Severed Steel Review: Colorful, Mysterious, and Fast-Paced

Colorful, Mysterious, and Fast-paced. All of these describe the newly released Cyberpunk-themed FPS Severed Steel. The game was made by indie developers Greylock Studio and was released just last month on September 17. Playing Severed Steel, I definitely feel a bit of Ghost in the Shell vibes, with both titles having a female protagonist in a futuristic setting.

You will be playing as a one-armed acrobatic killing machine, Steel, who is hellbent on seeking revenge. She can slow time and perform stunts, which consist of sliding, diving, wall-running, and double-jumping. 

Greylock Studio really applied the phrase “go in the front door guns blazing” in Severed Steel summing up the whole combat system of the game. You just go through the front door and kill everyone while performing stunts in bullet-time. I liked the aspect where there is background music while shooting enemies, it made me feel like a total badass.

Not to mention, the soundtrack is actually pretty good. Greylock Studio said that the AI will be unscripted and dynamic, and they stayed true to their word; It didn’t feel repetitive even when I played the same map over and over again

The levels are small, destructible, and filled with neon lights. Even though the levels are compact, you still have enough room to perform different stunts. Either way, you should be always stunting since there is a mechanic where enemies will always miss their bullets when you are performing a stunt. 

Just a piece of advice, do not play in the easiest setting available since it will be a cakewalk.  Do note, however, that it is still pretty challenging in the harder settings since you will have limited resources and take more damage as you crank up the difficulty. It will still fall down on your preference though.

Severed Steel’s story is exiguous and secretive. The cutscenes are comic-themed artworks that don’t contain dialogues and are shown in short passes. I think the game is fleeting since I finished playing it in less than 5 hours. Nevertheless, it still has some sort of replayability since the levels are timed. You can challenge yourself by trying to achieve the fastest time possible. Overall, the experience was still pretty fun. I liked the fast-paced combat and I enjoyed killing enemies in slow-mo – like I was in the movie “The Matrix”.