The Surge

Here's another of them methodical third person action roleplaying games. I actually played The Surge a bit last fall already during my second month of Game Pass but then ragequit and uninstalled after dying and dropping a considerable amount of scrap which is the game's main resource. I had just spawned the first boss who appears between you and the level's medbay which is your respawn point. I thought there was no way to get to the scrap in time with how I would need to beat the boss first. I now know it would've in fact been quite simple to go around, although I don't remember if I had unlocked a particular shortcut then.

I beat the game later on Origin Access as EA had kindly given a free month to everyone who had activated two-factor authentication on their account. I don't personally remember even having a say on that though -- one day it was just on.

The Surge was pretty much the only game in the Origin Vault I wanted to play; everything else I already owned and/or had played. Anthem was there too; I even downloaded it but then ended up uninstalling without launching it once. I decided I didn't have enough morbid curiosity to witness another BioWare disaster myself.

At the end of my Surge playthrough I noticed Fraps had captured only black screens. I wonder if it was the game or Origin's overlay causing that. Fraps has been useful for taking screenshots in non-Steam games because it doesn't capture its own FPS counter, similarly to Steam's built-in functions. Uplay, for instance, does capture its counter too. The screenshots in this post were all taken with Shadowplay at the start of a New Game+. I should start using Shadowplay for anything non-Steam as it apparently has an FPS counter as well (which it should ignore for captures).

Third person scifi melee action

Anyway, The Surge is not the first time Deck13 Interactive has chased after success in the wake of Dark Souls. Their first attempt in the genre back in 2014, a more traditional fantasy game called Lords of the Fallen, wasn't that well received and I don't think The Surge (2017) got high praise either. Deck13 decided the latter's somewhat futuristic setting was worth sticking with however -- maybe for being a bit different from the other titles of the genre -- and there was a sequel last year.

I found The Surge to be a very average game. I mainly got enjoyment from learning how to beat the game's difficult enemies -- which are quite a few. The Surge's music, industrial setting, and visuals in general were not to my liking. A bit too often I was also battling in poor lighting, targeting HUD being the only indicator where an enemy was. Your rig has lights but they're pretty much useless in combat.

The game's story gives me no reason to return to the game either -- there's not much meat to it. Warren, the protagonist is starting at his new, no-experience-required job but something goes wrong as his exoskeleton rig is being installed. And then it's time for you as Warren to find out what happened at the place.

Issues with immersion

The subgenre's saving/death mechanic becomes questionable in a more realistic setting like The Surge's. The fact that you drop your loose scrap, keep upgrades looted and weapon skill progression gained since last death implies that your defeat was diegetic. But then you have the same exact enemies respawn and how did you even end up back in medbay? In Darksiders 3 it was far easier to suspend my disbelief due to its fantastical nature.

I would rather take standard checkpoints than backtrack through the same enemies every time a death happens. The Surge also has rather confusing level design; it can take awhile before you memorize the maps' layouts. Getting back to my scrap drop sometimes took awhile. There's a timer to it as well. Killing enemies does extend it though so usually the time limit is not a problem as long as you know where you're headed.

Enemy placement is sometimes brutally punishing. There are many spots where someone is standing right behind a corner and I swear such enemies get some sort of speed bonus if you're not facing towards them when passing. They will lunge at you from a silly distance and can oneshot you with their cheap attack.

In addition to when you die, enemies also respawn when interacting with a medbay station. It is immersion breaking and easy to abuse. You can start farming scrap and grinding weapon skills in the first area already. Scrap comes faster and faster too as you get an increasing multiplier with each kill. The multiplier resets when you die or store your scrap at a medbay but because the first enemies aren't that challenging, you don't need to do that. I feel that a game's design has failed if the most optimal way to play is tedious.

People tend to play these kinds of games with a controller. In The Surge at least there's no benefit to do so however. There aren't multiple discrete attack moves like in something like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor or the Batman: Arkham games -- you have just a horizontal and a vertical one. There are different attack animations but they are based on your movement and feel natural to execute with mouse/keyboard as well. Mouselook doesn't benefit you that much either due to the game's distinguishing targeting feature.

Modular equipment system

In The Surge you can lock onto enemy body parts. Hits to an unarmored limb deal more damage but by targeting an armored one you will get a blueprint of that armor part and can then craft it for yourself -- provided you ended the enemy with an energy requiring, and rather satisfying, finisher move and actually managed to damage that particular hitbox enough. Targeting a weapon hand will get you the enemy's weapon as well.

Each of the game's bosses drops a better version of its usual weapon if you defeat them in certain way. The bosses don't respawn so you only get one chance for each per playthrough (if you don't savescum, that is). There's also no way to know what you need to do without looking it up -- which I did. Thus I got all improved weapons except for the final boss's. I guess my hits weren't connecting with the special weapon hand enough. The final boss was also the only one I beat on my first attempt. I went to it well prepared, augments specifically tailored for getting through a prolonged fight against a single enemy.

Weapon proficiency increasing with use makes it unattractive to switch things around in the middle of your playthrough but I guess it does give a reason to replay the game to try a different weapon type. I used mainly single-rigged weapons on my run. One of the free DLCs adds a higher tier enemy to the first area from whom you can get a rank 2 rigged weapon early. The first boss's special drop is a single-rigged weapon too with high proficiency scaling to boot and I used it pretty much for the rest of the game. I also found an augment that gives a rank bonus to single and dual rigged weapons and boosts the speed their proficiencies increase at. There was a similar augment for the other types but then I found a better version for rigged weapons again.

Rigged weapons hit hard but are also slow. Normal attacks can be dangerous to execute with them. I feel with rigged weapons you should always try to initiate fights with a lunge or slide attack as they won't get interrupted and can be quite effective even if they cost a considerable amount of stamina. Augments and armor can help with attack speed. I used one of the starting sets, Lynx, for most of the game as its set bonus is an attack speed increase while at or near full health.

Every armor set's special bonus is active only if you wear the full set. I think that's limiting and a bit contradictory too to the modular armor system since wearing pieces of different sets is counterproductive. As if the modularity's whole purpose was just to have a progression system for unlocking a new full armor at once.