Is Warren In The Surge 2

The Surge 2 Review

This sequel is a good time for hacking and slashing just doesn't surpass the original.

Sequels are a tricky business organisation. The best of them not just manage to recapture what people enjoyed about the original, but also find ways to heighten them while effectively introducing new ideas. On the flip-side, at that place are plenty of instances where, despite a few new good ideas and by and large high quality, the sequel doesn't create quite as much of an impression. The Surge 2 fits snugly into the latter category: this return to the sci-fi Souls-like action game realm hacks and slashes just every bit hard – harder, in some cases – but falls just curt of recapturing the aforementioned dismembering joy.On newspaper, The Surge ii does exactly what it should in order to accomplish the goals of a sequel: information technology'south retained a lot of what worked in the first game, and throws in a few solid arrangement updates and quality-of-life improvements aimed at making a better version of the original. However, there are some environmental design and storytelling decisions that eliminate some of the original's charm and crusade the story to trip over its own feet.

The Surge 2 takes place in the ruins of Jericho Urban center (complete with its own large wall, definitely no biblical allegories here), the closest metropolis to the ill-fated CREO facility, after a mysterious plane crash that unleashed a torrent of sentient machines called Nanites and left the city a cordoned-off no human being's country. Its five chief areas (technically in that location are nine to explore, but you lot'll only really spend a meaningful amount of time in five) all have a different await and feel - the downtown shopping district, the port, the hospital/business organisation district, etc - but aside from i or 2 they all feel like variations on the same "urban wasteland" template. Past contrast, ane of the things I really appreciated near the original was that, while the unlike areas of the CREO circuitous all had some unifying elements (corporate signage and propaganda, or the compatible blueprint of the Scientific discipline Fiction Maintenance Tunnel), the thematic design of each zone was unique. The R&D surface area, for example, looked and felt completely different from the manufacturing plant.

The nature preserve is a welcome break from repetitive city streets and rooftops.

Jericho's dissimilar areas, meanwhile, feel by and large divided past color and lighting rather than the actual pattern of each area – the port is rusted and moisture, the hospital is spooky and dark, and everything has toppled piles of gray concrete everywhere. There are some mid-game situations that bring near some significant alterations to each area, only that doesn't salve them from still feeling relatively samey. The main exception to this dominion, apart from the more claustrophobic sewers and tunnels underneath the city, is Gideon's Rock, a nature preserve designed to… well, preserve nature - but, like… the last of it. Its lush wooded hills and rocky canyons are a welcome break from the fairly repetitive city streets and rooftops, even if it caused some of the more egregious technical bug during my playthrough on PlayStation 4 Pro.

Information technology'south not that The Surge 2 is buggy or broken - all xx+ hours of my initial playthrough and the several hours I've spent in New Game+ ran smoothly and (almost) without issue. I noticed a few spots where, even in the PS4 Pro's Functioning fashion (which is meant to maximize framerate over resolution and fancy furnishings), things would momentarily hitch when a lot of action and environmental effects were on screen, but those were too few and far between to be a serious problem or cause me to die when I shouldn't have. The aforementioned can exist said of the occasional camera getting stuck behind a wall or object during a fight. What was surprising - to me, at least - was the frequent screen tearing in the more complex environments (similar Gideon's Rock) and some consistent, very noticeable level-of-detail pop-in problems on character models, especially my own. While the screen vehement was decidedly less noticeable in Quality manner (which prioritizes resolution over framerate), the texture bug persisted throughout both.

Mechanically, The Surge 2 is notwithstanding a satisfying grind.

Mechanically, notwithstanding, The Surge two succeeds - its combat is even so a fun alloy of strategy and tense, palm-sweating action, and scraping together enough XP (aka Tech Scrap) to arts and crafts a new armor prepare that unlocks a unique buff or finding a new cybernetic implant that perfectly complements your loadout is even so a satisfying grind.

