The Surge

The soulslike genre has gone pretty far over the years, and I mean soulslike games not made by FromSoftware. Just want to clarify that right now so people don’t get confused. Everyone wants to put a fun twist on the Souls formula now, or create a game almost like it. There were roughly about one or two soulslikes per year, and now that number has risen to five or six. Despite there being a tad too many soulslikes like I still rather enjoy. I love Bloodborne and Dark Souls as they allow me to test my skills, knowledge, patience, and willingness to overcome a challenge. That good adrenaline rush for you finally overcomes the problem at hand and moves onward. I played the heck out of these games over the years and still do. Bloodborne being the game I’ve clocked the most hours into aside from Hades, no joke. It’s one of my comfort games. However, as much as I praise FromSoftware there comes a point where you pump in too many hours. You got to move onto something else, but at the same time you want to see other devs who can offer you that same joy Souls gives you. Basically it’s like burgers. Everyone loves burgers, and restaurants have made their own burgers. Despite each burger being made up of the same ingredients they all taste and are cooked differently. Same goes for pizza, tacos, reubens, omelets, etc.

Soulslikes come in a variety of flavors now. Wanna soulslike that blends stamina-based combat and the combos of a character action game like Devil May Cry then play Nioh. You want one that mixes Souls with a lighthearted 3D platformer then play Another Crab’s Treasure. Want one that is an over the shoulder third person shooter that actually puts good incentivization on co-op then try the Remnant series. Please do this is probably my favorite non-FromSoftware soulslike series. You want a soulslike that actually understands what makes Souls good? Go play Lies of P. Like right now. Please, it's one of my favorite games. Then you got the 2D soulslikes which there are a lot of. I can start listing them right now, but that would take too long so I’ll suggest reading my past reviews of them instead. I took a break from soulslikes last year, because like many people I was getting burnt out. Got soulslike fatigue, but similar to most fatigue it’s cured through a long break. Thought it would be a good idea to start getting back into them. Dying for a challenge as of lately, and last year Hollow Knight: Silksong showed me the joy of playing hard games once more. I thought about playing a game I’m surprised I didn’t play sooner due to how four years ago I played its sequel. That game being The Surge developed by Deck13 Interactive. 

You probably know who these lads are. The German behind one of the first soulslikes out there being Lords of The Fallen. Truly the first of its kind, and from what I’ve heard from a majority of people…… It’s not very good. With clunky controls more so than older Souls titles, a generic setting, and godawful game design. Lords of The Fallen is bad both as a soulslike and as a video game, but like many starting points there was room for improvement. Deck13 began to work on a sequel to Lords of The Fallen, which then quickly entered development hell as their publisher CI Games told them to pass their property to another team. It got so bad that mid development CI changed developers once again to Hexworks. Who in the end made the 2023 reboot we know as Lords of The Fallen. Sad story for Deck13 to be honest with you, but in some way they dodged a bullet. As the current CEO of CI Games chose to throw everyone at Hexworks under the bus in pursuit of shouting the craziest political views & takes known to man. Deck13 dodged one and after Lords of The Fallen was taken away they began working on a new property. A soulslike that would kick the formula all the way to the future.  They made The Surge, a soulslike that blended Dark Souls with science fiction. Now I love science fiction. It’s one of my favorite genres and settings for a video game aside from fantasy. When somebody told me that a German team had made Dark Souls in a sci-fi world I got excited. Is this my dream game? 

I learned about The Surge back in 2019. The same year its sequel was announced and released. I looked up whether or not The Surge was a good game, and the answer I got was very confusing. There are people who like The Surge and people who don’t. Some think it's a solid soulslike and others think it's a rough mess. Some say it’s just okay, and others see it as the worst thing ever. A good compare and contrast would be the reviews made by Skill Up and Yahtzee Croshaw. First and foremost talked about how he liked the game. It wasn’t great, but it was a solid foundation to become something better. The other saw it as one of the worst games of 2017 and no developer would ever live up to the peak FromSoftware have set for themselves. There’s a common theme between these two reviews. Both somewhat acknowledge the soulslike genre is still in its early stage, and with more time could be refined with better games. Titles that do a better job trying to understand what makes Dark Souls good. The Surge was a blueprint for a better video game, and that is exactly what happened as Deck13 spent the next two years making The Surge 2. A game often brought up when it comes to the discussion of good soulslikes. Whenever people mention The Surge they always suggest skipping the first game and playing the second.

