KILL. THEM. ALL. flashes on the screen as a man storms toward you with a flamethrower. The walls are crumbling, blasted apart by you and the soulless, faceless enemies of this place. You know what you need to do. KILL. THEM. ALL.
Severed Steel understands the joy of simplicity. It’s a straightforward Doom-style shooter, only imagine if the shooting never stopped. Just bang bang bang, kick someone in the face, bang. You can run on walls, slide through legs, double jump to scramble up walls, dive through windows and across canyons, plus all these moves can be chained together. It’s like someone looked at Doom and Sunset Overdrive, two of the most famously ‘more-is-more’ games of all time, and trimmed out anything that could possibly be deemed not 110 raw action before cramming them together into a single glorious experience.
Well, not someone. Developer Greylock Studio is making its debut with Severed Steel, and while 'oh it's like Doom' doesn't seem massively ambitious as a first title, Severed Steel has a lot of streamlined, focused ideas worth praising. First-time indie games can often be overburdened with concepts that never connect, but even though the action is very much 'more isn't just more, it's nowhere near enough', Greylock Studio makes this and only this its key focus. One level has a weird platforming section that has no right to be there, but everything else is expertly fine tuned.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. KILL. THEM. ALL. You blast your first two foes with the pistol you start with, peppering one in the chest with three quick pewpewpews, and the other with a single blast to the head. You’re out of bullets. Thankfully, just running over the corpse of your fallen enemies puts their shotgun in their hand. That’s more like it.
Three more baddies are clustered above you. Using your left arm cannon, you pierce a hole in the ceiling, either to make them fall through or for you to scramble up through the now fractured floor. The shotgun rings out, BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM empty. Still one enemy left. You could run to the nearby corpses and grab their weapons, or you could slide between his legs, kick him in the back of the head, and watch his gun magically appear in your hand. You’re already in motion by the time you’ve decided. One swift kick and a machine gun tktktktktk in the back for good luck, and it’s over. You have KILLED. THEM. ALL. A new task appears. GET. OUT.
It’s not always kill them all. Sometimes it’s hack the computers, which is done by blasting them. Other times it’s activate the switches, which is done by blasting them. It might ask you to disable the power. That’s a blasting. Disconnect the turbines. That’s a blasting. Cut through the wall. That’s a blasting. Burn down the mansion. Oh, you better believe that’s a blasting.
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Severed Steel’s directness is to its credit. Each level is short and ferocious, with the task at hand clear. The game will tell you what it wants destroyed, and you will go and destroy it. The longest any single level took me was six minutes, and that’s because I couldn’t find the exit. Most levels are done in two or three, but they’ll probably take a couple of tries in the later stages. Think Superhot with way more level destruction.
I’ve mentioned the gunplay a lot, and sure, it’s good. Weapons have a decent kick to them, and there’s enough variety to make the most of the fact you don’t reload, instead launching your gun at an enemy’s face before grabbing another weapon from nearby. Mainly though Severed Steel succeeds through its traversal. As I said, you run, jump, slide, and dive, but what's especially impressive is how lightning quick the whole experience is. You don't open doors, you kick them off their hinges. You don't break windows, you dive through them head first. You don't look for stairs, you blast a hole in the ceiling. The movement never, ever stops. If you try to stand and deliver, you'll likely get swarmed or run out of bullets and be forced right back into the action within a few seconds of failure.
Since everything is so hectic, there are a few visual bugs here and there, or times when you get stuck while punching through a wall and have to mash dive or slide in order to wriggle free. Once teleportation portals are introduced in the second half of the game, this issue gets worse, but it's always manageable.
The biggest issue with this traversal though is me. The game is played at a breakneck speed, but you can switch to slowmo at any time, making lining up shots easier and letting you time the perfect kick to the jaw after bursting through the window. This makes the game easier, but loses its magic - and it can be used infinitely. Sure, I could have just not used it, but after a couple of deaths on a level, I always figured it was silly to ignore a mechanic the devs had deliberately added. I don't think I ever failed a level after doing full combat slowmo, but they were never particularly exciting encounters either. What’s that? A games journalist asking for games to be harder? And in Rand McNally, they wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people.
Story wise, I mean... sure. There is one. It's told through vague comic strips after a chunk of around five levels, and it seems like you break into a place, steal a weapon - or possibly steal it back - and then escape. It's just a loose framework for you to KILL. THEM. ALL. but it works.
Severed Steel feels like playing the Deathloop trailer. Not the actual game, specifically the trailer. Specifically the run shoot kick montage that comes in right at the end. Slick, stylised, and never slowing down for a second, Severed Steel looks set to launch without much fanfare, but if you want a game that gives you a great time and then leaves you alone, give it a try. KILL. THEM. ALL.
Score: 4/5. A PC code was provided by the publisher.