). Another boon to this game is just how short it was, with the four hour runtime being perfect as to not get repetitive (though I will say Chapter 6 has some pretty meh levels). Would easily recommend to anyone in the mood for some fast and frantic fun.

8.5/10

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.

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.