The Surge (2017)

The first The Surge entry is a sci-fi action RPG developed by Deck13 that follows in the footsteps of the Souls series while carving out its own identity. Set in a dystopian future dominated by exoskeleton rigs and malfunctioning machines, the game puts you in the role of Warren, a man thrust into chaos at the CREO facility. This technological setting is perfect for the Soulslike formula, and I'm surprised we don't have more titles similar to this one.

The biggest strength of the game lies in its combat system. Instead of simply hacking at enemies, you can target specific limbs to dismember them and gain crafting materials or gear, adding a tactical layer that feels fresh. This makes up for the lack of elements such as magic, since it's setting wouldn't allow for this to make any sense, and it add some much needed dept to the viable playstyles. Weapons, implants, and upgrades allow for solid build customization, and boss fights deliver intense, punishing encounters that reward patience and mastery.

The industrial sci-fi setting creates a tense atmosphere, but the environments often look too similar, which makes exploration repetitive and navigation confusing. The narrative starts with promise but fails to maintain momentum, offering little in terms of memorable characters or storytelling. Technical issues like awkward camera angles and inconsistent hit detection can also break immersion, not to mention the weird movement and feeling of impact, compared to other titles of the similar genre.

Overall, this game is a challenging and rewarding experience for players who enjoy methodical, punishing combat in the style of Dark Souls. Its unique limb-targeting system and gritty atmosphere make it stand out, though its repetitive environments and weaker narrative prevent it from reaching the same heights as its inspirations. Despite it's drawbacks I highly recommend this for fans of the Soulslike genre, it is definitely one of the best out there.

I have to say: not bad. It definitely shows a maturation on the part of the developers (Deck13) since their previous game (Lords of the Fallen, also a Souls-like). It does, however, have that slightly paradoxical issue where by being a more polished product, it's also a bit less quirky and maybe even more bland. I was starting to get a little bored of my time with the game as I approached the endgame about 20 hours in, but when I decided to backtrack through earlier areas to find things that I missed (some out of a lack of vigilance, but mostly because they were locked with keys that are found much later in the game), I found that this is the kind of game that rewards greater attention and effort on the part of the player.

I would say that the major advancement since LotF is that it is less "Deck13's Dark Souls" and more a result of understanding the Souls-like formula and using certain parts of it to certain effects. Overall it does play like Dark Souls in many ways, but it's not a ripoff or rehash of it at all. It's more that you interact with the world of The Surge in a similar way to Lordran, but the world is entirely original and very interesting in its own right.

This might sound more like a 4-star review than 3, but The Surge is unfortunately plagued with a great many minor annoyances that drag the experience down. For one, it has this very clever targeting system that lets you aim for any limb, the head, or the body of humanoid enemies, and it is applied to less humanoid enemies in a more limited fashion as well. This is fun because it lets you target unarmored areas if you want to be efficient about it, as well as unlock certain weapons and pieces of armor. The downside here is the targeting can be pretty fidgety. It can be very frustrating trying to target a particular area when you and the enemy are both moving around, possibly changing orientations relative to each other, and the game can't decide if you moving down on the right stick means left leg, right leg, or torso. On top of this, blocking changes the right stick to a directional dodge, which can complicate things even further in a hectic fight where you're trying to adjust your target but you have to suddenly block an incoming attack. Now consider that, if you're playing efficiently, you're dealing with this in every encounter in the game--and if anything, it's worse with bosses.

I also have some gripes with the character development and equipment systems. I like that, for the most part, you're not locked into a build and are free to experiment. Implants can be swapped out freely, as can armor, provided you have the scrap and components to keep them at an appropriate level. The big thing that runs counter to this is weapon proficiency: you get experience with the game's five weapon types by using them, meaning if you've been spending the whole game using a one-handed weapon, you're not going to have much luck with a staff you pick up late in the game. I realize that this "problem" exists to an even greater extent in Dark Souls, but I guess I just find that it chafes with the much freer armor and implant systems.

This is all to say: The Surge is a good Souls-like, and a pretty good game overall. I'm really glad they took another try at it after Lords of the Fallen, and that they took as many risks with it as they did. I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve even further with The Surge 2.

Alright, I’m a big fan of dark souls and I told myself that I’ll do a souls like run and play those type games. However, The Surge has bad game and level design.

The combat is phenomenal, I love the fact that you can target different body parts and use them as your own. However, my biggest issue are the enemies. More so, the bosses. They hit too hard, you can level up your armor as high as you can (not want because you need certain parts to level up your armor). I honesty think that’s bad game design where I feel like my efforts of “git gud” is not in full display.