The routine from the original remains well-nigh entirely unchanged in The Surge two: exit a safe zone or medbay, hack your way through a bunch of enemies to find [Objective X], maybe (probably) kill a dominate, so observe a new medbay or backtrack your way to the one-time one to banking company your fleck, level up your exo-rig's stats, or arts and crafts/upgrade gear using the parts you scavenged while out and nigh. The more enemies you lot kill before returning to the medbay, the higher your reward multiplier ticks, netting you lot extra chip for each kill, which makes staying out in the world a run a risk well worth taking - but if you get killed before you can get in back yous'll need to movement fast to become dorsum to where y'all fell and repossess the bit before a timer expires and information technology disappears.

And this is withal actually enjoyable. Like I said of the original, it'due south a smart alloy of Souls-ian strategy and arcadey hack & slash activity, and the additions that developer Deck13 has made are most universally for the better, due largely to a couple of particularly noteworthy changes. The starting time is the wealth of new enemy types it introduces, all of which add interesting new challenges to combat encounters (particularly in groups of three or more than), from "raging" enemies who can't be stunned to shield carriers who tin can simply exist hit one time or twice earlier their shield is cleaved. The second is that the standard all-purpose Parry function has been replaced with a directional 1. While it took some fourth dimension to become used to - which I eventually did, thanks largely to an optional cybernetic implant that indicates the direction of an incoming enemy attack - it added a new layer of challenge and complexity to each encounter.

The implant itself did, at times, behave a piffling wonkily - information technology didn't seem to exist able to go along upwardly with a specially quick flurry of enemy attacks, for case - but later training with information technology for a while I learned to internalize it and was able to replace it with 1 of the more than versatile implants, like one with the power to deal bonus damage to humans or robots, or automatically uses a health kit if an enemy assail would've killed y'all. Each implant uses a certain amount of "core ability" in your exo-rig, and every fourth dimension you spend tech chip to "level up" your exo-rig, you increment that core power and tin can equip more resource-intensive items (which, as you might imagine, led to a fair amount of agonizing over how to maximize my equipment and implant combo).

The Surge ii introduces the helpful ability to create loadouts and swap them at will.

It was incredibly helpful, then, that The Surge 2 introduces the ability to create loadouts and swap them at will. I yet had to spend some time math-ing out which implants I tin can afford to equip with each fix of armor, but having the option to jump between 3 sets of armor, weapons, and implants almost entirely eliminated the tedium that was the abiding demand for inventory direction in the original. Now I can take two loadouts for exploring the earth – ane for fighting humans (which I'll add together is weird, both because of their consummate lack of cocky-preservation instincts, and that it makes my grapheme seem like much more of a sociopath than the zombie-slaying Warren of the original), another for machines – and a 3rd specifically designed to tackle massive single-target bosses.

All these additions to the already-solid formula made the moment-to-moment combat enjoyable right up until I striking the concluding boss fight, fifty-fifty if some of those battles weren't as thrilling (or satisfying) as in the commencement Surge. In the original, each boss felt like a more thorough exam of your skills than the i before. In The Surge 2, it's more near making the same strategy piece of work for every boss: deflect at the right time, counterattack, don't get i-shotted in between. There are still the optional dismemberments on each boss that tin can net you unique new weapons, which provides some additional challenge, but as was the issue in the original, these weapons were often laughably underpowered compared to the weapon I was already using.

That said, getting weak weapons is decidedly less of an issue overall this time. Partially because some (though not many) of the late-game drops actually do have stats that are comparable to your equipped gear, but likewise because the meaning increase in the sheer variety of weapons actively fabricated me desire to experiment with dissimilar types as I found them (for a while, at least — I'd ultimately fall back on two or 3 standard weapons rather than grind for the parts to upgrade new ones). Of the 4 new weapon groups, I immediately gravitated to the versatile Double Duty class. They range from a sledgehammer with a fire axe strapped to it that deals a satisfying crisis to futuristic zweihanders that split apart to bargain shock damage, and tin exist used for either slow, powerful hits or split into two halves for a quick flurry of blows. I eventually abandoned them as I institute more powerful weapons like Wolverine-esque Valkyrie that improve fit my quick-assail play way, but I thoroughly enjoyed them while they lasted.

