Welcome to our review of The Surge 2, where violent combat reigns supreme.
A mysterious storm causes your plane to crash in the outskirts of Jericho City. Weeks later, you awaken in a crumbling metropolis overrun by a deadly nanite-based disease. Rampant machines roam the rubble, military forces carry out mysterious plans, and survivors are left to fend for themselves. Above the city, an ominous, expanding nanostorm darkens the sky… Jericho City needs you.
Combat is challenging and unforgiving. You’ll need to carefully study your enemies, rather than blindly rushing and wildly swinging your weapon without focus. Study their attack patterns and weaknesses, then strike hard and fast – even the weakest of enemies can be deadly!
With The Surge 2’s technical fighting system, utilize a number of devastating tools to decimate your opponents. Launch opponents into the air with powerful combo attacks and use directional parries and weaving to protect yourself from the monsters and madmen roaming the city.
Tune your exo-suit’s health, stamina, and energy levels and customize your abilities with implants. Aiding you in your journey is a trusty combat drone that can be fitted with guns, explosives, and other deadly technologies.
My first experience with The Surge 2 was actually a nasty one. I was unable to beat the very first serious enemy I came across and before I knew it, I was nearly 90 minutes into the game before I finally figured out what to do and where I went wrong. I was not paying proper attention to the game mechanics and it kept getting me killed in the most violent of ways.
Turns out all I had to do, was purposely die against him and use the drop point of that game as a healing point for the next try. Once you get killed, you actually have a timer on the top left that will say how long you have to reclaim your items. So I ran over to the massively overpowered enemy, the one where you needed headshots with your currently equipped weapons, which are the awesome defibrillators of the med wing you were at.
I kept hitting him before, but he was so overpowered that he kept easily killing me. Blocking his attacks still did massive damage to my body and barely got me more time to truly find a way to kill him. I know that the proper approach would be a bait and switch attack pattern, but I wanted to go all out on him. The game is so energetic in these boss fights that it makes you make the wrong decisions, which I totally adored!
Once I got back to him, I hit him a few times and then used the healing function to fix me up again. I went back in with as many hits as my endurance would allow and bam, I did it! I was so darn proud that I was able to take him down on pure wit rather than just hit and run tactics. Aiming at his head for the punches sure helped too.
The next boss fight, the warden, was way more intense, but I will let you figure out his pattern for yourself. Even heading further into the game, the bosses become way more intense and it shows that this game is clearly banking on energetic fights.
All while needing to stay alive and getting your exo upgraded, this by the bays or by getting items along the way. The entire game sometimes feels like one big rush and while The Surge 2 is on the harder side, some perseverance does do the trick to stay alive.
Graphically, there were some minor glitches during the making process of my character, especially the beard which looked odd, but during gameplay, I never noticed anything disturbing or something that took away from my game experience. If anything, the high speed might only be limited by the game mechanics of having limited endurance and while you do free up more and better powers/health along the way, you often barely have enough stamina to go berserk on a single enemy.
I wish this would have been an option, like an easier mode where more punches were possible. I know die-hard gamers will scream at me over this statement, but I honestly think the difficulty level might be the biggest enemy of this game. In itself, it is quite the experience but does the level of unforgivingness not ruin its chances of being a mainstream title at full retail price? Time will tell.
In conclusion, I think The Surge 2 was a fun yet hard game experience. The lack of a real tutorial might be a bummer for some since the hints shown on the screen don’t do a full tutorial justice. The Surge 2 is not for the faint of heart and it takes some real guts to get this game!
