The Surge - 14 minutes of gameplay

I saw a sizzle reel of this eight months ago and dismissed it as a shitty Dark Souls ripoff. It still appears to be a Dark Souls ripoff, but the devs seem to 1) actually be trying a different take on the formula and 2) not actually fucking say "we're inspired by Dark Souls." Essentially, you don't have light and heavy attacks, but horizontal and vertical attacks; you can target different limbs of enemies to attack weak points or break off armour.

I tensed up when he talked about crafting, but it looks VERY minimal and straightforward. Only two numbers are needed, one of which is your generic currency, and both seem to be accumulated through combat and exploration.

Anybody else interested? Am I just a retarded faggot missing some obvious clue it's gonna be trash?

Ive watched a bit just now. I'm more intrested in the world right now than the gameplay. He uses a lot of buss words but what ever. ActionRPG he calls it, more emphasis on action. Enemies could use a bit more variety in their moves, but its not out yet, I dout those early enemies will change though.

Looks alright I guess, Doesnt interest me to much personally.

Looks interesting.

I hate the slow motion kills. Other than that, I like the look of it.

Between stamina system, different attack directions, how character moves and body parts targeting it looks more like a futuristic monhun. But I guess everything with stamina is soulslike for you guys.
Either way this shit being 60 fps is one good sign.

if they get creative with that aspect i could see it being fun

the slow mo finishers are a bit much BUT i like that you have to use a form of energy to use them, that's smart, then you can have your flashy stuff without it happening without the players volition

i like this guys style i'll give him that

...

what's the point of even calling it as crafting system then

I'm not calling it a 100% clue it's going to be trash but the Lords of The Fallen devs are making it. Now if you haven't played LotF it's pretty much dark souls made by amateurs who had no idea what they were doing so in a way it's a lot like DS most of the time. For example heavy weapons had this massive windup on every attack, except for the run attack which came out incredibly fast and rivaled most of the attacks in damage. Guess which attack I used the most with heavy weapons.
Next there's this shield bash move. You sprint and keep your shield up and then collide with enemies or walls or whatever. The thing is, this doesn't look powerful at all but in reality it's one of the most powerful and broken moves in the entire game. It staggers nearly every enemy in the game, including some bosses, no matter how large they are or how little of a sprint you've worked up, and it's the only move in the game that can break down walls. It can also be spammed almost infinitely without using much or any stamina.
Third is the stamina of enemies. Enemies pretty much went: Fast Guy, Medium guy, Shield guy. Shield guys are my biggest problem, since breaking their guard you had like half a second to start wailing on them before they bring their shield back up(and my greataxe at the end of the game with stamina upgraded and all that jazz still lasted two hits with my entire stamina bar).
Finally most of the bosses were dogshit. At the end of the game they put you in this dreamlike area where they tell you how many times you've died to any boss and the one I died more than once to was the second boss and the obligatory 2 on 1 boss. They have like one combo they keep using and then some halfassed moves in the middle. The final boss has one VERY telegraphed combo, then goes into bitchboy mode, summons a few cannon fodder enemies and then kills them all for a very negligible heal.

Still it had it's positives, like I kind of liked the gauntlet weapon and the prayers had their appeals. And like DS3 I had much more fun playing with small, faster weapons than the heavier ones, a lot more fun. I liked a little control options like the Sprint heavy attack being the lunging attack and the shield heavy attack changing depending on the shield you were using and the fact that you can actually level yourself up from save points rather than going back to some hubworld and talking to some bored woman for your level ups, the way secrets were hidden(especially the one hidden in the start of the game) and a bunch more.

