I'll post the video below. I just wanted to say that I thought the first game was actually really good in my opinion. I played it late, but I'm glad I did play it. It's not amazing, and it's not special like the best the Souls games have to offer, but it has a nice sci-fi atmosphere that I appreciated and while again, the challenge wasn't on the same level as a Souls game it was similar and challenging enough. It had its own unique systems going for it, like how you attack specific body parts to gain upgrades. I can't say The Surge 2 is on the same level as some other games when it comes to my excitement level, nor have I (or any of us?) seen that much footage for it, but I will most likely get it nonetheless unless it looks broken from footage we see. So questions first, who played the first; did you enjoy it, and now how about the second game? Alright, video now. I haven't watched it all at the time of typing this, so it's new to me. I do recommend people that like sci-fi and a bit of challenge check out the first game. It's not amazing, but it's pretty good and worth seeing through.

I never played the original but the gameplay seems really quick in the gameplay. Much like the first game I do want to play it but if they release it around a crowded launch window it will probably pass me by. If they were to release it this month I’d be all over it.

Seems they're bringing in some more Soulsborne stuff, like leaving messages for players.

@humanity: September 24th. If we're only talking about September, there will be Gears 5, Borderlands 3, Link's Awakening, and a game called Phoenix Point (never heard of it, but it's like XCOM I guess).

I'll probably spend more time with Iceborne (September 6th) than all of those games combined if my previous MHW experience is anything to go by. That doesnt mean i'm not interested in any of them, just that I can wait for them to drop in price. (Gears 5 being on gamepass means I might make time for it though)

Anyway, I also enjoyed The Surge but there are a lot of these types of games being made, I think I would rather play Nioh 2 whenever thats coming out. This doesnt look bad, the enviroments are definitely a step up. But the combat still looks sloppy, like the animations dont match up with the hit detection. It's a problem I had with the original game and Lords of the Fallen. I do like the setting though, it helps set it apart from most of these games.

@boozak: Yah you are right about the animations seeming to be kind of weird. It's fast apced but I often got the impression like the animations would cancel out or generally they just seemed a bit weird. Couldn't really put my finger on it. Also I was never a huge fan of the way these exo-skeletons looked in Surge 1 and in this one it's not all that different.

The one bad thing about Game Pass is that often times with games like Surge or Evil Within, while I could buy them on a huge discount, I always think "well I'll wait until this comes to Game Pass.." and I'm never 100% sure it will. A few times I was actually rewarded for waiting. Like Hollow Knight and Astroneer were both games I wanted to try out but didn't want to buy for XB1 and then they got added (Hollow Knight mainly because I put a lot of time into it on PC already but wanted to play on console). Surge 2 might fall into this nebulous territory of possibly waiting forever, but I feel like it's absolutely a Game Pass Type of Game if you know what I mean.

I just started playing the first one a few days ago and I'm rather enjoying it. My biggest problem with the game is that the environments are kind of hard to parse. At least where I'm at. I'm in the second area of the game and it's gigantic with very few shortcuts I've found. It's easy to get lost and become unmotivated to keep going through this massive area over and over again.

This video looks promising, though. It seems like it'll be larger in scope than the first one. The gameplay looks a hell of a lot faster, too, which is a plus as far as I'm concerned.

From what I played of the first one, I remember it having some interesting ideas but that the game felt a little incomplete overall. It's like they had this idea of "dismemberment + ruined robotics facility" and that was as far as they got in the concepting process.

The demo makes it look like they are trying to broaden the scope of the world, but it also seems almost like a soft reboot? From what little I remember of the first game, it seemed like there weren't really cities or much of humanity left, so I'm kind of wondering where they're getting all these urban environments.

@therealturk: I'm not sure if incomplete is the correct word, it definitely felt complete. If you play it and read what there is to read about the second, the urban stuff makes a little more sense but I'd be lying if I said it was entirely clear as there's just not a whole lot there to read about two's story. Humanity is definitely still there, it's just struggling. The vibe I get is that it's the typical rich vs. poor/technology is taking our jobs, and how humans wrecked the environment story. It doesn't slap you in the face with that, but that's kind of what it is I think. The story and events that happened kind of surprised me because I thought there would be less of it, and yet that's also what I wished there was more of. There are some cool moments of discovery later in the game I think, like what happens to the people that run the place you inhabit throughout the game.

@killem_dafoe: It should get easier because you'll probably be backtracking a lot. You'll also be to a point in some parts where you'll totally just want to rush past enemies, either because it'd be a pain in the butt to fight them on your destination of progressing forward, or your way back to where you previously were. It's like Dark Souls where you'll keep going forward until you find a door/elevator that allows you to get around to previous spots easier. Although the game does have a lot of industrial areas, the look of it changes up just enough throughout that I really had a good time venturing through them. When you say the second area, what part are you really talking about? Is it inside or outside?

I was pretty surprised when I learned that The Surge was getting a sequel, since from what I understand it really didn't do very well sales-wise. I think that can be chalked up largely to the fact that this was Deck13's next game after Lords of the Fallen, which was... well, pretty bad, honestly, which scared people off their next Souls-like project. Certainly The Surge was a much better game, and I'm glad they're making a sequel despite the fact that it seems like no one played the last one.

They did some pretty cool and smart things, design-wise. I liked the idea of a timer to get your bloodstain back that would add time for killing enemies... it meant either had to be fast or kill some things on your way, kept things moving. I also liked that the whole implant system; it was very smart and flexible. Levels gave you more points for better implants, which could be freely switched in and out, but at the same time you were limited by your number of implant slots, which was gated by story progress, so you couldn't get quite stupidly powerful merely from grinding out levels forever, you had to at least get the next rig with more implant slots. I liked that you could bank your scrap. I liked the lack of many "bonfires" in favor of unlocking lots of shortcuts. I liked the humor that they showcased in the theme-park DLC. And of course the whole limb-cutting system was pretty neat.

Certainly there were areas that could have used improvement. Your robot companion wasn't good for much other than pulling enemies. Some of the weapons had multi-hit animations for a single button press, which made them way more unwieldy and less responsive than you'd like. The levels throughout the game looked kinda same-y. It could use more weapon variety.

But overall, I had a very good time with the first one. I don't pre-order many games nowadays, but in this case I feel like I want to support the developer. The original game deserved more success than it got, and I myself got it late and for cheap, so I'm happy to pony up for this one.