Title: The Surge 2
Platform: PS4 (Reviewed), Xbox One, PC
Genre: Action RPG, Dark Souls of the Cyberpunk Future
Developer: Deck13
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Release Date: September 24th, 2019

So The Surge 2 is a sequel to a game I’ve never played. Which would normally be a bit of a problem, but I’d argue it’s playable on its own merits. Especially since, if there’s any direct connections between the two, you probably won’t notice.

The Surge 2 is a game about making shortcuts

Graphically, the game is nice enough, though there are a few hiccups here and there. My first impression upon actually gaining control of my character was that there was some nasty screen tearing just from rotating the camera in that first room. there were also some occasional problems with textures not loading in fast enough. That said, otherwise the game looks just fine.

Notably, you have your choice of backgrounds, though they don’t really seem to affect much, at least as far as I played (this is a game where you die a lot, it’s a huge time sink). But why would you want your character to be some veteran of a space mining war with lung damage when you could be middle manager who has lost their job due to automation or something?

I picked that option and never looked back, and made sure my character looked as Danny “I’m getting too old for this shit” Glover as I possibly could by randomly clicking through autogenerated faces until I saw one I liked.

Before, naturally, dressing him like a cyberpunk version of Michael Jackson in the Thriller video. As an aside, random faces are the way to go; not like they don’t give you a large number of sliders, mind, just that the random faces are more entertaining.

As for how it plays? Well, it’s very Dark Souls, and I mean that in a good way. Much like DS1, it’s a game about making shortcuts; especially important, as their bonfire analogues, medbays, don’t have a warp feature.

You’ve got weapons that all have different stamina draws and energy generation (more on that in a bit). Personally found myself going for weapons in the middleweight classes there, as the heavy weapons didn’t feel like they offered enough pop to make up for how slow they were, at least to me.

Controls are also similar, with attacks on the shoulder buttons and certain actions on the face buttons. One thing that did, however, throw me was jumping. I found myself failing that first test ledge almost entirely due to muscle memory telling me to run with X and then release and press again to jump, which in The Surge 2 is only a dodge.

Finally realizing that jumping while running involves hitting a stick button (odd choice in my opinion, but whatever) proved a much less frustrating platforming experience than I was used to.

As for items, they’re tied to your batteries. You charge these by fighting enemies, and can stick a charged battery into an injectable (i.e. healing charge) by pressing O (which also uses said charges if you’re in need of that injectable’s service). Since you can only hold so many injectable charges, battery also serves another purpose; the game’s visceral finishing moves.

Your dropped scrap has a time limit for you getting it back

You can target a specific body part (head, body, left or right arms, or left or right legs) and, if you deal enough damage, the opportunity to sever the limb using square pops up. It’s actually super important to do so, too, since not only is this how you get new gear, it’s also how you get the upgrade materials for said gear. And since, even early on, some enemies get to cheat since they straight up have guns (which you can’t use as a normal weapon), that’s really important.

Medbays are where you get your leveling and upgrading done. One of the nice features it has over its inspiration is the option to bank your unused scrap (i.e. experience points for which everything is used) so that when you die, you don’t lose literally everything. That said, there is a difference in The Surge 2; your dropped scrap has a time limit for you getting it back.

You can increase this limit by killing enemies along the way, which you’ll probably have to do anyway. That said, when you get to it, it might not be the best idea to snap it back up, especially if you’ve got some time on the clock. Mostly due to the fact that you probably died to whatever was there, which leads to the next difference in dropped XP: healing.

Namely, when you’re in a certain range of your dropped stuff, you get occasional healing surges, and picking it up grants a full heal. So a perfectly valid strategy would be to deliberately die to a tough enemy with only a small amount on you, then go back an use that healing to kick his ass.

Honestly, The Surge 2 is a fun game. Even with the occasional jank, you could easily sink a fair amount of time into it. If I didn’t already have a massive timesink on my hands, lord knows I’d probably be even more into it. So it easily gets a recommendation.

“While a little rough around the edges, The Surge 2 will give you that grimy cyberpunk Dark Souls you probably didn’t know you wanted”.

Final Score: 4/5

*We were provided a copy of this game for review*

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