Genre: Action

Whether it's called "Severance: Blade of Darkness" or "Blade of Darkness" in your country (as it is in Europe and America respectively), the message that developers Rebel Act apparently want to get across with the title is pretty clear - this is one game where the only way to get past the enemy hordes is by cutting a bloody swathe through them. With no guns in sight and only a weak short bow available for shooting enemies with from afar, the best way to take them out is up close using anything hard or sharp, or ideally a brutal combination of the two. Groovy.

At first glance you'd be forgiven for mistaking Severance for a 3D revamp of that old side-scrolling hack 'em up, Golden Axe. They both let you play a Dwarf, an Amazon or a Barbarian and let you slice your way through countless enemies. Thankfully the similarities end there because, let's face it, at the end of the day Golden Axe was just a little bit lame.

The differences between these two games are far more significant than the extra character (the Knight) and the 3D graphics of Severance. While it might not seem the most original of games at first, Severance (or Blade - I'm just going to call it Severance from now on though if you don't mind) has something which I wish more games did - innovation within the genre. Sure, to an extent it's just a 3D remake of all those old side scrolling hack and slash 'em ups, but whereas the controls for previous games that offered sword based combat tended to be influenced by first person shooters, the cunning chaps at Rebel Act instead decided to rethink things and came up with the unique idea of a "lock on" feature as part of the Severance control system. Basically, when you press it you "lock on" to a particular enemy and until he dies (or you cancel the lock on) you'll strafe around him with your view constantly centered on them. This also makes combat in Severance a much more tactical affair than previous titles like Rune and FAKK2 - suddenly the enemy's shield becomes a challenging defence to get past and you have to choose precisely the right moment to attack, and also which attack to use at that particular moment.

Feigning, blocking and dodging are also important tactics to learn, and you'd also do well to learn the different attack styles of each enemy. Wade into an Orc with your sword swinging randomly in a bloodthirsty frenzy and it will quickly turn into a blood soaked frenzy, that blood being your own. Of course, that doesn't stop you from carefully blocking or dodging the enemy's attacks, cutting into them carefully a few times and then finishing them off with a flurry of careless blows when they're near dead, and this can be particularly satisfying. In Severance, gamers finally have a 3D fantasy close combat game that offers fights that are tactically challenging without scrimping on the adrenaline either. While each encounter might start off as a slow exchange of blows and blocks, when you finally finish them off by slicing off a limb or or two or three the adrenaline will be coursing through your veins like.. oh, sorry, hadn't I already mentioned the limb removal bit? Well, suffice to say, Severance is bloody good looking, in every sense of the word.

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