The Surge

[h1]With core power, comes shortcut-unlocking responsibility.[/h1] [h2]Hello and welcome my review of The Surge ⚡[/h2] [i]I've written a starter-guide too. It's linked at the end.[/i] Be prepared to experience a surge of grind and difficulty as you enter the vaguely crafted story of Warren, a paraplegic caught in the wrong place at the wrong time ‘all thanks’ to man’s best science experiements to pro-long the survivability of humans. While most players may play this game for the souls-like feel of it, the story is ‘rich’ enough for people to say that ‘there is a story’. The quotation marks hint at sarcasm. [b][u]What does souls-like mean?[/u][/b] You might have read this over-used terminology in regards to this game. If you’re new to souls-like adventures, then to understand it in very simple terms, it’s a genre that reflects that a game is of the difficult sort, that which is ready to punish you for getting lazy with your skills-application mid-way throughout the game, that which has lower tier enemy NPCs strong enough to kill you in seconds even if your combat weapon/gear/equipment is high-level but your focus is low. It’s basically a lazily used terminology but not inaccurate in the case of this combat-heavy game. It’s important to mention that there are no ranged weapons in this game for the player and all weapons are melee. Details of the game’s story can be read in the game page. It’s more fun discovering this by yourself though. [b][u]Optimisation - How well the game runs:[/u][/b] It’s well optimised for its time and now too. Even with gpus such as gtx 1650 and above (like my Rx 590), expect to hit constant 60 fps at near maxed settings in most cases. The game did crash on me once during gameplay. I didn’t experience stutters and experience was ‘constant’ (better than smooth). Game loads up pretty quickly to main menu on SSD and surprisingly quickly loads into the game. Suffice to say, this is a low-spec friendly game. The graphics is pleasing. The game characters are well modeled, textures are rich and while non-essential objects such as office-room in-door plants won’t look lifelike, the environments were all neatly rendered and crafted. Reflections are as good as you can get without the buzz-tech ray tracing. Limb-cut blood spills are not overly gory but the action sequences felt graphically and satsifying. The sounds of the actions were satisfying too and the turning off the music provided a much spookier feel to it all which I enjoyed. And I don’t even enjoy horror games. Not trying to draw in a comparison, albeit the spookyness. The music is off putting anyways. [b][u]Overall impression:[/u][/b] I liked the game overall. Was able to complete the story after beating all the available bosses per level. There’s plenty of hours to sink in for fun. But this is a specific sort of fun. If you’re seeking a casual, story-driven and rich, narrative experience, then this isn’t the game for you. If you’re looking to grind many hours for more in-game currency (Tech scrap; obtained by killing enemies) to spend on higher-level gear, weapons, turn yourself from a no-armour, basic weapon wielding worker to an all-armoured electric axe yielding, gorily limb slashing machine slayer and dominate the field for hours, then this game is definitely for you. It’s difficult for me to precisely tell you otherwise whether you should buy this game or not. But fret not, for just under the first two hours, you can enjoy the content to judge whether you like the feel of it or not before deciding to refund it or not. But in order to do so, you will probably have to try to experience the game quickly and not read too much into the details of different equipments in the game. Your starting weapon is more than powerful enough to get a good feel of the game and take down almost all the enemies except the boss so you can easily utilise the first 2 hours to decide and then if you wanna keep playing, then look into the specifics of the game weapons and armour. I know I sound negative when I keep using the refund word, but I’d be happy to prevent anyone from feeling buyer’s remoarse. But that’ll be it from me regarding my endorsement of the game while highlighting the cautions. It’s not that there are no negatives about this game. Sure there are. But nothing about the game’s main functions but rather negatives about its weapon variety in the same class. For instnace, the poor balancing of different weapons, gear classes (arms/legs/chest/head). I’ll hide this following bit because it is spoiler-ish. So, no, you don’t need to read this bit at all but I’m sure for most of you, this portion will not ruin your gameplay experience because you’re likely to agree with me after 10-15 hours of real grind. [spoiler]While there are several different types of gear sets, ultimately, you need not bother with 90% of them and can stick to your very early obtained Lynx Gear till the very final boss because it may feel just good enough. Sure there are better armour but this one is ideal for a simple grind-farm, sufficient for mini-bosses, the best for covering ground and sufficient for semi-skilled to skilled gamers who don’t receive lots of damages from bosses during fights. And its greatness alone is the negative about the needlessness of most other common gear types. The effect of gear-variety is truly poor and while the other gears are not useless, the starting gear, as it is upgraded along the way, almost always seems good enough or better in most circumstances). You can find weapons for all the classes/types in the very first level to check out the mechanics of those weapons individually. The ASTir Vibro Cutter has one of the highest damages among all the other One Handed weapons in the game except for a few paid DLC items. So, as I was saying, why even bother with other different One Handed weapons, isn’t it? Just upgrade it using materials and done. But yes, this is only if you prefer One Handed weapons.[/spoiler] Then there is the issue of different kinds of attacks dealing different levels of damage for the same weapon. Upon my testing, I found no such significance. So, what are those numbers? Devs didn’t explain at all. You can see for yourself in the first level when you try stuff out in the very first level. While most players will probably stick to the super quick but low damage weapons, it mainly comes down to combat style for the player. The single-rigged and heavy-duty slower weapons have a large place in the community and viability in combat. In fact, I used a quick weapon and a slow weapon (swap for swap) to end the final boss. I’m not saying I’m an expert in utilising all types of weapons but since I was able to utilise them both, they are viable for everyone imo, because I am a low-mid skilled player at best. However, this variability in different weapon types is what I loved about this game too. Now, before I end, I should mention that I did not buy any of the paid DLCs but I am aware that there are some very broken items, gear pieces and long-playable hours in a couple DLCs of this game, so if you wanna spend more for extended an experience, go ahead. Be aware though, in order to enter those DLC areas to farm for better loot, you need to first progress to specific areas/levels of the game. Say for example, you need to reach the 4th level/area in order to find the door which if you open and go through, will lead you to the respective DLC area. Nevertheless, to end this unexpectedly long review, I’d like to say that, for such a game, such content, such creation, hardworking devs deserve money and appreciation. This genre is far from my favourite, but I was able to feel a surge of fulfilment after many played hours. [i]Thank you for reading my review.[/i] And if you want to read my starter-kit guide here on steam, here is the [url= https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3663830726]link[/url].