Lopping off robo-limbs in The Surge [Preview]

There’s been no shortage of Dark Souls-style of action RPGs in recent years, so whenever I hear about a new game that could possibly be in that wheelhouse I get a bit wary.

I was taken by the tone and art direction of The Surge early on, so when I found out that it was, in fact, that style of game, I felt that all too familiar sense of dread, because it’s a very easy thing to screw up. Thankfully, Deck 13 is no stranger to that world, especially after putting out Lords of the Fallen in 2014, which ended up being a very good (and well received) version of that Souls-style experience.

However, whereas Lords of the Fallen was a very recognizable and unimaginative take on that style of game, The Surge forgoes the now-tired fantasy genre and instead opts for a sci-fi setting. From the look of what was shown, it’s more of a “Dark Souls with mech suits” than it is just a straight-up Dark Souls clone.

Right from the get-go the game differentiated itself from its brethren. Set in a near future reminiscent of the film Elysium, we found our hero, an exosuit-clad construction worker named Warren, waking up on a job site after an unknown disaster.

Warren, now seemingly the sole survivor of this mysterious catastrophe, starts to explore the ruins of the work site to find that all of the other workers have entered a rabid and (dare I say) zombified state. It’s worth noting that the developers assured us that there was a more nuanced and interesting reason for the workers affliction, rather than it just being a situation of ”YO! EVERYONE IS ZOMBIES NOW!”

Much like Warren, all of his former coworkers are clad in the same type of exosuits as himself, albethey of varying styles and boasting different pieces of equipment and of varying functionality.

The enemy exosuits are where The Surge gets interesting. Throughout the game, Warren won’t be coming across loot caches or chests filled with new weapons and gear. If you want to better outfit him for the challenges at hand, you’ll need to obtain and craft the gear yourself.

Combat starts as what one would expect from a Souls-style experience. Rather than running at enemies head-on, it’s important to slowly and methodically take on your opponent, as Warren is pretty frail for a guy in a robotic exoskeleton, and healing is a luxury. Where The Surge alters the formula is in its inclusion of the ability to target specific points on a character.

When facing off with one of Warren’s former coworkers, it was pointed out that he had a helmet that he didn’t, and that we would want that. During combat, several visible points appeared on the other exosuit indicating where we can attack, which were toggled with an analog stick. After fighting and weakening the specific head point, a finishing move severed the head and with it, the helmet. Collecting the piece gave the ability to craft that item for our own use, and is how all gear acquisition would work, according to the developers.

Visually, the game looks fine. The graphical presentation is at least on par (for the most part) with Lords of the Fallen and Dark Souls 3. The demo ran into a few issues with textures or AI, but that’s far from damning on the final product as we were reminded that we were being shown a very recent pre-alpha build, so hiccups like that are more or less to be expected.

Is The Surge going to end up being the sci-fi action RPG I’ve been wanting? It’s really too early to tell. After all, this was a pre-alpha, hands-off gameplay demo shown at an industry trade show, but I’m sure as hell hopeful. Deck 13 has proven that they understand that type of game with Lords of the Fallen, but hey, anything can happen. We’ll have to wait until it’s eventual release to know for sure.