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<center><h5>Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Deck13 Interactive
Platform: PS4, Xbox One and PC
Release Date: May, 16 2017
Genre: Hack n Slash Action
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It takes an interesting game with a premise based on something niche to 
entice people to play it. Especially if its in the realms of being 
another Souls clone. The Surge is Deck13's second Souls game after Lords
 of the Fallen. Since the sequel is well on its way this year(or maybe 
next year) , I thought I'd be interesting if I explore some dichotomy 
between other Souls game and this one.

<center><h1> Story </h1></center>

In a pretty densely dystopian future, you play as Warren. Guy who is 
paralyzed from the waist down and wants to reinvigorate his life by 
being part of CREO's workforce. Little did he know, sh*t got really 
crazy. Everybody from their mother to their robotic companions have 
turned into ruthless killing machines. It's your job to figure who and 
for what reason did this incident occur?

There's no big shroud of mysticism in The Surge, story is pretty much straightforward. As you progress, you meet various survivors who provide tools of the trade to help you trek further. But when it comes to them having depth, there's not much. Their conversation feels throwaway and I never wanted to be bothered about what they were talking about unless there was an incentive behind it.

The main plot throws a few neat twists here and there, but the drive to know what made the station go kaput wears thin. Underwhelming plot didn't keep me invested much but I did like taking my time around, exploring areas to find recording logs of various people that were in the station or still are during the event. Their story provides tension as well as substance.

But if anything else though, the game's story is like a nice coating that only supplements the premise if nothing more. 

<center><h1> Gameplay </h1></center>

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The Surge borrows aspect from Dark Souls like high damage enemies, fast-paced combat, obscene but fair difficulty and some insane enemy combatants. You fight workers, officers, drones, repair droids, big machines and much more. Almost every scenario has you think strategy for combat, looking around corners of unexplored territories. Of which btw, you won't have a map to look at so memorizing locations is important. 

But the big differentiation is how the combat works. Locking into enemies, you select which anatomy to attack. Yellow means it's protected and will require heavy weapons to dish out damage, but the blue ones are where most of the damage is done. But killing enemies mean nothing if you can't severe their limbs, by pushing to their breaking point, you hold the X button after selecting the body part before severing. Yellow ones indicated get you items like per say, cutting off arms drops off their arm gear of which you can extract components and blueprint of such gear.

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Blocking is important as some enemy attacks are hard to dodge or can be last minute saving. But they drain out your stamina so watch out for that. Attacking enemies get you energy, using it for severing enemies, fill up your drone ability to dish out damage or using it to heal you if you have an implant installed.

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Your implants are managed only when you reach safe room where you customize and revitalize/restore everything. Basically it's a room which is used like the shrine in Dark Soul. There you also manufacture gear parts for use and upgrade your power level which allows you to use gears and implants of higher power requirements.

Combat is fun, intense. Like Lords of the Fallen, if you stay focused well long enough and get the hang of its structure, you'll get around it. Plus it's a bit easier than most Dark Souls game around even though stuff I've mentioned earlier can seem menacing for it and it can turn off other players. I do wish though they added a practice mode where you could spare with an A.I of sorts to test your abilities and stuff. When you die however, your currency and parts collected is lost and can only be recollected through certain estimated time before it disappears like 3-5 minutes. But if you're planning to save them, you can bank store them but the multiplier will be reset.

Surge is alright, but I got irritated by the level design. There are times I randomly fell on some hole and died on the way while fighting an enemy which seemed clumsy and ridiculous. But alas, for exploration, it's nothing too confusing and going through each levels I've traveled via subway, I can go backtrack all the previous ones for farming and such with the same system. The camera is also fidgety, mostly around small environments which makes aiming difficult.

<center><h1> Production Value </h1></center>

Music is fitting, it grants a dystopian cyber-punk aesthetic. Harrowing and pretty captivating as well creating a tense atmosphere complementing the games outlook. Bombastic and electrifying when things get really tense like boss battles. One big exception is the god awful song from your Medbay(or gear room). Way too many melancholic prison metaphors and it gets tedious which made me want to turn off music everytime I get in there. Wish the devs gave the option to just turn it off entirely.

As for the visuals, well this is a 2017 game so for a certain time being, it feels outdated. I guess I got too much exposure to modern games that judging this make it seem unfair. But in fairness, it looks nice for a title dating back 2 years ago. Just not the most superb looking one so far.

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Performance is something else, you can play this on a console at 30FPS just fine. But I recommend playing it on either 60FPS from half-gen refresh systems or your PC. Because that experience is easier and buttery smooth than 30FPS for a title like this.

But surprisingly Surge has a pretty outstanding value in terms of visual fidelity and soundtrack, this was made by a small European studio that made lukewarm strategy game before finally working on Souls clones such as this. Though it kind of reminds me of Messiah, the early 2000 game but in much high visual feedback.

<center><h1> Summation </h1></center>

I can't say am fully impressed with this game, it didn't exactly age well for its type. Especially now that Sekiro is out, which ups the benchmark for a souls-type game. Also I forgot to mention this but the enemy locking isn't always effective especially during intense combat sequences. I guess the devs sort of knew that and made it easier to target weakpoints on stronger enemies easier. 

The Surge is a good addition to Hack'n'Slash roster but nothing too exceptional, it's also no stranger to bugs. Had the level design improved and that stupid song was gone from my head, I would have given it a really nice score. 

For now, this'll have to do. 

<center><h1> 6.5 </h1></center>