Why is that? What did The Surge do to warrant such treatment? Is it really as bad as people say, and what qualities were so good that Deck13 decided to make a sequel? What refinements have been made since 2017. I decided to find out. Before playing Ghost of Yotei my time was spent working through this game and it was until recently that I finally finished it up. I rolled credits after twenty hours of playtime, and yeah my thoughts are pretty conflicting. It’s easy to see how The Surge improved with its sequel. The many rough edges and Deck13 still trying to figure out how to make a soulslike. There are numerous moments I wanted to ragequit, but I found myself coming back each time. Part of me had a good time with The Surge, and another part of me can see why not a lot of people liked it. This review is gonna be similar to the review I did last year of The Evil Within. A conflicting review where I explain why I liked what is objectively a kinda bad video game. Let’s talk about it. Let's do a deep dive into The Surge and why it is the way that it is.

Story

The game takes place in a far off future where a majority of the earth’s natural resources are now gone. What I find interesting about The Surge is that it doesn’t explore a reality where humanity is struggling to survive. Instead it explores the economy of said world, and how people attempt to go about their daily lives. Weird focus, but it pays to create an interesting premise. A lack of resources leads to a majority of jobs being out of commission. Woodsman, farmers, biologists for marine life, normal biologists, etc. A majority of people are now struggling to provide for their families both in terms of resources and financially. The majority of earth’s population is jobless, and The Surge explores this. Tech companies rose in the distance and offered jobless individuals the opportunity to provide for themselves. One such was CREO, a huge manufacturer for basic household appliances and developed the world’s most advanced exoskeleton. Rigs that massively increase the strength and performance of its user. CREO will offer workers good pay, and shall grant individuals surgery to these exoskeletons to conduct daily duties. One such individual is Warren who takes a train to where CREO is mainly stationed. A

Warren is physically handicapped. Unable to walk due to his paralyzed legs, but he learns what makes the exoskeletons of CREO special. They not only grant strength, but can restore physical capabilities of its users. Allowing them to feel, bend, and walk once more. Warren wants to have the ability to walk again, so he signs up at CREO. Wheeling his way to the nearest bay so that surgery can begin. The surgery goes wrong as sedatives that were supposed to be administered fail. Warren is forced to endure iron plating being screwed onto his body before a neural link is then drilled directly into the back of his skull. This knocks him out and leads to CREO officials assuming he’s dead. Like any corrupt high tech company in fiction Warren is dumped in a trash heap. He awakes to find a robot trying to drag him away, and that the robot is trying to kill him. Warren picks up a weapon, fights back, and discovers CREO has gone mad. The factory is now filled with corrupt robots and former employees who have gone mentally insane. Something had occurred over the last few hours to send CREO into apocalypse mode. That is all for Warren to figure out as he works his way towards escaping. Uncover the truth of what happened, fight an array of machines gone mad, obtain better equipment to fight, and try to survive.

Gameplay

If you played a soulslike before then you already have some expectations of what you’ll get from The Surge. Explore a handful of levels, find secrets and equipment, fight enemies, and try to get further without dying. If you die you lose whatever currency you gained and have to run back to get it. Die again and it’s gone for good. In Dark Souls you had souls, and in The Surge you had scrap. Spend it at medical bays to level up and upgrade your character gear. The Surge takes an interesting approach to character progression compared to Dark Souls. Instead of leveling stats you level up health and stamina together. There’s no strength, dexterity, faith, or intelligence. All you do is bank scrap, and weapon damage is increased through upgrading them and familiarity. It’s similar to how familiarity worked in Nioh except instead of spending time with one specific weapon it’s each weapon class. What leveling up in The Surge does instead is open up implant slots. These function like perks in Hollow Knight where you can equip implants, but are dictated how many you can have based on energy and slot number. Implants can increase health, stamina, provide a multitude of consumables to use, etc. With stronger versions of implants taking more energy to use, so plan out accordingly what you want to bring out into the field.

