The Surge

I was reminded a lot of Vanquish and Dark Souls when playing The Surge (with perhaps a little bit of a Tom Cruise movie that apparently had multiple titles a few years back). Imagine a mash-up of all three and you'll get the idea.

Was it as fun as Vanquish? Almost. I never felt that the weaponry was all that powerful compared to the hoards I was fighting against nor did I feel like the armor was all that protective. This made tackling the enemies a little boring, honestly. There's weapon crafting though, which I enjoyed in Dead Space 3, so it was nice to see it here. Also, if you enjoy dismembering enemy limbs you'll have your bloodthirst satisfied, just don't expect this game to be easy. There are only five bosses in total, and it seems that they have taken a relatively short game and attempted to extend it by adding lots of grind and upping the difficulty.

The environments and graphics are all gorgeous to look at. I'd say that this is a great game for demonstrating the ability of your home theatre, and while the sound effects are good, the music...isn't. They really fumbled the ball there. I won't be rushing out to buy the soundtrack, which is filled with cheap, techno-noise and a few country-ish songs. It's sad to see any kind of scoring go in this direction. It's a trend that fills me with dread.

There's no multi-player (not that I care about that), so you need to keep that in mind if you are used to online co-op gaming.

With 47 achievements/trophies available there's a reason to come back after your first playthrough, but I found the game already too overly familiar and derivative of other games that I enjoyed more. It's still a decent timewaster, but sometimes I am looking for more than that.

...no hope for escape.

That's what From Software could never do, get a song stuck into your head.

Other than that, I really liked it, but I don't know about die-hard From Software fans. The bosses are only a few and quite easy, but the rest is probably harder than Souls games.

There's not as much enemy variety, but there are some new gameplay elements. There is the possibility to bank your currency at medbays ("bonfires"), you can cut off body parts from enemies (and these are required for crafting new armor), and there are sets bonuses. There's a lot to learn even if you played Souls games.

The level design is not as masterfully crafted, but it's good. Often, frustrating. The second area was basically impossible for me to learn.

The combat is simply great, it can be fast, slow or in-between, there are combos and finishing moves, and plenty of weapons to go around.

The atmosphere is great, managing to capture the Soulslike feeling in a sci-fi, industrial environment. There's also a story told mainly by NPCs, not as cryptic as Souls games, but not great, either.

It's the best Soulslike, if you ask me, adding plenty of innovations to the formula, most of which are really good.

As easy as it would be just to apply one metric or measure each game's performance with one scale, it just doesn't work. The Surge isn't a game that is story-based or relying on the strength of its story but lets dive into it. Our protagonist is Warren, a handicapped man that's starting his job at CREO (a Google style conglomerate) where we're assured that they're a wonderful employer whose interests are aligned with humanity's advancement. Warren is then forcibly attached to a rig (via screws through his muscle and bone while he's still awake). He wakes up in a junkyard, some time has passed and the former workers have been replaced by mostly brain-dead security all too eager to slice, dismember or burn Warren to death. CREO launched Project reSOLVE into the atmosphere to repair it and things haven't gone to plan. They're now scheduled to launch Project UTOPIA which would speed up the effects of reSOLVE but sacrifice most of the population. Warren is then tasked (there's no choice, Warren doesn't speak so there's no discussion) with stopping the release of UTOPIA and hacking his way through anyone standing in his way. I'd describe The Surge's story as serviceable but pretty middle-of-the-road. Right from go, there's barely a hop let alone a leap to identify CREO as the villains (why no one else figured this out in this universe.... I just don't know). While you'd think doing something as unique as making Warren need to be in this rig just to walk (an inspired choice) would signal more character development or a deeper narrative, it's just not here. There's nothing wrong with the larger arc of the plot being telegraphed, I'm just not going to go out of my way to overtly praise or criticize it.

To Deck 13's credit, The Surge doesn't try to hide what it is or try and distract the player. If you're playing The Surge, you're signing up for Dark Souls-esque combat/difficulty in a post-apocalyptic environment. While The Surge wasn't a smash hit game, there's been some debate on whether the game is too hard and I'm happy to weigh in as someone new to the genre. In my opinion, The Surge is too hard for casual players and I'm not ashamed to admit to reviewing this game without being able to finish it. The game has a highly frustrating difficulty level that is only enjoyable to a certain percentage of the gaming community (calling it a niche game isn't an insult, the amount of people who bought the game compared to who finished it is well outside of normal range according to the percentages on the trophies). There's no mini-map, objective markers or checkpoints and if Warren dies, you start again at the med-bay with all the enemies having re-spawned. You've also dropped your loot with only so much time to get back to it to pick it up again. There were some aspects of the combat that I liked and I'll detail them later but I did give up on The Surge after trying to grind through it (I got past the 2nd boss and was about halfway through the next large area, past Biolabs and starting the second visit to Central Production B). Even the low level enemies can kill you with just a couple of hits. If you get lost in an area, accidentally engage with high level enemies or lose focus while fighting, you're done and you're going to be starting over again. I also found the boss fights excruciating, one of the more glossed-over aspects is how awful the camera can be during prolonged battles. I was trying to fight PAX (the first boss) which can kill Warren quickly. You have to get behind its legs and I died so many times because the camera wouldn't position itself where I needed it to so I could see what I was doing. Nothing is fun about dying continuously and while a game can be enjoyably challenging, I'm not going to pin a medal on The Surge for just being hard to complete. I have to want to continue as well and I didn't feel like continuing to trudge through areas, without any direction and little hope of surviving for any meaningful amount of time.

While I'm obviously not the target audience for The Surge, there were things about it that I liked. The reveal of Warren's condition was extremely well done and instantly made me root for his survival. Being able to target specific enemy areas to farm out there equipment is cool, it takes away the dice rolls of most loot drops. The character progression system to level up Warren's abilities was different enough to be interesting. I also begrudgingly respected the loot drop system, it forced you to backtrack and weigh risk on where you decide to venture on the map. I was also impressed by how brutal the kill animations were. You don't have to be hugely gory to impress me but Deck 13 weren't afraid to push the envelope a little. It didn't make up the difference for me but I did get a little satisfaction when I dispatched a particularly tenacious foe because Warren was eviscerating them.

I wanted to like The Surge more than I did but I never really lost my temper with it nor did I stop playing it with a ton of vitriol towards it. It's as difficult as described and it shouldn't be attempted by just anyone. If you enjoy games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, The Surge is going to scratch that itch and perhaps even then some. The fact that I got it heavily discounted also cushioned some of the blow but I still can't wholesale recommend it. It was too punishing for my liking (the odds suggest it probably will be for you too) and I won't be continuing with the series either.

This is a highly addictive and utterly polished top notch SoulsBorne with a great combat/level up system, outstanding smart and original level design of a rich world to explore, decent story, robust movesets and a significant variety of weapons and armour to choose your unique play style.

I had originally played this back when it was released and loved it, but having revisited it just recently on PS5, I can say this game did stand the test of time, still looking fantastic after all these years. Definitely among my favourite non-From Software SoulsBornes.

Enjoyed every second of it and certainly got the Platinum trophy.

As long as you play it, you don't want to play anything else.

An absolute Must for SoulsBorne fans.