The Surge Brief Review - Sci-Fi Dark Souls!

Hello Nerds!

"The ancient Greeks once said, A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in"
-The Surge intro

So I've had the pleasure of playing The Surge and I've got to tell you. It's harder than 3 week old bread and I just absolutely love it. Now before we get into the nitty gritty I want to make it abundantly clear I am a huge fan of the "souls" type games where basically you are thrown into the thick of the shit and you need to use all of your wits and agility to survive. So without further adieu LET THE REVIEW BEGIN!

So The Surge was created by Deck13 Interactive and Focus Home Interactive the same people who made "The Technomancer" (Two reviews in a week of the same company...I swear I don't have a hard on for the publishers of the game.)  It released on the 16th of May on all platforms (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC)

Story

The game takes place in a dystopian future where mankind has exhausted the world's resources, leading to strained social service and environmental diseases. The company CREO started a project called "Project Resolve" which is helping restore the planets "natural shield" (I am assuming the Ozone) They also outfit their employees with EXO-Skeletons and allowing them to and carry more weight to get the job done within the factory. Enter your character Warren, you sign up with CREO as an employer but when you are being outfitted with your EXO-Skeleton it doesn't go according to plan... You wake up in a junkyard not sure how you got there or what happened so you need to make your way back into the facility to figure out why everything has gone to shit.

It's only a stone throw away...

Movement/Navigation

So this is where the game really starts out strong, As soon as you can move freely you immediately feel how fluent the movement can be and get pumped to go kick some ass. The areas are very linear but you can unlock shortcuts by overloading access doors with your RIG. (More on that later) There are nooks that make the areas feel bigger than they actually are, but sadly there is no "Map" to say but there are signs on the walls showing you where elevators and save areas are...(So that's something)

Combat

The best part of any game ever, the combat. So if you are familiar with the souls or bloodborne or even Lords of the Fallen series you will know exactly what I mean when I say the combat is extremely challenging and unforgiving to the point where breaking the controller is going to be a reality. If you take "Bum rush everything" approach you will learn the hard way by losing your precious scrap. (Experience/Currency) In saying the combat is unforgiving is also saying it will be rewarding when you take on enemies who bitch slapped you a few moments ago and you came back and chopped their limb or head off it's extremely satisfying.

The Surge takes an odd but extremely interesting way of you powering up(leveling up) and gathering different equipment. To power up you use your scrap to upgrade your power core which allows you to equip different perks/bonuses to your character This also powers up your RIG which allows you in the higher levels to short circuit access doors that opens shortcuts or possibly rooms that have rare items hidden. Scarp is also used to upgrade your current equipment or build other pieces using a combination of scrap and parts you find from killing enemies or finding them lying around the facility.

Combat trailer

Equipment and Crafting

So I am combining these two categories because they seriously go hand in hand... So the way to obtain new equipment is either find it in the world or take it from your enemies by force... So during combat when you are ducking and dodging and getting your combos in, you can target different parts of the body and if you do enough damage to a specific body part you can active a small automatic attack that will chop or rip that part off of the enemy. If you didn't have it before you get a blueprint to make this item in your med bay. This makes finding new enemies exciting as they may have the next best piece of equipment for your build.

Overall

So naturally there is some issues with the game overall as of course the level design can be infuriating as you get lost consistently without an overhead map. The enemies can seem generic after you deal with them time after time, it does mix up the variety when you get deeper into the game. But you should be used to this nowadays in video games you fight generic soldiers ect. But this game is worth a pick up if you enjoy hard games that make you feel accomplished. I will not lie, it's extremely hard and you will get upset the first time you lose 20k Scrap because your timer ran out or you were so close to getting them back only to be stabbed in the anus cavity and die right in front of them... And this is only the normal New Game status, there is a New Game + which makes this 100% worse! Regardless of these small flaws I would say pick it up at full price and if you can get it cheaper even better. The lower the cost is to $0 the more value you will get.

Have you guys ever tried the dark souls franchise? What do you think about these hard as nails games, does it make you strive to be a better gamer or do you skip them entirely? Let us know down below!

-SenorAsssHat