The game is gorgeous, I love the industrial environments it’s a lot of different from what I’m used to. Especially for a souls like games. On the other hand, it’s too much industrial. The point of souls like games is not only for its tough combat, but it’s exploration as well. I feel like this game is lacking a lot of that. I don’t get lost and find a path I’ve never been instead I get lost and it stops me from progressing and a lot of the areas looks alike. Which makes this bad level design.

Overall, The Surge is pretty dope with great combat and cool style. But lack of different environments and unfair enemies that can potentially one shot you is not fun. Play it at your own risk lol.

I enjoyed this one although I could not understand the story at all. I really love the mechanics of targeting limbs to upgrade your character and to deal more damage to the enemy.

Never figured out how to use the advance dodge mechanics(Jumping Up/Ducking) but thankfully they were not needed. The bosses were okay albeit there are only 5 of them. Most tedious is probably the big sister boss.

The weapons were really cool although I preferred the one-handed weapon type due to the speed. Overall a really solid dark souls inspired game that manages to do its own thing.

I enjoyed this one although I could not understand the story at all. I really love the mechanics of targeting limbs to upgrade your character and to deal more damage to the enemy.

Never figured out how to use the advance dodge mechanics(Jumping Up/Ducking) but thankfully they were not needed. The bosses were okay albeit there are only 5 of them. Most tedious is probably the big sister boss.

The weapons were really cool although I preferred the one-handed weapon type due to the speed. Overall a really solid dark souls inspired game that manages to do its own thing.

Wonder how long this song will be stuck in my head after hearing it daily for a month:

This'll be a short one.

I have a buddy who mentioned how he was enjoying Surge 2. I got this through PS+ however many months ago so I figured I'd give it a spin just to see if I'd be interested in the sequel.

I hate to use the old Dark Souls comparisons, but honestly it's the easiest shorthand to get across the point to people. This is a slower, clunkier, less good Dark Souls. It has some interesting ideas, like being able to customize various parts of your rig (armour) with various parts.

It can, at times, be satisfying. When you successfully parry into a string of combos and decapitate an enemy without taking a single hit it feels real cool. That, however, is mitigated by the rest of the heavy, slow, clunky combat. Even the faster weapons seem to have long wind up times.

This game is interesting, worth a shot if you can get it for cheap or just didn't try it after tagging it on PS+. Otherwise, give it a pass.

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

Story: 3/5

Presentation: 3.5/5

Gameplay: 4/5 Very challenging like dark souls, but less punishing. Unlike dark souls it makes use of short cuts a ton and has one checkpoint per area. This leads to a lot of running to boss fights which was kind of annoying.

This may be a unique problem to me, but the game crashed a lot. Usually right as I would approach a checkpoint. Luckily there are autosave around the areas so when I would load back in all was not lost. However if you are hyped about getting past something really hard while carrying a ton of xp this will crush your joy. The worst crash for me was right as the credits started. This crash didn't lead me to have to fight the final boss again, but it did jip me out of a silver trophy. So warning to anyone who may get this game digitally on PS4.

The Surge, for PC

Rating: 8.0/10; Great

Played: 2019

Highly recommended for any fan of the Souls series. It is also a fair entry point to the Souls like genre.

The Surge is a sci fi third person action RPG which is essentially a Dark Souls clone. Anyone familiar the the Souls series will know what to expect in this game though it does have its own unique mechanics and refinements.

At the beginning of the game you are made to choose 1 of 2 classes; heavy or light. This has minimal impact on the game and only determines what type of free armor you get. Then you are introduced to combat against the weakest enemies in the game. Just like the Souls series combat is based around managing your stamina bar. Attacking, sprinting, jumping, dodging and blocking all consume stamina while it regenerates quickly when you are not doing any of the above (so standing still or moving at normal speed). Enemies have fairly predictable move sets that you can learn and anticipate, and hit you for huge amounts of damage. So the combat is deliberate and methodical with heavy focus on not taking damage by watching carefully, budgeting your stamina and knowing how and when to attack.

There are 2 different attack buttons; horizontal and vertical, which determine how your attack will move through 3D space towards the enemy and can affect what part of the enemy you hit. Vertical attacks are slightly slower while causing more damage but the difference is nowhere near as significant as a Dark Souls power attack. Different combinations of the 2 attacks can be chained together to create special moves (such as a flurry, or backflip) depending on the weapon used. I did not use this much and almost exclusively used simple horizontal attacks, but the added depth to combat is there to explore. There are also jump and slide attacks for added speed and offense at the expense of defense. There are no backstab or sneak attacks but if you catch an enemy unaware you can often spend all of your stamina to blitz them down before they can react. The impact stat helps because it can cause small stuns/staggers.

