Quick Look: The Surge

This game looks pretty interesting.

Somebody was working late...

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

Hey there conveniently timed quick look.

Is it me or does Ben sound kinda high in this video?

Me want

Pretty sure I'm on board for this. Just need to see a couple of reviews now to confirm it'd be worth my time.

Wuh, kinda surprised by this thing. Seems neat.

I have heard absolutely nothing about this game but it looks kinda neat... very Dead Space Dark Souls. Dead Souls? Dark Space? I'm sure these game names will be used eventually.

L9oos good will pick up for pc to see if it's way hard as it looks lol

Poor Hobbs =(

Well this looks interesting. Maybe I'll check it out.

"There's no character creator. You're stuck being this dude."

Oh, nvm.

I don't care about 4K one bit, but with this amount of industrial grating, 8K wouldn't be anough to defeat Moire - the real boss of The Surge.

this is the dark souls of sci dark souls

I feel the souls games lose something by having preset characters and none of the online features. A Souls game is essentially beat 'em up-y, and it's nice to have the option to co-op in those, as well as choosing different looks for your avatar. But I'm still excited that this and Nioh do different things with the formula. I was getting tired of the Dark Souls series after three medieval dark fantasy games with long DLC tails + Demon's Souls, and variety is the spice of life. Bloodborne breathed some life into it for me too.

Hey @brad I've got some questions that I'm not sure about after this video. I dunno if you've played enough to get a sense for it yet(or how much you've played since this quick look), but this is what I wanna know:

Is there predetermined loot in containers in addition to what you can gain from enemies?

You seem to dodge and block alright, but have you found a parry(might be the little hop?) or a guard break equivalent? I've also seen a video that involved the main character sliding like he was in Vanquish, is that unlockable?

How is the linearity? I heard the world is interconnected, but are we talking Dark Souls 2 where the map is basically a wheel with four seperate paths headed in different directions, Dark Souls 1 where it's a layered cake with tons of shortcuts and routes between them or Dark Souls 3, where everything is largely linear except for an optional are here or there, but the areas themselves loop in on each other and have odd paths/shortcuts?

Are the weapons upgradeable?

I'm with Ben on how this looks. While the concept is a cool idea it just ends up being very "transformers-y" and it's just a bunch of blocky metal that animates really awkwardly.

I'm very interested in this game.

I saw gameplay footage of outdoor areas and streets. Is that still in the game?

"That's what I love about the Souls games, just one big interconnected seamless world."

I... don't think that has been true of any of the Souls games. Sure wasn't Demon's Souls, and in Dark Souls 1 that concept wasn't true right from the start (you fly to Undead Burg) and even then, you're flown to other areas, and then you hit the halfway point and all of that falls apart. It's certainly not true in Dark Souls 2 or 3, either.

I mean, everyone loves that when it IS true in those games, but it kinda seems like the Souls team fluked into it for the first half of Dark Souls 1 and haven't found their way back since.

This is the most Brad start to a QL there's been in a while.

No multiplayer is an instant no buy for me.

Ghosts of Mars: The Game

Just spent the first 15 minutes or something just running around and letting yourself get hit. Could've tried to show off the combat.

I watch Otdzdarva's video on this (he got early access) and he said there are no i-frames at all, far as he can tell. So this game isn't about dodging through a hit, but getting out of the way in the first place.

Is this a "B" game?

Lords of the Fallen was terrible. The combat was so clunky and slow. This doesn't look any better.

@quantris:

Kinda mean to see these comments so much. I know plenty of people with a natural voice that is more lay back and they also get lumped in as always being high even if they never smoked before. Its like people who assume your drunk then find out your voice naturally slurs. I don't know, kinda insulting but hey you probably didnt mean it that way so dont take my rambling too harsh.

The interconnected stuff works for that first half pretty well - I get why it's often brought up. I think everyone likes to wax poetic about the elevator from Undead Parish to Firelink. But you're exactly right, no one ever mentions the latter half of the game and how that doesn't really matter/work as well anymore.