Still it looks like they stepped up their game with this. And unlike LotF they don't have an AAA publisher influencing them(Focus Home from Bamco(?)). I'd say be cautiously hyped and try to play the demo/pirated version first.

weird priorities there

he was pressing or holding a button to redirect the camera, he points out you can ignore that if you desire

...

my mistake then

it did seem pretty basic/boring but he mentioned that fighting them the "hard" way means better loot, not the ideal boss system but kinda interesting

this footage makes the game seem more interesting than the last promo they did where it looked a lot lamer, but now i'm not dismissing it completely


lords of the fallen gave me a game breaking bug and i dropped it, wasn't enough to make me restart. i will give it one piece of credit in that hitting weak enemies with heavy weapons would knock them off their feet into a ragdoll which i found pretty satisfying

Which one? It was denuvo so the crack wasn't so good, I'd run into dialog that cuts itself off, invisible doors that wouldn't open, falling into stairs and whatnot. And yeah if there was something that LotF did really well it's this feel of weight and power behind your attacks, even if they did take a long while to come out and even if the shield bash was broken shit.
Has something changed with the quick reply box? I can't put my finger on it.

Also I really hope there's a setting to speed up the kill animations. I like that it's for loot purposes but it's still going to get old fast.

It's been awhile since I card about a game.

looks kinda cool

i tried a ps4 version of it, i fought a boss and an NPC got stuck in a walk animation, what i looked up was he was supposed to walk to where you fought the boss and initiate a cutscene but no matter what i did he'd get stuck walking in place.

hopefully they learn from those mistakes cuz i do feel there was room for improvement in that game but it fell on its ass a bit

email fields been replaced

we'll have to see when they expand upon what "hard" really means


they've dumbed the site down

Yeah, like I said it looks like they've stepped up a lot from Lords of the Fallen, although I must admit that boss really didn't impress me and I hope it's not the same deal as Lords.

dont worry they will fuck it up with dumb shit like denuvo

I want this to be good.

The crafting appears to be more of a store than actual crafting, which is good. The complexity in this kind of game should be found in combat and not in building things. Reminds me of crafting things in Warframe, but simpler and without the wait times.

If we want to make a comparison with Dark Souls I think we should touch on healing, which really set the tone mechanics wise of the series. The Estus Flash in Dark Souls 1 is a counter for how many mistakes the player can make until the next bonfire. If you don't make a lot of mistakes, you don't need to use it a lot. This encouraged careful and deliberate play. This changed in Dark souls 2 when the player was given pretty much infinite healing with the use of lifegems, which meant that the player didn't have to be as careful and the developers could throw multiple enemies at the player because unavoidable damage wasn't as bullshit as it was in Dark Souls 1.
Here it looks like healing is done by converting a resource gained by attacking enemies and used for other abilities into health. So it looks like the developers are encouraging more aggressive play.


I agree, I hope there is a way to turn it off, or at least tone it down.


If you want more card games then go to /tg/ :^)

so they're actually trying to copy bloodborne this time

I doubt it'll be Denuvo, Focus is an AA publisher and the recent Sherlock game had denuvo and it wasn't Focus Home.
The recent Sherlock game was also fucking dogshit so who would have thunk it.


I don't mind it, it worked and it was a neat idea there. Now if it were a carbon copy of Bloodborne then I'd be pissed.

Except for, you know, Divine Blessings, Humanity and several Miracles used to fully heal or regenerate health over time.

Well aren't you a card.

if it's going to be anything it'll be like lord of the fallen which means it'll be half a game with lots of shitty bosses

ehh, remove camera slowdown, and add a parry mechanic and i'm happy.


sure, but you had to sacrifice for them.

Based on what they have been funding lately, seems like Focus Home is trying to bring back mid-size vidya devs, which isn't a bad thing.

Apparently they are bankrolling Streum on for Deathwing and giving them a lot of freedom in development.

They've published Wargame and Styx so I'm all for them succeeding.

I like the look of it so far, but I'm not gonna get excited about it.

The crafting system basically seems like a "kill an enemy and get a blueprint" system, and then you build the weapon you want at a workstation using simple currency so your inventory isn't constantly clogged with fifty bajillion generic helms and broken hilts.

