Severed Steel(Playstation 5) Review

There was quite a lot of buzz surronding this game at the time it was about to come out. I played around then mainly shocked that my aging PC was able to run it at all. I also paid more attention to the fact that my PC was whirling like a jet engine when I played. Not the case when replaying on PS5 which is one thing I love about about it. I do like the game a lot more now but 3 levels in the final chapter of the campaign did put a sour taste in my mouth due to aggrevating they can be when playing in the moment.

Severed Steel is a combination of a lot different games it has the looks and asethetics of Superhot. As well being able to throw your gun at an enemy after ammo is depleted. The more advanced maneveurs of FEAR. The first Max Payne's bullet time where you slow down time and enemies recharge your use of it. A late level in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare where your character only has one arm due to this can't reload and need to constantly pick up weapons. There of course Titanfall's movement with it's wall runs and double jumping.

It's obviously a combining a lot of games but due to how unusual some of these inspirations can be, it does carve a unique identity all to it's own.

Moves like the melee kick and slide were just moves you could just so happen to use in FEAR but in Severed Steel it's a core and reliable part of combat. CoD AW only did the character with one arm for a single level, Max Payne's bullet time of killing enemies to replenish it as well as empty ammo gun throwing and Titanfall's movement gives Severed Steel it's own spin on combat.

Every level is an intense ballet of slo mo, wall running, melee attacks, shooting, switching or throwing weapons, sliding, diving. Later in the game you get a robotic handcannon that can melt through walls.

Combine all this with the insanely satisfying gunplay and the sound the hit markers make when getting a kill on an enemy and combat can feel very gratifying for the short length the campaign lasts.

Enemy variety is solid with regular mooks, shield users, armoured enemies and later enemies with flamethrowers. Shield enemies encourage slide use. Amoured enemies also makes sure that the player is careful and not mindlessly running around.

Level design is mostly solid with a lot of vertical space, places to wall run and platforms to jump to and then get the drop on enemies. Objectives are mostly simple and are highlighted in red but it's there to help keep the momentum of the level going for new players.

This now leads to some issues where it's easy to get blindsided by enemies especially when you aren't over using slo mo to get the edge. Not abusing it can often lead to getting shot at from behind. Then when you combine that in that player HP is very low and it can lead to some very cheap and to hard see coming game overs. This is counteracted with levels being short and late levels having checkpoints.

It can also be annoying to stand still as the arm canon needs to recharge when carving through walls but levels with mandatory use of it are very few luckily.

However levels during Chapter 6 can put a bad taste in my mouth. When level has you buring a building just to have you kill everyone anyway. You have to pick up the flamethrower to get anywhere here and it's easy to get blindsighted and die.

Remember the aforementioned issue of getting attacked from blindspots? They are now tenfold in two late game levels. One where you need to kill enemies to get a super handcanon and kill them as they are spawning in while fighting them in a boxed in arena. You can't stand still and ambush them due to low health.

The penultimate level where you need to destroy a shield and it's designed like a more traditional FPS arena and not the vertical design of past levels where all the enemies have a sightline on you and that means your aforemented blind areas. I lowered the difficulty to the 2nd easiest during this due to how much frustration I was having. The level left a sour taste in my mouth even though the following level was a lot better.

Overall, I enjoyed Severed Steel a lot more this time around. Most of the campaign is solid and a lot of fun outside of 3 terrible levels during Chapter 6. It succeeds in it's own take on the FPS while borrowing from many other games which is great in my book.