The Surge

Although the visceral feel of its combat comes as close to Souls as any game, The Surge would really benefit from more variety in enemies, story, setting, and player character options -- as well as difficulty -- which eventually start to become repetitive. The decision to make every fight significant and potentially deadly certainly adds tension but there is rarely a sense of power or growing mastery, simply a more easily found relief at not dying. Thanks to its sci-fi setting and excellent combat, The Surge is overall a very solid, unique addition to the growing catalog of Souls-like games.

The Surge is a good action-RPG and a real Dark Souls-like, so the game is clearly not open for everyone. It offers interesting systems, but we still regret a lack of diversity in everything (weapons, enemies, environments...).

Deck 13 took what they learnt from working on Lords of the Fallen and added their own ideas to allow The Surge to be more than a pure Dark Souls clone. The combat is fantastic, engaging, and features a neat limb target system, and the skill progression is refreshingly open to experimentation, but the overall experience is sadly hampered by the lack of enemy variety and a monotonous sci-fi location, which has so much potential wasted with the current industrial environment. Even with those faults, The Surge is a better game than Lords of the Fallen, and one that I can recommend to fans of the popularised action RPG subgenre, because there is a good, fun experience to be had with The Surge, and some of its unique ideas bring solid additions to From Software’s concrete formula.

Surge is far from perfect, but none of its problems are deal breakers. They're minor bumps that come from an otherwise inventive, exciting new entry in a packed sub-genre. It bucks the trend towards creative bankruptcy, adopting some fresh ideas and layering those together with aesthetics, tone, and play to create an inspired adventure.

The Surge is a fine example of how Souls-like gameplay and structure transfers well to other genres and settings. It's a great looking game — The Surge boasts not only smooth animation, but fine details, such as the way a tarp will flap realistically in the wind, go a long way towards making this title one to show off. Combined with satisfying and unique combat, hopefully, The Surge will experience a surge of players on release.

The Surge is an admirable riff on the Souls formula, with its novel setting and new mechanics making its mechanical and narrative blemishes easier to swallow.

Deck 13 have vastly improved upon their formula, and hopefully, this is a sign of great things to come. But for now, The Surge falls short of being anything more than a serviceable title that sticks to what it knows.

It’s not bad, it’s creative and a change of pace, but it pumps up difficulty in a really unsatisfying manner. It doesn’t feel rewarding to play, t’s convoluted, and it’s confusing. Despite that, it’s still probably the most interesting attempt yet at learning from Dark Souls and creating something new.

Unfortunately while it gets the mechanics right the overall design is a far cry from Dark Souls. The world itself is plain, unimaginative and uninteresting. The level design is cramped and maze-like. The enemies are mostly stock sci-fi robots which aren’t that fun to defeat. If you’re desperate for a new Souls-style game and like the idea of the sci-fi setting, set your expectations low and you could totally enjoy The Surge. We on the other hand got bored of it very quickly, and we can imagine a lot of gamers feeling the same way. Shame.

The Surge has solid combat mechanics but the weak storyline and frustrating level design blocks all the fun.

The Surge isn't the same as Dark Souls but comparison's inevitable. Like that cyborg whose torso I severed, it struggles to stand on its own.

The Surge is a game you’ll play for its innovative targeting system and fun combat. If you’re still mourning the end of the Dark Souls series and are yearning for more punishing, action-heavy games, this should help to alleviate some of that pain. The exploration bits aren’t bad if you’ve got the patience for it, but the level and enemy designs could use a bit more work. Overall, The Surge is a huge step up from Deck13’s last outing, but there’s still quite a ways to go before it can become something truly special.

I wanted to say something about the story, but it is nothingburger… just like everything else in The Surge.

Dark Souls success naturally led to appearance of imitators, some of which are worse than others. The Surge inherited everything that was wrong with the original: bugs, sudden spikes in difficulty and general lack of polish, – yet captured none of its magic. There’s no fascinating world, intriguing story or thought-out combat mechanics to find here. [Issue#220, p.50]