There’s some extra unique mechanics as well like being able to bank scrap you didn’t spend on upgrades. That way you don’t risk losing them in the field, but there’s also a scrap multiplier. It allows you to obtain more scrap from defeated enemies and is reset upon resting at a med-bay. There’s also how you can get health injectable refills randomly while out and about by carrying the needed amount of scrap to level up. There’s a reward in playing risky and daringly, and for some players they may like this. Gain the materials they need to level up and have more implants equipped. As for how you upgrade and obtain new equipment is entirely different. This is where we need to talk about the combat of The Surge. It functions similar to Dark Souls. You have your health bar and stamina. Every time you dodge, attack, and block it consumes stamina. There’s a third bar though and that is your energy. Different from the one for which you equip implants. It works like Hollow Knight where striking enemies will fill it, but unlike Hollow Knight it can and will drain if you don’t keep up the pressure and let it linger too long. Energy can be spent on the many consumables you may bring, but it’s also spent to perform execution attacks.

A majority of enemies in The Surge have limbs. Different components you can target and slash at with intense focus. If you manage to weaken a limb enough and have enough energy you have the choice to perform a lethal slice. Cutting off the limb and allowing it to loot whatever was on it. This creates a fun combat system where you determine whether you harvest something from the enemy, or kill it as soon as possible. Limbs with no armor net no rewards when sliced off, but it will take increased damage compared to armored limbs. The armored limbs take less damage, but will net you reward if sliced off. New armor can be brought to manufacturing machines to unlock blueprints to forge said armor, and cutting off enemies with armor you already have the blueprint for will give you broken parts. These are spent to forge and upgrade armor. It reminds me of Monster Hunter in some way, but you have more control over what rewards you gain. Farm the resources you need, craft better gear, and have a slightly easier time with future foes. You may even be able to find new weapons better than the ones simply lying around. This game has some honestly really cool ideas, but I want to save them up for the end. Now comes the real question. Why is The Surge the way it is? Why was it perceived so harshly back then & now?

Thoughts

My short explanation of The Surge is that it’s good, but not a game I’d recommend to people. If you haven’t played any of the other major entries in the soulslike genre like Lies of P, Remnant, any of the 2D metroidvania titles, or The Surge 2 then it’s best playing those instead. If there are really no other options, or you’re something who really liked The Surge 2 and just want to see how the series started out then I guess The Surge is worth checking out. From what I’ve read the initial release of The Surge was plagued by terrible bugs. Framerate issues, glitching through the floor and falling to your death, you or enemies getting stuck in the wall, and the list goes on. The game was downright unplayable and one year had to be spent patching the game into a playable state. Even then this game has a lot of frustrating bits that I’m not even sure the most patient of players will be able to stomach. About five percent of players on PlayStation have managed to beat the game. That is the lowest completion number I’ve seen for a soulslike, and it makes sense to be honest. It sucks that I’m saying this, because The Surge does have some really good ideas. They just needed to be ironed out more. Better executed, because the way this initial game has handled them isn’t the greatest. It’s why I’m glad The Surge 2 only took two years to make even though most video game sequels spend years in the oven. Deck13 took feedback, learned from the first attempt, and used it to create a much better game.

The combat of The Surge is great and terrible. Great because the mechanics at play are unique & worth messing around with. Terrible because there are so many encounters that are nerve racking or annoying rather than fun. I love how this game experiments with a limb targeting system. It allows the player to prioritize whether they strike weak components, or attempt to farm stronger gear from enemies. It creates strategy, because in most soulslike games you want to end combat as soon as possible. Each resource spent on refilling lost health is another step closer to death. It is a priority to save consumables for emergencies or when you run into a tough opponent. This mechanic creates tons of risk reward scenarios. Do I go for the exposed flesh of an enemy, or do I risk getting that extra fighting power? This is made even better with how energy and execution works. Energy drains if you don’t keep up the pressure, and execution which can end fights even faster needs energy. This forces players to fight aggressively so that they may get the edge. You even have an implant that allows you to restore health upon performing an execution move. This basically transforms the game in Doom 4, and I love it. However, while the game has good ideas for combat not a lot of it is handled well. Limb targeting forms strategy, but it’s frustrating when the camera doesn’t want to lock onto the piece you want to hit and you have to fiddle around with the right joystick for a bit.