Dodging is the main defensive ability and allows you to very quickly move in the direction pressed. As far as I can tell there are no invincibility frames so dodging is literally to vacate the 3D space where an enemy attack is directed. Timing is important because some enemies can turn with you and still hit if you dodge too early. Dodge speed is independent of armor but heavy legs increase the stamina cost of dodging. Blocking makes you immobile, drains small amounts of stamina while in the blocking stance and drains huge amounts of stamina when reducing damage from attacks, so there is strong incentive for proper timing. There is not really a perfect timing riposte system but a perfectly timed block can stagger the enemy, allowing a manual attack.

Once you learn the basics of combat the game teaches about targeting enemy body parts. It is entirely possible to defeat enemies simply by locking on and attacking, which is a quick and balanced option. For better tactics you can target specific body parts though cycling between them does not pause combat or prevent you from attacking or any other action. Hitting the head does more damage while hitting the body does the least, so headshots are the quickest way to kill. Armored parts show gold while unarmored show blue. For best damage you are encouraged to go after the unarmored parts but if you target and damage an armored part enough for a dismemberment finisher, you will get new weapons, new armor schematics and materials for crafting and upgrading weapons and armor. Unrealistic but it is a good mechanic that adds another layer of tactical complexity. Do you want the enemy's chest armor? Be prepared for a more difficult fight. Better watch your attacks too because if you spread your damage between different body parts too much you will kill the enemy without getting the option to dismember. To execute a dismemberment you must hold a button down while continuing combat and not getting hit. You can continue attacking to prevent the enemy from hitting or keep some distance (but not too much). It also requires energy...

Energy is a resource that functions like adrenaline or rage in other games in that it accumulates from melee attacking enemies and quickly decays outside of combat. It can be spent on finishers or on this game's equivalent of magic; a drone that can use a variety of offensive and defensive effects, such as fire, poison and a shield. There is also a heal and special equipment that gives passive boosts from energy. The drone learns a new environmental ability which can be used to backtrack to find treasure from earlier levels Metroidvania style, and there are other similar abilities. The drone can even be used to bank energy for itself but there is one issue. The basic ranged attack can be used without energy for very low damage. It is great for pulling but can be used to defeat enemies at no risk if you are willing to spend the time whittling down their health. Enemies will chase you some distance before returning to their designated location but damaging them will allow them to be lured outside of the normal range. Lure them to a place you can reach but they cannot and they will just stay there to die slowly.

Weapons, armor and drone spells can be swapped at any time (except in the middle of animations) and are not the only type of character progression. Each weapon type has a proficiency rating that improves damage and goes up by using that weapon type. Core power level serves like character level. There are no attributes like strength or dexterity, rather each piece of armor and implant consumes an amount of core power and core power unlocks more implant slots. Core power is raised by using tech scrap, which is the same as souls in Dark Souls in that it is used as both xp and currency. The simplification of not having attributes does not hurt the game because the wide variety of implants leads to a variety of builds without having to worry about making wrong choices or respeccing; all things that affect your character can be freely swapped at base.

Implants come in 3 varieties: 1. Hardwired provide powerful passive boosts such as health and stamina. 2. Injectibles provide a limited number of short term boosts, such as healing and enhancing weapon damage and function most like the estus flask and spells from Dark Souls. 3. Hotswaps provide situational passive boosts and are interesting because they can be swapped in the field leading to considerable and optional micromanagement.

The game world is divided into distinct levels with free access to backtracking. Each level is designed around the ops as your base and new shortcuts are opened up as you progress. This is an interesting change from just copying the bonfires from Dark Souls and it does mean there is no need for fast travel. Unfortunately it makes the world more difficult to navigate. The game desperately needs a map. This is most pronounced when you die and all of your non-banked scrap is left at your death location with a time limit before it is lost forever. Which way is the quickest to get to where you died? You better have a very good memory of the level (or pause and look it up online). The time limit also encourages you to rush, which makes it more likely to die on the corpse run and lose all that scrap anyway. It is also possible to make huge amounts of scrap by manipulating that timer. Whether that feature is intentional or not, the game would be better without that time limit.

