When The Surge first came out in early 2017, I took one look at it and decided I really needed a piece of it. It looked fantastic. Powered armour melee combat versus hordes of evil sci-fi bad guys? Brilliant. Sign me up. Even if it looks a little bit like D-
No, I’m not going to mention that one. No.
…so anyway, I got it, and I played it, and god damn it was hard, but it was worth it. It was fun. I liked the plot, I loved how it looked, and the combat felt great to run through – even if I ended up losing duels more often than winning them.
Truth be told I didn’t complete it, though the story compelled me enough that I did look up the endings and found them to be very satisfying. So imagine my pleasant surprise to find that there will be a sequel?
The story is a continuation of the first game – how, I’m not going to reveal, because frankly, that’s worth finding out for yourself. Suffice to say that as someone that plays plenty of sci-fi games and reads plenty of sci-fi books, I find the plot pretty compelling. Like, it’s not going to win an Oscar, but it isn’t here to. It’s here to provide a good backdrop for the game.
The game is the thing, see.
And the game is a mixture of hazard avoidance, exploration and battles against a variety of foes. Some of them are bigger, badder, and more dangerous than others. You can usually see why they are dangerous visually, or you will find out very quickly when one of them smashes you into a million pieces.
The thing is, though, there’s a good reason to go for the fellas that are more powerful. It’s a real test of your mettle – even with a combat system that is as well-realised as The Surge 2’s.
See, very early in this game (and from the very beginning of the original), you end up wearing this power harness. It’s a metal frame that enhances your strength and agility, amplifies your lifting power. So are a lot of the enemies that you end up fighting, and at the very least, they carry weapons that you can take off them for your own ends.
The limbs of these suits are modular. So – and here’s where this game’s mechanics are just pushed above many other games of its ilk – you are going to spend a fair amount of time finding a bunch of useful limbs that all have different traits and strengths, lop them off of the enemies that are wearing them, and slap them onto yourself like some kind of robot cannibal Voltron.
That’s you, that is. You are robot cannibal Voltron. Of course there’s more to it than just the frame and the weaponry and such – there’s drones, injectables, a full crafting system which I am a total slut for – but that’s your core. Robot cannibal Voltron.
It sounds great. It genuinely sounds fantastic. The combat is full of horrible crunchy noises, and you always know if you have landed a good hit. The music is great, too. You are fully invested in this awful landscape you are running around in. I kind of wish I had a better audio setup at home to appreciate it more.
It LOOKS great. Not just in the department of the graphical design – which is absolutely, if I may say so, banging – but from the UI perspective. It does two things games have to do, which is look contiguous, and not hamper your gameplay. Customisable character creation at the beginning is a joy, too – and while the first game sometimes suffered from everything being a bit grey and miserable, the sequel certainly doesn’t.
As tough as it is – and I will use the word challenging without fear – you never feel like the game is pulling a fast one on you. You could have won that fight, if only you had approached it differently or come in with a different setup. That’s what keeps you coming back. You come back again and again, to go reclaim your scrap from the evil bastard with the pike that just took it from you in the first place, and this time you have a plan to take his left arm off him too.
In the wider gaming context, I think The Surge 2 is pretty well timed; while Nintendo is absolutely crushing with its current crop of far less grimdark offerings and shooters are having a resurgence with Borderlands 3 and the next Destiny expansion, The Surge 2 is a welcome path less travelled. If you enjoyed the first one, you’ll like the sequel.
And of course, you’ll love it if you liked Dark Souls GOD DAMMIT-
The Surge 2 is out now, for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.