I'm one of those people who loves DS2 and gets salty when the biggest negative leveraged against it is the lack of connected level design.

This looks interesting, but it doesn't seem to have solved my main grip with Lords of the Fallen, which was that it felt like it was designed by people who had only played Dark Souls with a mid-roll. The movement always felt a little sluggish - that's a design decision, and not necessarily a flaw, but it was what kept me from enjoying that game as much as FromSoft's offerings.

I'm still going to have to check out more of this game, at least, however. It does some cool stuff. I think the location-specific targeting and loot harvesting is a really neat concept.

Totally. I'd say Bloodborne probably comes the closest to that, but even then the Nightmare realms are separate. But I think it holds true for large segments of the games, at least, if not the thing as a whole. Also for me it's still a great feature, but less of a draw than the core gameplay.

That's one of the things I loved about Lords of the Fallen, no multiplayer. I really didn't like that part of Dark Souls. The co-op was fun at times, but it just seemed like a thing to do when you wanted to go fast or just cheese the boss.

Ben is not a Souls guy. Yikes.

There's a volcano on top of a windmill

There's some neat ideas here that I can see being very compelling, but much like Lords of the Fallen, the art design is just to generic and uninspired to warrant any of your attention.
I wonder if the bosses are going to be cool.

Obviously Brad's not deep into this game, but I not sure if the enemies and environments are going to change much, I don't have much faith in the LotF devs to make it very interesting.

Not liking that you won't have the ability to create your character in any way, didn't like it in LotF, didn't like it in Nioh, and the dude here also looks terrible.

I'm pretty sure it's that pulling that off well is just REALLY hard -- it would be a hell of a fluke to pull that off accidentally. It's way easier to design discrete zones than trying to fit them together in a logical manner like it was done in Dark Souls.

I'd also contend that you spend quite a lot of time in that game where the interconnected nature of the game plays a big role. The very opening and one other area and the back half (or third) where you warp around are the exceptions, but the lasting impression is still the clever backtracking in the early game.

As for this game, I just hope it nails the mechanics. These games ask a lot of the player, so the gameplay needs to hold up to close scrutiny. If hitboxes are unclear, movement is clumsy, or weapon/attack combos are unbalanced, it comes across a LOT more than in something like Prey where you just need to make the shooting feel good. The little details like that are what makes DS1 and 3 good games while DS2 is a weak imitation.

Jesus Brad, just, I don't know, get away from enemies every once in a while. He keeps attacking them until he's out of stamina and wonders why they kill him then.

I hate that it shows the two paths you can take and says m/F and show a lady machine monster yet you can be only a male character

@coffinvarnishh: good, varied tastes are a good thing! i'm glad not everyone likes souls games; they don't have to.

also sad there hasn't been a "SUUUURRRRGGEEE!!!" in the comments yet. paging dr. ryckert.

and i still don't get why brad is the only one on the site getting grilled for his minute gaming folibles.

i played lords of the fallen only briefly but i actually kinda liked the chunkier feel of it. not sure how it would have held up for me, personally.

Hmm this seems cool.

In all but price.

They really missed out on some product placement for Surge soda

The video player UI and mouse cursor aren't disappearing for me. New bug?

@redhotchilimist: clearly you've never been to Sweden

This actually looks surprisingly good.

@dudeglove: A negative TTB has long been theorized but never observed in nature

Great video explaining this vs dark souls and it's not just Brad the trash mobs are hard.

https://youtu.be/4c_JPDMgkhI

Captain America word like a word on all this shield shade.

What lazy bullshit... "Let's rip off From again but change the setting"... This studio needs to die. This game looks so generic. The art looks super lame, no character creation, no multi-player. Fuckin lame. Btw... Ben is a great addition to the crew.

I love the metal-on-metal sound in this game. Hits sound so satisfying.