The game does feature some horror elements with dark areas that require use of your light, which overall makes combat more difficult. The music and sound effects help create a creepy atmosphere and there are jump scare style ambushes. Though later in the game there are security guards trying to do this but they are so easy to see that it is humorous. Buddy what are you doing? You know I can see you right? Otherwise the game has comparable story elements and side quests to Dark Souls.

The Surge excels at creating an interesting and creepy atmosphere with the highly skill based combat and overall gameplay of Dark Souls. Its unique body part targeting and character progression systems make this game more than a simple clone, instead allowing it a worthy place in the genre.

Fire and ice dlc

This free pack adds unique human enemies with new weapons to take from them. They are found throughout the game (not near the end) and some make the game considerably harder. Some are no harder than standard enemies while others feel like bosses. 2 staff users in the research level in particular gave me much trouble and 1 of them I had to kill using the drone trick. If you want the full experience use this dlc. If you think the game is already too hard you might not want to install this until late game.

Pro

• Good story, setting and characters
• Newgame+
• Challenging skill based combat
• Variety of weapons, armor and equipment, many of which have unique effects
• Unique character progression system that is not based on locking the player into choices and is fun to tinker around with builds
• Good keybinding options
• Many mechanics of Dark Souls have interesting new takes on the concepts (such as the bonfire and estus flask)
• No inventory limit
• Only tech scrap is dropped upon death, and it can be banked
• Body part targeting and dismemberment for loot is an excellent risk vs reward system
• Some backtracking after acquiring new abilities to get optional content
• Some areas with good atmospheric horror

Con

• Third person camera that can sometimes have awkward angles, or enemies or your character blocking your view
• Lack of in game maps
• Time limit for corpse runs before your scrap is lost
• Cannot use scrap or higher level components to get lower level components, so you will have to farm weak enemies
• Can only jump while sprinting, which makes the little bit of platforming harder
• The arc welder robots are too unpredictable due to having too many different attacks
• Too easy and tedious to kill enemies with basic ranged drone attacks. Would have been better to up the damage and make each shot cost scrap, like arrows in Dark Souls
• Lack of multiplayer
• Implant interface is somewhat unintuitive and user unfriendly

Beat the game. I first played this on a Steam free trial and was immediately impressed. The price was less than $10 so I purchased the game after the trial ended. I opted not to buy any of the DLC because they did not seem all that interesting.

I started as a heavy goliath and kept the basic Rhino gear until shortly after beating the Black Cerberus. I used a Lynx headgear and switched back and forth between that and the Rhino head depending on whether or not the body part I was targeting was armored (for optimal damage). After that I did research online to see what all the armor sets were like and to choose one. I settled on the basic security armor; Gorgon, though both types of Cerberus armor are also interesting. I did make some environmental hazard gear but never bothered to use it because I could just use healing to overcome toxic environments.

After the starter weapon I used the single rigged plasma torch that the enemies were using. It was interesting, but too slow for my tastes. I switched to the one handed vibro blade. It was still a little too slow but I stuck with it and kept upgrading it. I used it until the Firebug boss where I stumbled onto the special way of killing the boss and got the Firebug Throttle 2.0, which I used until the end of the game. I did not bother too much about its special moves, which I eventually learned. I found the attack speed of twin rigged to be just right for me because I like to stay on the defense and do quick attacks when the opportunity presents itself and I slightly regret not using them for the early game too. My secondary weapon was the one handed that boosts health by 10%, which could be used for a small heal if I lost less than 10% health (by swapping weapons). I tried out the other weapon types but single rigged and heavy were too slow, and staves were too flashy (as in dumb swinging it around instead of quick stabs like a spear). I did not rely on blocking because I really did not like how you cannot move and block at the same time; it is just not like using a shield in Dark Souls. Instead I focused on dodging and I loved how dodging speed is independent of armor weight.

I used the ranged attack and shield drone abilities. The ranged attack was very useful for single pulling enemies to me, and I even used it to kill annoyingly powerful enemies before I was strong enough to beat then normally: the arc welder bots (which I could not beat until I switched to twin rigged because I was too slow), the watch dog bots and the smelter bots (why melee an enemy that cannot reach you?). It was a bit of a pain to hit for 2 damage per shot but I set up an automated macro on my keyboard and did something else for a while. The shield I used in tough battles.

