The Surge

If you like Soulsbornes and Science Fiction, this is the game for you. Solid mechanics, challenging combat that forces you to adapt and sometimes change your build (which is easily done). The engine is really good in detecting collisions - all the time I was playing I so wished the Soulsborne engine could have been like this. It only has five bosses (plus two in the DLC), but the regular enemies are harder than in the Soulsbornes; I liked that, but yes, I still would have liked to have more (^_^) They've got some nice ideas too; I guess you never fought a robotic assembly line before - now here's your chance :) The 'dismemberment' feature on the other hand I didn't fidn particularly interesting. It's got its place in the grind for the equipment you want to get, but other than that it it does not bring anything interesting to the table IMHO. The story is deliberately vague. Over in a forum discussion there were interesting ideas coming up on what really happened in the game's story, and a couple of them had very good backing - still, there was no conclusion on 'the' truth - which is kinda nice, since you can choose to believe what you prefer. I've done a long review on this ... somewhere else ... which wouldn't fit here, so I'll just give a general recommendation: if you urge for more soulslike combat and do like the SciFi setting, then this is a no-brainer: get it. If one of the two does not click with you, be very careful - it's probably best to check out some gemaplay video in that case.

Short Synopsis: Starts out strong, then quickly regresses to it's Dark Souls roots. The game's biggest flaw is the stability system. You are taught at the start to rely on using heavy weapons if you want to chip large chunks of stability from the enemy for stunning purposes. The stunning system becomes useless at the start of area 2 when enemies are 'stunned' for about half a second or sometimes just ignore being stunned so they can finish a combo attack. Altogether, their own system negates 1/2 of the effective weapons to encourage a 'hit and run' style of play. I mean, look at the GOG Achievement percentages. Only 30% completed the second area when exposed to this frustrating game design. Eventually you can overcome it by leveling up your weapon skill and flatout one-shotting the enemy so they can't kill you through cheating, but is that really beating the opponent at that point? Once you get past that failure, the ubermench show up with unlimited stamina. You'll be attacked with 6 hit combos and not enough stamina to block it all. It just cements the fact the game behaves like Dark Souls where you get a bunch of options but only a few are worth having and the rest are there for 'a good challenge'. Just use the Spear or Claws and you'll win most of the time. The map system of relying on signs is tolerable. The majority of travel points are secret pathways, so some areas will be needlessly maze-like. The bosses are really easy, and I'm not even an expert at Dark Soul style games. Finally, the progression of the story is badly done. I get it; escape science lab/private military base, but why am I fighting a constructor bot chilling by the rails? I legit paid attention with nothing to distract me and there were many times I was befuddled with weird decisions I had to make. Will a game ever be able use the combat style of Dark Souls while removing the awful design pattern of memorizing every enemy animation? I'd like that a lot. Score: 5/10 (5 being average)

The movement and combat system will instantly feel familiar to Souls players and The Surge is more than a little inspired by those. The biggest difference is probably that The Surge is completely focused on melee combat. There are some changes and additions here like the ability to dismember humanoid enemies, which you need to do to get new equipment and crafting components. Need new headgear? Chop of some heads. New weapons? Okay, arms it is. And instead of spells you have a drone that can perform some attacks (which need to be charged up with melee, though) but those don't matter that much. The first main difference is obviously the setting. Instead of dungeons and dragons you have a futuristic complex here inhabited by "zombiefied" augmented people, some robots and surviving humans. You upgrade an exoskeleton, add implants and so on. The latter boost stats or unlock some basic active abilities (especially healing). At first I was in love with the world but sadly it soon becomes indistinguishable from the likes of Dead Space or Prey. Still, it was nice to see this kind of RPG in a sci-fi setting. Secondly, progression works very differently than in most RPGs. Gear is almost all that matters and it doesn't differ much in quality, even early game gear remains powerful towards the end if you choose to upgrade that one, and you can always fully respec. The biggest "problem" is that you can't really farm. You're always only as strong as the stuff you find. That makes the game in some ways harder than Souls but it's more forgiving in other areas, e.g. thanks to the ability to "bank" currency. That said: the boss fights are frustrating and navigating some of the maps is a nightmare. I got close to rage quitting at times but in the end I just tried it over and over and did not regret it. The exploration is rewarding, the combat is fun and the story decent. Combat and levels are far from Souls quality but make the game still a decent alternative.

It is good. Highly detailed environments, broad range of enemies, great rig customisation and excellent world-building. But Christ does this need a mini map system. A world where less abled individuals can be hooked up to exo suits and lift things thrice their own weight, regular rocket launches and nanotechnology and no one thought to insert a map system for the maze that is the CREO facility? Really? It's far too easy to get lost. Even 'hugging the left/right wall' didn't help because your left path might take you to sudden and instant death, or to an entirely new location that you can't get back from (which happened far too many times). Combat is excellent, but too punishing. I wanted to enjoy the mystery of the story and the excitement of the fight, and getting lost half the time and dying the other half, just spoiled my experience. It's not for me and honestly I'm in a love-hate frame of mind with this game. Definitely check it out if you're into dying a lot, or getting lost.