Some other welcome inclusion are The Surge ii's new social features. The well-nigh useful is undoubtedly the drone attachment that allows you to spray graffiti tags around the world, similar to notes in Bloodborne or Dark Souls, that tin can warning players to the presence of hidden enemies or treasure. Other additions, similar Revenge Enemies appearing in-globe that have proved particularly troublesome for other players, or placable banners that net you scrap rewards for keeping them hidden, are fun means to keep you lot connected to the community and engaged in the earth.

Games Every Nighttime Souls Fan Should Play

The Surge two also leans a lot more heavily into the RPG side of things than its predecessor, though some of the additions feel almost superficial. I appreciate that it allows me to customize my appearance, which I well-nigh always prefer in an RPG - especially when my graphic symbol never speaks, equally is the case here - simply I don't necessarily run into the betoken in having me choose a backstory if that information isn't going to be integrated into the plot or decisions in an interesting or meaningful mode. I opted for the "Mining Wars Veteran" background, thinking that someone who served on the "evil corporation" side of a violent workers revolt (on the Moon, of form, because it's the future) and now finding themselves a "hero" would provide aplenty opportunities for interesting conflict in The Surge's corporate dystopia, merely information technology never amounted to anything more than than my own headcanon and an errant line or two from the occasional shopkeeper.

Interactions with NPCs are all far more substantial.

On the upside, interactions with those shopkeepers and other NPCs are all far more substantial than earlier. About every vendor, survivor, or other character you can interact with has their own side quest with its own rewards and/or consequences. Most of these revolve around collecting items from around the world or crafting them a specific set of armor, but the few that I saw through to completion for their total chain all wound their mode dorsum into the events of the primary story, though not in a particularly meaningful manner. Still, it was fun to have the actor who played the in-universe superhero Fe Maus in The Surge's equivalent of the MCU tag forth for a while, or see characters who had survived the story of the first game.

Its something of a bummer that I didn't discover the master story of The Surge ii to be particularly engaging. It does a much improve job than the original in making certain its events were delivered in a more digestible style than "trying to listen to exposition while avoiding beingness murdered by robots," but those moments were mostly predictable, and the ones that weren't did little to pique my interest. I won't get into specifics due to spoiler concerns, but ultimately information technology felt similar the story was trying to enhance the stakes too loftier when compared to the relatively minor scale of the original. Yes, there were far-reaching consequences in the beginning game, but information technology however felt very self-independent since it was mostly focused on simply surviving The Surge and escaping the CREO complex. The original besides featured some fantabulous ecology storytelling and attention to detail, from clever sendups of startup/tech culture to moving vingettes that heightened the tragedy or horror of the accident, but that was in much shorter supply in its sequel'southward new post-Nanite-apocalypse setting.

The Surge 2 manages to recapture a lot of what fabricated the original Souls-style sci-fi take a chance fun, fifty-fifty improving on its already-solid combat and gear grind in several meaningful ways, from the added variety of weapons and enemies to the elementary but oh-then-welcome ability to build multiple equipment loadouts. Information technology's missteps, however, fabricated the sequel an overall bottom game than the original: uninspired environmental pattern and overly ambitious story choices rob it of the aforementioned level of satisfaction, fifty-fifty with the mechanical improvements. That said, if y'all're just hither to chop dudes in robot suits in half as you lot grind up to the next power bracket or craft some other piece of gear fabricated out of severed artillery, you're probably gonna take a dandy time. Either way you lot'll likely yet accept a adept time, merely will probably spend virtually of your playthrough fondly remembering your showtime time.

In This Article

The Surge 2

With an expanded armory of weapons, armors, and abilities, likewise every bit a bigger, more varied and more ambitious globe, the hardcore sci-fi activity-RPG The Surge 2 challenges yous to survive and unravel its hidden secrets.

good

The Surge two checks many of the boxes for a successful sequel, merely this sci-fi activity RPG falls just short or recapturing the full dismembering joy of the original.

Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/23/the-surge-2-review

Share this post