For implants I found 1 max stamina boost, multiple health boosts, multiple healing injections and the one that converts energy into health to be most useful. General combat would see me save energy for healing rather than finishers and saving the healing injections unless I really needed it. I made a set of Proteus armor for the passive health regen and made extensive use of that in the late game to heal up between fights; just do something else while waiting. I found it important to only have 2 types of injectables equipped so I could simply press the button to switch between them; with more than 2 I had trouble finding the healing in critical moments when I really needed it. My final implant loadout was:

Vital boost XL 4 (+135 health)

2 X Vital boost 5 (+115 health)

4 X Vital boost 4 (+70 health, making my total health 745)

Medi voltaic injection 5

3 X Vital injection 5 (gives 9 uses of 360 health each)

Endurance enhancer 5 (+50 stamina)

Rig capacitor XL

2 X Rig capacitor (so my energy does not drain below 50%)

Voltaic dynamo 2 (increases energy gain from attacks)

That was my set up for the final boss, though for general play I have 2 that boost scrap gain and 1 that boosts weapon proficiency gain. I used a trick to get a couple million extra scrap. The trick where if you die with a lot of scrap and bring the timer above 5 min you gain far more than you lost (I absolutely hated that damn timer for corpse runs). I did it in the Research exhibit room just outside ops where there were 4 disabled proteus and 1 security guard to farm. Good thing I did it then because bad enemies showed up there later. I ended at core level 121, twin proficiency 18 and had my weapon and armor maxed out to mark 5.

Some parts of the game were quite tough and took a few attempts. I think most of my deaths were from falling or doing something dumb rather than failure at combat. Each boss took 2 or 3 tries. I killed the big sister the special way accidentally after struggling with the 4 laser arms and just saying the hell with them and running past them. Black Cerberus took the most tries because I struggled with the giant robots and it took several tries to figure out how to knock down the robots without the rocket barrage from the first boss. I wrecked the final boss on the first try and got the Claws of Gestalt; I put that down more to the exploiting and cheese I did to excessively over level and max out my stuff rather than skill.

Due to the beginning being like Avatar and the overall similarities to Dead Space, I thought this game took place on a different planet for the longest time. I did not learn my error until late game. Overall a very good game which faithfully follows the Dark Souls formula while refining some bits and adding in its own unique mechanics. Could really have used a map because the world is more confusing than Dark Souls, but the PC controls were excellent.

So, what can you expect from a future with exoskeletons? Let's find out!

[Pre-Read Info]

System: PlayStation 4 Pro

Play-Time: Less than 1 Hour

Mode Played: Solo Campaign

I downloaded this game because it was a part of PlayStation's free games for April's PlayStation Plus subscribers. I didn't initially give it much thought when watching the trailer, but it did look really neat. I was show a game that seemed like you were fighting other people in exoskeletons, something that I've always thought was a really cool mashup of man and machine. Needless to say I was kind of excited to try it out.

The game does take a minute to explain what it's about, who your main character is, why he is there and all that good stuff. The scene immediately shifted to something a bit more dark, as I immediately find myself surgically bound to the exoskeleton. Once my character was up and moving, I found myself fighting against other humans who were in the same condition as me. It was basically like fighting robot zombies, which is a pretty cool concept.

The one thing I didn't really like was the combat system. It's a bit more complex than your average game, so I believe it needed much more time explaining it. There were times where I found myself completely ignoring the rules of combat simply just so I can beat my enemy to death and pass by it. Of course, this didn't fare well as I got stuck trying to pass a much bigger enemy that took me down with ease.

As with a lot of games in this era, the realistic look is great. Though I recommend turning off motion blur, as I was feeling a bit nauseous after playing for a while. The bland wasteland that you start in does coincide with the story and with what's going on, but with the game-play mechanics not meshing well with me, I lost interest fairly quickly. I found myself getting tired of restarting after not being able to pass an area with a bigger enemy due to not catching on to the combat fairly quickly.

Overall I didn't really have the best experience with playing The Surge. This I can definitely say it is due to the combat mechanics in the beginning. It's definitely more story-driven above anything else, as it puts a lot more focus into that aspect. Even though this may not be my cup of tea, this was only the first hour that I was in. I believe I need to get a better grasp of how to play before really continuing before I can enjoy this game. At the end of the day I still say this is worth giving a shot, especially if you can snag it on a sale.

[Video] :

I guess it is a very bright Souls-like. It gave me no reason to care about the world or the main character.

I knew nothing about the game and just tried it since it was free on PSN. It is very confusing at the start. Obtuse, but not in a difficult way, more like... annoying.

Anyway, not for me. I unlocked a couple of trophies so I felt comfortable quitting.