The FPS genre is in something of a renaissance in modern times. DOOM revitalized things in 2016 demanding a higher sense of quality, polish, variety, replayability, and gamefeel as the games at the time felt tied down to run-and-gun military shooter dreck. Now, games like SUPERHOT, Neon White, and DEATHLOOP are demanding players have the reflexes of an eSports pro, the sixth sense of Haley Joel Osment, and the precision of Robin Hood. With this all put together, Severed Steel challenges the player to accommodate these talents. How does it turn out?

Straight from its tutorial level, Severed Steel shows that its movement scheme requires the player (named Steel) to dive, slide, wall-run, wall kick, and slow time to survive the onslaught of enemies in each level. While this is a speedrunner’s dream as they can blaze through fodder in seconds, the average player will need to move on a dime, regaining health/bullet time as they methodically mow down enemies while gauging their ammo count and time left to slow down, well-indicated around the crosshairs.

There are five difficulties to Severed Steel, not only modifying your health but the enemies’ reaction times and your time allotted to slow down. While the easiest difficulty serves as a respite for inexperienced FPS players (or a power fantasy to experienced ones), I found ample challenge and little to no room for mistakes on the game’s intended difficulty. I did try out the harder difficulties and got punished to no end though. I can only imagine how rewarding overcoming this surmountable challenge would be for experts.

More than just a standard campaign, Severed Steel also includes a seriously-comprehensive level editor and a 42-level firefight mode that pits you against the toughest battles the game has to offer. You’re able to download other people’s levels via Steam’s Workshop. In fact, there’s already a decent amount of content to sift through, with everything from Counter Strike‘s Dust 2 to the lobby from The Matrix‘s renowned action-packed scene. In total, I found about 100 levels from the community in the Workshop. That is not an endless ocean, but definitely enough for several more hours of gameplay.

Walking away from Severed Steel, its presentation is what seals the deal and sets it apart from the pack. With bass thumping in your ears and a satisfying sound effect with every kill accompanying the enemy’s screams and genuine distress, the game looks sleek while also running like a dream with even below-modest hardware. My only immersion-breakers were when I unknowingly dived into an abyss near level completion, losing minutes of progress due to an unintentional mistake. It also feels as if the sliding/wall-running is sparingly utilized, as this could have made more levels memorable.

Severed Steel sits at 1% below “Overwhelmingly Positive” on Steam’s reviews, and it’s no surprise as to why. With tons of free updates via a communicated roadmap, a price tag at half of a AAA game with just as much polish, and the urge to not leave your seat when you’re fully immersed in it, it’s one of the best experiences I’ve had with a game all year. At $24.99, it’s a steal with how much content is currently in the game.

A PC review key for Severed Steel was provided by Digerati for this review.

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Severed Steel

24.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Fluid, Tense Gameplay
• Strong Optimization
• Addictive Loop

Cons

• Troublesome Level Design