The Best Action Games for PC in September 2023 2nd week
Severed Steel
I think this is one you might not know about. I’m not gonna say everybody hasn’t, but it’s not one of those games that has necessarily reached ubiquity. “Severed Steel” is a game custom built to make anybody who plays it just feel like a totally unstoppable badass. It’s sort of a combination of the free-flowing combat of “Fear” with the absurd lethality of “Hotline Miami,” but also with fully destructive, voxel based environments basically enabling maximum chaos. There are other FPSs games that have wall running, but to just say, “‘Severed Steel’ has got wall running,” would be under reflective of the level of movement abilities in this game. You can kick off walls, slide kick, throw guns at enemies, even flip upside down. The options available at any given time can be almost overwhelming. Not only can the game be a little relentless in it’s difficulty, it feels amazing. Visually, not the most beautiful game out there in terms of raw polygons, but it feels so good to play, it really doesn’t matter.
Sifu.
A very different kind of action game. It’s got more in common with, like, a beat ’em up like “Streets of Rage,” but has an intensity to its fighting that really makes it stand out. At its core, it’s roguelike with a really unusual twist. Rather than it just gives you lives and continues, the game has this really complex life system where every time you die, your character gets older. The entire game is built on combat. There’s almost nothing else to it. Normally that would maybe be a problem, but even after multiple attempts, beating up goons just never stops being viscerally satisfying. It is brutally hard, at least with all the assists turned off. But when the combat really starts to click, it really feels good.
Dead Cells
Platinum really carved out a niche for themselves with over-the-top action games. Not all of them have been perfect, let’s say, but one of the most underrated has got to be “Vanquish,” their 2010 follow up to “Bayonetta.” Set on a futuristic space station under attack from an army of robots. “Vanquish” takes the usual third person shooter formula popularized by “Gears of War” and “Uncharted,” and puts it on steroids. Everything from the movement to the shooting, to the entire way the story is presented is fast, chaotic, and completely off the wall. Platinum is one of my favorite developers, and “Vanquish” is genuinely one of their best games.
it can be extremely frustrating, but it’s one of those games where once you’ve broken through that, and you’re on a roll, it is so entertaining.
Bullet Storm
Back in 2011, the idea of an FPS game that included some action mechanics of the score system was especially unique. And even now in the post-“DOOM” reboot world, there’s still nothing out there quite like “Bullet Storm.” This over-the-top action shooter, it’s all about killing enemies in creative ways, and getting scored for it more or less. Compared to something like “Severed Steel,” the movement options are pretty limited, like, there’s no jump button at all, but in place you’ve got a pretty impressive slide, a mighty boot that’ll send the enemy flying through the air, and an energy whip for pulling enemies to you, and activating traps. he violence is maybe a little grotesque, if that’s not your thing, and the story and characters are certainly juvenile to the extreme, but the whole thing just comes together really well as a whole package, despite any of the little eccentricities that might turn certain people off. When you get it, it really just works.
Just Cause 3
What makes “Just Cause 3” better than the previous game is the addition to the wing suit, and vastly improved shooting mechanics. You can just go absolutely nuts flying around the battlefield, destroying everything in sight, and getting away in an instant. The base wing suit is just a joy to use, but once you get a jet pack, it basically turns you into Iron Man, and that’s when things really start to get totally nuts. This game is just so much fun to play, even though there are the usual open-world moments of downtime. And there is a reason when there is action in this game, it is so over-the-top and amazing, it’s just its own experience.
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