The Impact Factor

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Review

Severed, Drinkbox Studios (PS Vita)

Abstract: Fusing together first-person dungeon crawling with touch-based attacks was a risky choice, but one that pays off in Severed. A gripping world sets the stage of an impeccably designed adventure that builds momentum throughout. Smart infusions of new challenges and gameplay systems keep Severed feeling fresh as you progress. Disappointing boss fights and weak narrative payoff is a bummer, but not one that compromises an otherwise exemplary experience. Severed was a delight. It is a game every Vita owner should play.

Enter a world of colorful vibrancy of death and dismemberment. Severed is a unique creation, a mixture of gameplay conventions old and new. Drinkbox Software earned my trust with Guacamelee, and they make good on the promise of their talent with this dungeon crawling, finger-swiping adventure. Not many titles come out each year that justify the PlayStation Vita as a must own console, but Severed does a great job of proving just how impressive a handheld experience can be.

Severed weaves a tale of loss and the lengths someone will go to save their family. The game begins as the protagonist has her right arm violently severed, only to animate and fly away. You explore a dilapidated home in an alien world. It’s soon made clear that your entire family, your mother and father and brother, are dead and you’re in the ruins of your childhood home. Death is just the beginning of your adventure, however. A surreptitiously granted sword and quick monster encounter later and you’re off. You must now venture into danger filled dungeons, learn about where you are, and find a way to save yourself and your family. I was quickly intrigued by Severed’s plot but unfortunately the game does not do much to build upon it.

The first and most immediately compelling element of the game is Severed’s world. It is never made explicit to the player, but the setting comes across as a demon filled purgatory. Bolstered by a strong art direction, similar to the one they used in Guacamelee, Severed does a great job at establishing a mood. Distinct Central American notes permeate the various landscapes, from the look of the protagonist herself to the various iconography and architecture you encounter. This aesthetic carries over to monster designs as well, each with flair and personality. Exploring the forests, temples, and caves throughout Severed was a treat.

The contrast of color and beauty with gore and horror works fantastically.

On paper Severed sounds like a game that wouldn’t work. Severed is a combination of Ultima Underworld with Fruit Ninja. You read that right. Severed is a first-person dungeon crawler with a touch based control scheme for attacking. It is a unique mix that simply works. First-person dungeon crawlers are a genre of games we don’t really see anymore. It has been close to two decades since I played my last one. Aside from some Japanese developers that have recently adopted this early Western genre, first-person dungeon crawlers are all but lost to time. Thankfully, Severed learned from its ancient lineage to create a solid dungeon crawling experience. Quick access to maps, elegantly simple UI, and straightforward dungeon layouts make exploring easy. Rooms are diverse, often filled with interactable elements like destructible vases (that give resources) and secret paths. Light puzzle solving, typically involving switches or locked doors, prevents monotony while exploring without seriously halting player progress. A fast travel system would have been nice, but never did it feel like a slog to traverse Severed’s large map.

Combat is one of Severed’s most pronounced successes. When you think Fruit Ninja, you don’t picture a tense or thoughtful series of swipes. You think about mindless chaos. Though Severed uses directional swipes for its combat, the experience of battling couldn’t be further from those more casual titles. As you explore, you’ll come across rooms that have monsters inside. To progress to the next room, you have to defeat them. Monsters can be attacked only by swiping your finger across the screen. Short, quick swipes do little damage whereas long swipes deal much more. Defeating enemies is all about pattern recognition and discovering weaknesses. For instance, after being hit a couple times, one monster will block its center to prevent damage, while simultaneously opening up its flanks to attack. Other monsters have weak points that only make themselves apparent after you whittle away their defenses. These demons aren’t just helpless creatures waiting to be wailed on – they fight back. Every enemy has an attack timer, indicated by a meter on the bottom of the screen. Once it’s filled, they attack. The only way to mitigate damage is by parrying their attack, swiping in the opposite direction. Learning how monsters attack and the best way to quickly counter them is absolutely critical to make your way through Severed.

 

Combat is fast and fun. And just a little bit bloody.

As you progress the complexity of monster encounters ramps up. Some monsters don armor that must be destroyed with a charged swipe before you can deal damage. Others have defenses in place that, if you swipe the wrong way, you’ll power the monster up instead of hurting it. Later still, monsters will have stat boots that cause them to attack faster, deal more damage, or even recover health. Fights quickly become more than 1 vs 1, too. You’ll have to fight several monsters at once, which involves rotating your character to face them. Even though you can only face one at a time, monsters can attack whenever. What results is a skill intensive choreography of balancing damage and defense as you attack, parry, and rotate. Mistakes are punished and precision is key.

Think you're going to mindlessly swipe your way to victory?
Think again. 

Severed’s RPG elements manifest themselves in a couple ways. You gain abilities after defeating bosses, which adds new dimensions to both combat and exploration. Early in the game you gain the ability to briefly stun enemies, opening them up for attack and stopping their attack meter. Later on you acquire the devour ability, which not only allows you to open walls marked with its symbol, it also enables you to steal enemy stat boosts for yourself. Additionally, Severed features a robust leveling mechanic based on the game’s namesake. Attacking enemies fills up your Focus meter and, if an enemy’s health is depleted when the meter is full, you are able to use precision swipes to remove limbs, horns, eyeballs and more from your foes. Those severed appendages serve as your experience points. Severed parts can be consumed to fill up nodes on a skill tree. Nodes grant bonuses like better defense, quicker recovery time, or more damaging attacks. Severing quickly becomes the name of the game (pun intended) as you’ll want to cut off everything in sight to make yourself more powerful.

Combat is not without some faults. Though much more skill intensive than something like Fruit Ninja, Severed still asks the player to swipe one heck of a lot. Not only do you look like a madman in the game’s more tricky sections, it also results in some serious wear and tear to your fingertip. I appreciated the monsters, but Severed repeats enemies a bit too often for a 3-4 hour experience (albeit they come back with slightly altered variants). Boss encounters are generally underwhelming, too. In fact, several late game encounters are more challenging than the game’s bosses, both in sheer difficulty and in terms of strategy. When you have to defeat 4 uber-hard monsters on a strict time limit it makes a tiny little crow monster feel like chump change.

I've fought floating eyeballs harder than you! (Seriously) 

Other issues I have with the game lie outside of chopping monsters to bits. The narrative, while intriguing, never fully comes together. The player is left to guess the exact nature of the world, the antagonists, and the final outcome. A little more would have been nice here. The game’s soundtrack is disappointing and quickly became repetitive. Still, I can’t help but be enamored by the number of small things Severed does so right. Your protagonist changes as she gains new abilities, transforming her into an otherworldly-looking monster-slaying badass by game’s end. Sound effects for attacking, parrying, and severing are immensely satisfying. The way the camera dips and rises as you walk, the tactility of everything. Severed has far more in the plus column than minus.

It's the little things that make a game feel special. That, and a
breastplate made from the face of a boss you eviscerated.

Severed is a game I played nonstop until I finished. I got sucked into its world. I was hooked by the novel fusion of old and new. A great sense of momentum carried me through my adventure and my platinum trophy capped off an overall stellar experience. Perhaps Severed isn’t reason enough to buy a Vita, but if you have Vita there is no reason hesitate on this one. There’s nothing quite like its vibrant horror.

Severed

4/5