The Surge

god

perfect maze simulator

The Surge is the second game I've played from Deck13. Before that, I played Lords of the Fallen (2014) about a year ago and, contrary to popular opinion, I thought it was an okay game and a good first attempt at a Souls-like. I think that with The Surge, Deck13 managed to make a genuinely great Souls-like this time around! First off, the game can be a bit of a pain to run on modern hardware. I played it with a 9070 XT graphics card, and it seems there's a common texture bug with this card. Thx Reddit for finding a solution. The game was also locked to 60 FPS for me. I tried a workaround that unlocked the FPS, but the framerate variation was huge (from 150 to 250 FPS), and the game would randomly lock itself back to 60 FPS from time to time, forcing me to access the menu to unlock it again. I eventually got bored with that and just played the game at 60 FPS, which was perfectly fine. Anyways, if you manage to get the game running properly, you'll see that it still looks quite good! I wouldn't say it's the prettiest game ever made, but for a game that's almost 10 years old now, the textures are good, the lighting is great, and the artistic direction is decent. I would say it lacks a little bit of diversity and ambition when it comes to giving us some truly memorable views, like you get throughout the Dark Souls games or even in Lords of the Fallen from time to time. But you definitely get the feeling that you're exploring a huge futuristic factory, so I'd say it does its job well enough. From a visual standpoint, I'd also add that the animations of your character and the enemies are great. The equipment you can add to your character also looks great, so +1 for Fashion Souls! The level design in The Surge is very good. It's a little labyrinthine for my taste and I got lost a lot (tho I'll admit I'm not the best at finding my way in a videogame), some areas can look very similar due to the lack of visual diversity. But overall, exploration is fun and, more importantly, gratifying when you find good stuff or finally find a shortcut to the operation room (= bonefire of Dark Souls = safe space to save and do other stuff). The music is serviceable, with some nice atmospheric tracks and a nice "hub theme". The sound design overall is quite good and helps you stay immersed in the game. The sound of your weapons and the impact of your attacks is also very satisfying. In terms of gameplay, The Surge is a Souls-like, so you'll have to deal with a stamina bar, dodge difficult enemy patterns, and be patient while learning their movesets and figuring out how to counter them. I'd say it's way faster than Dark Souls 1/2 in terms of movements and probably even DS3, mainly because in The Surge you can dash and hit ennemies which is amazing. However, the actual hitting animation can be as slow as heavy weapons in Dark Souls 2 (meaning very slow). Also, there are numerous things that The Surge does uniquely. First off, in addition to health and stamina, you have an energy bar that can be used for your drone, healing yourself if you have the right implant, or cutting off limbs from your enemies. Why would you want to do that? Well, to get their weapons or schematics for their different pieces of armor of course! It sounds cool, and it is! Being able to specifically target an enemy's limbs and then cut them off to obtain their equipment is a really satisfying mechanic. You can then use the materials you get from cutting of limbs of equipment you already have the plans for to upgrade your gear. It gives fights a nice extra layer of strategy because you're not simply trying to kill enemies as quickly as possible, sometimes you actually want to target a specific limb and make sure to build up the energy to cut it off. There's also, as I mentioned, an implant system that allows you to add passive and active skills to your character. This is another great idea and gives you quite a bit of flexibility in how you build your character. A few more mechanics are introduced as you progress through the adventure. The "poise"/stability system is a bit weird, in my opinion, since even with a high stability build I was still getting flattened by most enemy attacks that connected. Most enemies have interesting and challenging movesets. Some are, of course, more annoying than others, especially the ones that interrupt your chain of attacks, and can sometimes two-shot you right after. The game also has a tendency to put very mobile and fast enemies into very narrow areas, which can be frustrating when unecessary and in the way of a runback. The bosses are decent. They can be quite cinematic, but never to the extent of the bosses in Dark Souls. They generally don't have particularly deep or impressive movesets (although sometimes they do have annoying little moves and not so greatly telegraphed ones) and are overall easier than Dark Souls bosses. The game itself is also easier than Dark Souls games overall, imo. One particular boss is annoying because he can "summon" very sturdy opponents throughout the fight, which makes the encounter more long and frsutrating than challenging (though there is a way to make the fight easier). But overall, the boss fights were enjoyable once I got the gist of them, especially the final boss. And I like the fact that there always is a specific way to kill them that makes their loot better. The story is actually quite well done imo and is mostly told through environmental storytelling, encounters with NPCs, and audio logs. It's nothing revolutionary, but I enjoyed exploring the lore and understanding the events of the game little by little. Overall, The Surge was a very enjoyable game and one I would definitely recommend, especially when it's on sale like it is right now at the time of writing. You can get it for less than 2 bucks, or get The Surge 1 & 2 for less than 5 bucks, which is an absolute steal. It's difficult, but not that difficult, has a good gameplay loop, satisfying exploration thanks to good level design, an interesting story, and isn't overly long. I'd say around 18–25 hours for a first playthrough. If you like Souls-likes and haven't played The Surge yet, I'd definitely give it a shot.