When you think about it, Severed Steel is everything an action video game should be. Featuring some extremely tight parkour combat that moves at a face-melting speed, Severed Steel is the culmination of every revolutionary shooter that came before it.
Severed Steel‘s fantastic use of slow motion is coupled with a highly dynamic camera that always angles itself to give the player a stylish perspective of the action as we bump into enemies to steal their weapons or slide to knock them off their feet.
Here’s a rundown on the game:
Severed Steel is a single-player FPS featuring a fluid stunt system, destructible voxel environments, loads of bullet time, and a unique one-armed protagonist. It’s you, your trigger finger, and a steel-toed boot against a superstructure full of bad guys. Chain together wall runs, dives, flips, and slides to take every last enemy down.
Features
- A Unique Fighter – Play as Steel, a nimble, one-armed sharpshooter on a mission. There is no reloading – pick your shots well and be ready to pry a loaded weapon from your enemies’ cold dead hands.
- Stylish Combat – Dodge bullets, leap off walls, slide kick, throw weapons – do whatever it takes to come out on top in intense and frenzied firefights.
- Fully Destructible Environment – Punch through thick concrete with .50 cal slugs, or make big holes in things with your arm cannon. Carve your own path through completely destructible levels.
- Dynamic AI – No two battles are the same thanks to dynamic, unscripted, squad-based AI.
- Firefight Mode – Chase high scores and fast times for leaderboard acclaim in this arcade-styled mode. Features 42 levels, each with their own sub-challenges, and over 20 unlockable, game modifying ‘Mutators’.
- Campaign Mode – Blast through six compact story chapters as you battle against the forces of nefarious mega-corporation, EdenSys. Finish the campaign and want more? Try New Game + mode which mixes up the campaign for a fresh playthrough.
- Rogue Mode – Severed Steel with Rogue-lite elements. Click the Rogue Steel button on the main menu to start a short, randomly generated, 10 level campaign. Features unlockable perks, skins, and more.
- Accessibility – A range of adjustable settings for features such as difficulty, visuals, audio, controls, navigation, and more.
- Level Editor (with Steam Workshop support) – Build levels and share them with the community. Note: This feature is in beta and will continue to be updated post-launch.
Severed Steel‘s fully destructible environments also look fantastic with the RTX technology, as it creates these very reflective textures that give the levels a shiny, futuristic look.
The levels start off as regular labs for the tutorial, but as things start spiraling out of control, we are thrown into insane action set pieces, like multiple moving trains that you can fully move through at insane speeds.
It is unbelievable that this game slipped under so many people’s radars, including mine. Anyone who likes shooters needs to do themselves the favor of playing Severed Steel, because it is a truly unique experience.
Severed Steel is available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows (through Steam)
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