Maybe you’re fighting multiple enemies at once, but targeting the want is hard cuz the joystick which is what usually changes lock-on between enemies is soulslike only changes limb targeting. You change lock-on by pressing the left trigger which is usually for parrying, and parrying now is a jump or duct performed by holding the block and flicking the right joystick. The controls of this game is so f*cking weird. They took such a long time to get used to, and it doesn’t help that The Surge is a rather clunky game. A soulslike somehow more clunky than Dark Souls 2. Warren turns weirdly, attacks feel stiff, and sometimes Warren doesn’t do what you need him to do. The enemies of this game, especially the ones later on, have such long attack strings and do so much damage. You also stun easily, so getting hit once in an enemy combo is more often instant death. It leads to a lot of fights seeing you wait until an enemy stops swinging, you getting one or three hits, and then backing away because they like to get back up quickly and start swinging again. This is not fun especially for a game that allows you to move around and attack quickly. It’s why The Surge 2 puts a heavier focus on this faster action. Having less punishing foes, tighter player controls, giving more room to fight enemies in, and designing most fights to be reactive rather than wait or bait.They even redesigned some combat mechanics like being able to store energy charges as heals, or having directional blocking instead of jumping and ducking. A mechanic I never used, because more often than not dodging was easier.

Now one thing I will say is that the game has some genuinely good character customization and progression. I like how you gather resources, and the armor you chop is always a full guaranteed loot drop. You get the reward you work hard for, and it’s nice. It’s like Monster Hunter but less annoying. What is annoying though is having to farm for it. The resource requirements for some of these upgrades are so high that working towards them stops being fun after a bit. Made even worse with what you need is doubled with how you need to upgrade two separate pieces for the arms and legs. It’s why The Surge 2 had to cut down on how much was required to upgrade your equipment, or at least that’s how I remember it. You can’t even fully upgrade your armor by the end, because the last material rarely drops and you’re better off spending it on the last weapon upgrade. You’d be a fool using it on anything else. The weapon familiarity system is nice, but it discourages you from trying out any other weapon aside from just two types. I never liked it in the Nioh series, but it’s understandable why that game made it per weapon. Why The Surge 2 just straight out removed weapon familiarity, because it limited player experimentation.

The level design feels like a mixture between Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls. Each area has only one resting area where you’re safe, and the rest you have to carefully explore. Opening up any of the shortcuts you find to make backtracking less annoying. For the most part I enjoy the levels of this game. Finding secrets and figuring out the way forward. Feeling relieved when a checkpoint was opened up. Slowly marching through, because I never knew what was ahead. It reminded me of class Souls level design which I really love. There’s even moments where fighting what is up ahead is worse than finding another way around. A great bit is in the second area. You have to cross a bridge but there are three gunners at the end as well as a robot. Running in is suicide, but if you explore the area you’ll find a lift that’ll take you above the bridge. Allowing you to avoid a tricky combat scenario and get to where you need to be. I love the level design of The Surge, but I also kinda hate it. This game really loves placing you in tight ass corridors where moving left and right is nonexistent. It then also likes placing enemies in these corridors and forcing you to fight them. Made even worse with how terrible the camera is and how often it gets caught in a wall or corner. This is what I’m very mixed on. The Surge has level design where it wants you to be careful, but it also has combat where you need to be fast and reactive. Both of them don’t mix well together, and it leads to a ton of frustrating moments that feel unfair.

