One of the standard features of first-person shooters is a protagonists who can soak up a truly ridiculous amount of firepower before falling down.  Steel doesn’t have much in the way of health, going down in a couple of shots like pretty much every human being who’s ever lived, but to make up for this she has the amazing ability to dance through bullets.  Severed Steel is an incredibly fast-paced shooter with a hero who slides, wall-runs, and dives faster than the enemy can track, plus a limited bullet-time ability that should take the edge off even the most crowded firefight.  And yet even with all that, death is frequent in the bite-sized levels due to enemies that are constantly on the move once alerted.  It’s hard to dodge a bullet when you don’t realize there’s someone on a platform above you two rooms over, able to see you through the windows, but killing with style regenerates health so it makes a lot more sense to dive into the middle of the action than snipe from the sides.  High risk equals high rewards, especially seeing as enemy bullets miss every time while you’re pulling off the acrobatics.

Severed Steel released today and it’s hugely entertaining for fans of fast-paced action.  The highly-defended corridors of the compound you need to escape from are as destructible as the enemies within it, and while initially that only comes into play with explosive props eventually Steel’s missing arm gets supplemented by a slow but powerful cannon, able to create new passages wherever you decide one is needed.  The missing arm also means that Steel can’t reload so is constantly scavenging new weapons dropped by enemies, and even when she runs out in a situation where retreating to re-arm is a bad idea she can kick someone in the face to steal what she needs.  The enemy force initially feels overwhelming, but once you figure out all the tricks Steel has at her disposal the excellent design of the combat arenas combine with enemy density to create a playground of acrobatic destruction.

Like any good game launch, Severed Steel comes with a brand-new trailer to announce its arrival.  While currently PC-only the game is coming to Xbox One/X/S, PS4 and PS5, and Switch later on.  Check it out below to see what kind of trouble you can get up to once past that initial difficulty curve.