Preview – The Surge

Dear Deck13 Interactive. When you told us you were moving on from the surprisingly decent Lords of the Fallen to make a sci-fi Dark Souls, you had our curiosity. When you revealed that said game had a risk/reward mechanic that encouraged us to dismember our foes in order to acquire and use their body parts… well, that’s when you earned our full and undivided attention.

Here’s the basic gist of earning some hand-me-down limbs: When approaching an enemy, you’ll need to decide whether to target an unarmoured body part for a shorter fight, or risk a lengthier, more damaging battle for a chance at slicing off a shiny new piece of equipment. The toughest enemies drop the most powerful weapons and armour, which means bold and skilful players will be rewarded handsomely (maybe that isn’t the correct word for it, because you’re a raggedy-looking factory worker in a beat-up exoskeleton).

Fight hard for your upgrades and chop your way to the top (via cinematic and gore-gasmic finisher moves) or die trying and become spare parts yourself. Who wouldn’t want to play that? The setting and tone of The Surge have both captured our imaginations, too.

Pleasingly, the unforgiving FromSoftware-esque fisticuffs is layered in over a bit of a BioShock (or System Shock, if you’re old enough to know the difference). The CREO complex is effectively a utopia gone wrong, and as you sift through its ashes the full horror of the place is revealed through audio logs. This industrial space was meant to turn everything around, produce solutions for a planet wracked by war and global warming.

In the end, all that rolled off the assembly lines were dangerous juggernauts (read: your future bosses) and the exo-suited workers all became zombies (fodder enemies and mid-bosses).

Wade in with a flurry of punches and kicks, and you’re gonna have a bad day, OH&S-wise. During our hands-on we quickly learnt to watch our stamina and have a healthy respect for every single enemy. Once you’ve got the measure of an opponent, it’s then time to cleverly use horizontal and vertical attacks to cherrypick what you want to lop off. You can spec your base rig with your ill-gotten light, medium, or heavy attachments, or you can kit out to better survive the many toxic areas of this hellhole.

Superhuman strength means a lot of ridiculously large armaments, most of which lean towards repurposed machinery rather than bona fide military tech. We didn’t see a single projectile weapon in our build, but chainsaws and beam cutters were the norm.

Don’t expect to go full robo-wars and build yourself into a Decepticon in no time, though. Every exo has a power limit. Smart spec decisions have to be made. On the topic of self-improvement, the RPG levelling has an interesting wrinkle. You don’t so much level up as you do gain exo additional electrical power-output for your rig.

Some of the implants you swipe can give you stat upgrades, or special abilities (we had one that allowed us to siphon health off our victims as we were going the tonk). The scrap you leech out of your co-workers can also be slagged down to craft new weapons and gear. Mind you, sticking with your favourites will create an affinity buff over time. Decisions, decisions.

The test of any masochistic game is in its bosses. The factory supervisors we met were several storeys tall and cost us craploads of precious scrap every time we died. Calm down, though, because all of those deaths were on us. Felling a boss is only moderately difficult. Killing it in such a way as to get its best loot is…well, murder.

If the storytelling can keep pace with this satisfying and tactical slaughtering, The Surge could be something of a sleeper hit. Yes, this is us going out on a limb here.

Posted in Blog, Games