Severed Steel

As someone who adores movement games, this game is a huge disappointment on that front. Definitely play the demo before buying, because it isn't a bad game per se, but it might be something else than you expect. Looking at the trailer and description I was expecting something akin to Titanfall 2, instead Severed Steel is Superhot, but without the time stopping mechanic. The movement allows you to perform "stunts" during which you are completely invulnerable. The issue is that not all of the movement options can be chained in to one another. Some of the disallowed combinations do make sense if the game was trying to be realistic (for example you cannot chain a dive in to a wall run), but it is not, let me have fun. What this manifest as when playing the game is you making individual actions instead of smoothly chaining all of your movement options together. As with anything, it is possible to get better at using the movement options as you play the game, but it could have been so much better. Another thing that makes the movement worse than it had to be is the level design and the fact that levels are destructible. First two chapters of the campaign do really big disservice to this game as they put you in to tiny crammed levels with practically no space for movement. I feel like the level designers realized this too as later in the campaign there is more and more arena style levels where you cannot accidentally just fall to your death and the movement feels way better in those stages, but nobody went back to fix the first few levels. The destruction feels like a feature creep. It doesn't really change the game that much. It ends up being a handy tool when you are looking at an objective on the other side of a wall, but most levels do not seem to be inherently designed around it. And the worst part is that it actively makes the movement worse, how? Titanfall 2 has a mechanic where for example windows have slight magnetism to align you with them when you are flying around at mach 10, the game also prevents you from getting stuck on corners, etc. Severed Steel has none of it because the whole level is destructible and you can make a million holes in one wall. There is no magnetism to begin with and re-calculating all of it for every hole the player makes would most likely tank the performance. Last note on the movement. The game has a kick mechanic, if you are close enough to an enemy you get a prompt to kick them, the issue is there is no melee auto aim on this prompted action, resulting in you kicking air. So, you often have to completely stop to align yourself, which kills your momentum and gets you killed. Few negative nitpicks: - Most of the guns feel exactly same - Very low enemy variety (no the same enemy but flying doesn’t count as separate type) - No directional hit markers Is there anything positive? - The soundtrack - If you enjoy the gameplay there are two more game modes and the replay-ability seems to be pretty high