This game gave my adhd adhd! 10/10~~!!!

5/10 - Mid; Excellent visuals but actual gameplay suffers greatly

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I hate to leave a bad review on this game, and I wish I could leave a neutral review instead, but I have to say, the other reviewers are, unfortunately, right on this.

I bought this game the same day it was released (iirc) and it's just been sitting in my games library as I was hesitant to play it. I called myself wanting to give a small-time dev I had never heard of a try, especially with the game being new, and especially with me never having heard or seen any prior marketing for this title, but man, was I wrong this time.

This game, as a positive, nails every single thing right with its aesthetics! The game is so visually distinct, the color scheme with the black, white, gray, and yellow mixed in is great. It definitely has its own identity as a game, especially in its character design, which is only a plus! This aspect, however, is the only good thing I can say about it, with the rest being a complete departure from there.

I don't know where to even begin with the downsides of this game, but I can say, to keep it brief, that I really, really dislike how nothing is explained from the moment you fire up the game til the moment you enter the game after clicking "Start". Nothing about any of the mechanics are even shown to the player on what exactly the storyline is and what we're even supposed to do. I feel like there are only a few games where you can jump in blind not knowing how anything goes and it works, but this is not one of those titles at all. Where is the introductory cutscene to show the characters of this world off to us as players? Where are the brief couple lines of text telling us what any sort of objectives are? How TF are we supposed to know what's even happening and what to do next?

I actually, despite these flaws, don't even mind that the game is mini games-based, but why is there so little lenience with the mini games? There was a balance change made recently, which is appreciated by those willing to stick with this title, I'm sure, but in my couple minutes of playtime, I couldn't even tell what had been changed. Not to be nitpicky, but also even though there is a small bit of text in the upper right corner letting us know what version of the game it is, there are no in-game logs letting us know of these changes unless we read the Steam posts, and not everybody reads those. There are also no thorough settings within the game to actually change anything other than the music volume, fullscreen, and v-sync...It's kind of a mess.

This game needs restructuring as a title IMO to be viable for playing and embracing the level of challenge the dev wants us to meet head-on without it continuing to feel vague and unexplained how it currently does now. I hope they can get their ♥♥♥♥ together. I wanna see this game win, but it needs more work on it because this ain't it in its current state. Great bones are here, just needs more time to cook.

****** Hi! This review will contain spoilers! ********


My playtime for Severed Steel may be short, and I may have even gotten this game on sale at a more-than-generous, steep discount, but even as an FPS/Boomer Shooter fan, at just two (2) hours of playing, I can tell that this game is far too generic for its own good. This is a YES but with some important caveats!


The long and short of it is this:
- The bland, piece-it-together-yourself story of Hard Reset
- The Matrix-esque slow-mo mechanic of the F.E.A.R. series
- The voxel-based environmental destruction capabilities of Deep Rock Galactic
- The oft-recycled, cuboidal level design of SuperHot
- Late 90's-Early 2000's Jungle/EDM music
- Jane Doe "Badass" lead protagonist no# 49383491240
- Neon lights because C Y B E R P U N K
- The main menu UI reminiscent of the aesthetic of RUINER
- The diving across the room from a hail of bullets mechanic of Max Payne
- The level editor of Turbo Overkill
- The brain off vibes of Doom

...I could go on, but I would be belaboring the point.

Having amassed a pretty solid but humble collection of games over the years, with this game truly NOT actually being the worst game I've ever played that I own (and trust me, I have accidentally bought some complete DUDS like we all have, lol), I would say that all of the traits listed above aren't even negative in isolation nor in combination, really.

I happen to really like the music, the cyberpunk vibe, and the main set of mechanics this game has, it's just that it's still puzzling to me how lacking in character it truly is! If the problem were the mechanics, I would say that. There are modes that give access to tweaking this at the player's leisure later on down the line. If the problem were difficulty or level navigation, obviously that could be changed via the menu or maybe scheduled updates, respectively.

I think, however, the problem is that I can only really recommend this game to someone who's just so in love with FPS/Boomer titles that they won't mind that this game doesn't have much that stands out about it and need to play all the FPS games that are out there indiscriminately for pure completion of having done it alone. It's a very Hard 6 out of 10 for me. Not a complete failure, but leaving so much more to be desired precisely because I feel I can tell exactly what the devs were going for but didn't quite reach in execution with this title. It's like the devs have blue balled players with this outing in a way. It scratches *some* itch, but definitely not the one it needed to scratch or even hinted at scratching with its marketing on the Steam page.

There is no Buyer's Remorse for this title, even though my rating is what it is (6/10), BUT if there should ever be a sequel to continue the series, it would be nice if all of these aspects could be addressed so that it not only feels like a more worthwhile purchase in the long run, but also so that the game is more fun and memorable overall for what IT is, not for the other games it borrows influences from.

So yeah, that's my hot take!

TL;DR - 6/10. Only buy if you're on a marathon to play all the FPS games humanly possible that exist on Steam

To all the reviewers saying you need an RTX card to experience this, you don't!

I'm running this with the following:
- GTX 1650
- 16GB RAM
- 4GB of VRAM on a i7 10th Gen
- 1TB HDD (where the game is installed)
- 250 GB SSD

The experience runs just fine for me with these specs, even if the components are starting to show more signs of tech aging now. The only tweak I made was lowering global illumination to the second/middle option, with the rest of the settings all the way up, and it worked perfectly fine. I also had no other background tasks running except for this program, and no, it's not running at 60fps or even 100+ fps (what I'm used to anywhere else), but it did work without a hitch. I'm not a stickler for frames unless gaming, and this is more of an experience, so while it's personally fine for now, the extra frames would be nice to have as an update in the future, if possible.

Pros --
- Visually minimalist and STUNNING
- Great experience for the 3D/CGI community heads to enjoy
- No modern art museum in your small, middle-of-nowhere town? Try this!

Cons --
- Screen tearing is only noticeable if the anti-aliasing option is turned on and cranked up all the way to the highest setting, so I didn't use it.
- The walking is a little bit too slow for my liking.
- There also needs to be a way to fast forward or rewind the recordings maybe? Idk.

I would recommend this game purely for the fun element of it, but with some caveats.

No, it isn't the highest graphical quality, but it *mostly* works for what it is given the price. It's a YouTube-ready, "Three Random Games" kinda game. Good for rage quits and shooting the ♥♥♥♥. If you have a dollar to spare, know how to manage your expectations, and aren't looking to 100% this in any capacity, then it's for you.

That said, I do think it's annoying that the UFO is so damn fast compared to the lawnmower you have to drive through each level. There could've at least been an upgrade system using the unlockable stars to improve speed, improve mower handling and tire grips, delay the UFO by stunning it after you use the stars to unlock that feature as part of a skill tree, literally ANYTHING but what it actually is, which is a rage quit youtube game as I said.