The Surge Review - Page 2
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Improvise, Adapt, Overcome
The basics of The Surge's combat system share more than a few similarities with the Dark Souls series. You have two types of primary attacks (vertical and horizontal in this case) that can be comboed together, as well as an assortment of less obvious moves like dashing and sliding attacks. The actions you can perform are limited by a quickly replenishing stamina bar that also limits your dodging abilities. Health in this system is a finite resource that you can generally restore only a few times before you have to rest, which usually respawns all the enemies on the map. And unless you're careful, you can die even to the most basic of foes.
The Surge adds another layer to this formula by introducing the energy bar. As you attack, your stamina drains, but your energy level grows. You can then spend it to use special finishing moves and activate various implants. Throughout most of the game you can have a drone follow you around, which allows you to also spend your energy reserves on your drone's attacks that range from a simple ramming maneuver to a gravitational pull.
Another feature unique to The Surge is the directional aiming system that allows you to lock onto specific body parts of your enemies. This lets you attack their weak spots, but it's also the primary method of obtaining new items. See, if you keep attacking a specific body part and then use a finishing move, you'll chop that limb straight off, which will allow you to add your enemy's weapons and armor to your collection. This means you have to consider whether you're better off hitting your enemies where it hurts or attacking their armored limbs to get your hands on their gear.
As you defeat your enemies you will start accumulating Tech Scrap that you can then use to increase your Exo-Rig's core power. This represents the game's leveling system, as your core power determines how much gear and implants you can equip at any given time, and how powerful some of those implants will be. In the typical Dark Souls fashion, if you die, you drop your accumulated scrap but are then given an opportunity to get it back. However, unlike Dark Souls, The Surge imposes a time limit on scrap recovery.
Since you don't get a shield here, blocking isn't as useful as it was in Dark Souls, but you can still do it. And if you're feeling daring and confident enough, instead of blocking, you can try to duck under or hop over an incoming attack, save some stamina in the process and get a chance to use a quick counter-attack.
The game's weapons are separated into five distinct categories, like one-handed weapons, heavy weapons, or staves. Within a category, weapons tend to have similar but not identical move sets, which makes it wise to give the new stuff you find a try to see if it suits you better than what you already have.
The armor comes in sets, and if you equip all six pieces of a matching set, you get a special set bonus, like faster stamina regeneration or higher maximum health.
As you can see, the combat system is fairly complex, and if you add all the other tricks you have at your disposal along with the miscellaneous stats like Impact, Stability and Weapon Proficiency into the mix, it can even feel a bit overwhelming. Still, if you're familiar with Dark Souls, you'll be able to figure out what all those stats do, and if not, all you have to know is that you should keep hitting your enemies and do your best to not get hit in return. After all, for whatever reason a certain level of mechanical mystery can be considered a genre staple at this point.
Another genre staple is a fairly high level of challenge. The Surge is a curious specimen in that regard. During the first few hours the game seems extremely difficult - you don't know where to go or what to do and most enemies can kill you in roughly two hits. But once you get a few levels, equip some decent implants, and familiarize yourself with the intricacies of the combat system, things become much less dire. In fact, discounting the early sections, the game can be considered fairly easy when compared to others in the genre.