When the game throws a group of enemies at me out of nowhere that isn’t fun. When the game forces me to deal with a heavy hitting fat robot in a little tunnel that is not fun. When the game is spending more time trying to kill me than actually be fair or let me learn from my failures then the joy of conquering a challenge becomes hard to bear. A lot of you may argue Dark Souls is the same way. Dark Souls has moments that will kill you instantly and you just didn’t know it would happen. However, Dark Souls was fair in my opinion. A majority of challenges you can prepare for is seeing coming ahead of time. If you die it feels like it was your fault. The Surge placing the player into these uncomfortable quarters with enemies with longass attack strings that stun and kill you easily is not fun nor fair. The last comment is that I don’t like how far apart shortcuts are from each other. These levels are big and only have one checkpoint. It made sense back with Demon’s Souls when levels were smaller and getting back to where you died got quicker each time. Here it’s not, and good luck getting lost currency back as it’s on a ticking timer. 

The Surge 2 improves on so many aspects gameplay-wise. Better level and world design, better combat and enemies, more refined mechanics, and even better player progression. I don’t mind that everything levels together in terms of stats in the first game, but I want to have more control over what I level up. The Surge 2 does that and even though it’s only three categories it’s still a mile ahead of this. The Surge just feels like you’re banking your cash while The Surge 2 asks for you to invest. It also means stat increases aren’t just done through implants, which I’m surprised that’s how it works in The Surge. The second game does so many things better, but you want to know one thing I’d say the original does do better? The setting and the story. Visually the game looks great. That I won’t say much about because a majority of 2017 releases still look good. The setting feels creepy and eerie. CREO really is a company that has gone to hell. With hallways that are disfunctional, broken down, and dark at times. You feel unease with what lies ahead. All you can do is take a random shot ahead and hope for the best. There’s horror in this game and while I wouldn’t say it’s good horror I respect that they at least tried. They took a place that’d be just normal in any other video game, and tried to do something different with it.

The story of Warren learning more about what happened to CREO is interesting. It’s essentially a tale about how far humanity will go for advancement. The risks they'll take, lives they place on the line, and how even the brightest smiles have some corruption lying underneath. CREO is not a good company. It’s made apparent from the start with how Warren’s surgery failed and the next step they took was dumping his body in the sand. They tried experimenting with AI knowing it may go horribly wrong, did it, and experienced the consequences. The Surge and its story feels like what I wished Cyberpunk 2077 delved more into. That game too takes place in a world that is running low on natural resources and is led by corrupt corporate evils. The Surge shows you CREO is corrupt, but they genuinely did things to help people. Such as giving people positions to work in a future devoid of jobs, or creating exoskeletons that help those who are handicapped. I see The Surge attempting to address the resource drought whereas Cyberpunk never really delves into this. It never really did much aside from you’re the protagonist, evil corporation, and go kill them all. I’m not saying the corporation shouldn’t be evil, but I want to see some attempt to try to build them up rather than make them another cartoonishly cruel entity.

To repeat what I said earlier, The Surge is a good game that obviously needed a lot of refinement and polishing. It had some really cool ideas and a genuinely interesting universe, but execution of a lot of aspects were done quite poorly. Combat can be good but it’s clunky and isn’t the best to control. Level design is reminiscent of traditional mazelike levels in Dark Souls, but it also has bits that are annoying or downright unfair with how they handle enemy placement. Progression is great, but much like trying to fight anything it too gets annoying after a bit. This is a game that I can’t see myself recommending to people, but that doesn’t mean I hated it. I liked this game. I really did! Deck13 did everything they could to make it better than Lords of The Fallen. This is a game with a ton of passion and love put into it. There’s more heart in The Surge than a majority of Triple A games out right now. Deck13 could’ve given up after The Surge, but they kept going and eventually made The Surge 2. Even though it flew under the radar it was considered better than the first game. It became one of the best soulslikes out there, and that really shows who the people of Deck13 are. The Surge, despite being annoying, managed to impress me. It wasn’t the best, but it was a solid enough foundation to then lead into a sequel. I’m glad I played this game. Deck13’s last game was Atlas Fallen which wasn’t great, but I hope they do another soulslike in the future. I believe if they try one more time they crank out a Lies of P quality soulslike. Iin the end I give The Surge an 8/10 for being enjoyable enough.

8/10, Enjoyable (kinda)