What I don't like about this as well as about LOTF, is that you play as some preset dude instead of creating your own.
I fucking adore games that allow me creat self-inserts and always give them a chance if even they look like bad games from the outside.

the crafting system on the whole seems really stupid

why don't they just have it you just remove a certain limb and then there you go you get that part?

the story is stupid sounding too

This is true, I shouldn't have been so so absolute in my statement. The important part is that they don't encourage more aggressive play. The player has a reason to not use humanity to restore health, because humanity is useful for other things. In order to use miracles effectively the player needs to have the stats for that, plus the miracles can't really be used during combat in the same way as Estus and lifegems. Divine blessings are a limited resource (12 per playthrough) if the wiki is to be believed.

But yes, you are right that Estus is not a strict counter of how many mistakes a player can make between bonfires.

i enjoyed lords of the fallen for what it was. i only paid 10 bucks for it and had only one crash the entire game. Game was short and flawed. After you acquire the gauntlet and the ability to modify it becomes pretty easy. The game still looks better than dark souls 3 which is hilarious. I remember they talked about this game a year ago and boy did this shit impressed me. European devs have stepped up their shit. Will keep an eye on it

And it's dropped, if you're going to clone Dark Souls why would you fuck up the stuff people like about it?

Seriously the defined protagonist meme absolutely must die. It is only ok when you have an interesting protagonist but that requires competent writers that don't feel pressured to make some generic shit AND the rest of the game has to be built around that protagonist (or the protagonist built around the game). A good example here would be Bayonetta, it has an iconic and fun protagonist that is extremely well suited for the gameplay of the game. Generic "Mr/Ms Protagonist" characters can fuck right off back to Hollywood. If you're going to make your protagonist "normal" for the sake of being relatable to the player, then don't even make a protagonist and either make them nonamed and formless (only works in first person) or some rudimentary character customization. And no voice acting, fuck that.

Can't you only get like 2 in the game each run?
These were pretty broken and I much preferred them before the game was patched for being far more rare. I hit 99 humanity items by the end of NG+ nowadays.
They work exactly like estus: you have a set number of them between bonfires and the only way to recover them is by resting. You also have to get a ton of faith to even use the good ones which means less points spent on other stats.

Wow chill out there nigga, it ain't no an RPG.
Do you want self-insert instead of Max Payne too?

Shouldn't there be hit reactions after every hit?

Max Payne is an interesting character, mute "Mr Protagonist Man" is not. If you're going to have a defined protagonist then you should go all the way and make their personality and style important to the game. In Max Payne you can fight enemies like Max Payne would (ballsy but imperfect). In Bayonetta you fight enemies like Bayonetta would (stylish, flashy, and sexual). In "The Surge" you fight enemies like an undefined protagonist would because there's lots of different playstyles. A defined protagonist shouldn't just be a name and a face, the gameplay should revolve around them, the story should build off of them, and the player should feel like them.

Gameplay looks alright, but there's something to be said for atmosphere, and it doesn't look like this game has any.

How the fack can you deduce that protag is
Just from the gameplay?

Now this is interesting idea. Except in both Max Payne and Bayonetta you could fight enemies as a complete moron as well, it was up to you, hence "interactivity" of video games. If you want character to do shit the only way there is, you might as well watch a movie.

That being said if they're indeed making him into basically player's self-insert without adding character creator, that would be a bummer.


Define "atmosphere" chap. I bet you think Fallout 1 didn't have atmosphere either.

But both Max Payne and Bayonetta make it your goal to play like the protagonists would. In Max Payne you want to kill enemies without taking lots of damage and the best way to do so is to take them by surprise and shoot them until they die. In Bayonetta it's even better because of the scoring system. You get a higher score if you are constantly doing something flashy and fun by maintaining your combo with varied moves and taunting (and not getting hit).

And from what they've showed of the game there has been zero focus on the protagonist who has yet to say a word. I think it's safe to say that he will likely have nothing to his character and the only reason they didn't make a character creator is that they either didn't want to use the resources on it or felt a protagonist with a name and defined appearance would be more "cinematic/realistic".

Who's ideas was it to get fucking Denuvo on that game? Deck13 or CI Games? or maybe the publisher, because fuck this if it was Denuvo, and there better be a CLANG version of the Firekeeper with a sexy computer voice.

looks like shit

it'll be shit. screencap this.