The allure of dusty trails, battered hats and saloons with creaky doors is timeless – the cyborg zombies in exo-frames? That’s just anachronistic, but I dig the style of The Surge‘s new expansion, The Good, The Bad And The Augmented, released today. Described as a series of modifiable ‘test chambers’, this bit of DLC looks like it breaks away from the Souls-like progression of Deck13’s hack n’ slash action RPG, putting emphasis on self-contained brawls against western-themed robot and cyborg varmints. Below, a launch trailer.

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It s nice to see difficult robot slicer The Surge get dafter with each expansion. The sci-fi Soulslike previously went for a Walk in the Park to chop robot limbs off animatronic bunnies in a malfunctioning theme park. Now, its next expansion, The Good, the Bad, and the Augmented, is visiting the basement laboratory of a mad doctor who has themed his entire facility after the Wild West. But why would he do this? For some reason, say developers Deck13. For some reason. (more…)

A sequel is on the way for The Surge, Deck13’s so-so sci-fi Souslike from 2017. The Surge 2 is its name, and broadly trying to expand and improve the open-world action-RPG is its game. The first laid solid, if unremarkable, foundations of cutting robots and mechs to pieces so hopefully a sequel can build upon those nicely. Our Adam is at the event where publishers Focus Home today announced the game, and I imagine he’ll have more to tell us soon, but for now here’s word that yup, it’s coming. (more…)

I mean that the theme park is malfunctioning, not the expansion pack itself. You re not going to get killed by a bit of rogue DLC, ha ha. Oh no, wait, you are. The Surge is a hard game, wobbly in parts but redemptive in others. As an unabashed soulslike, it did exploring and shortcuts very well but combat less so. Most of the environments were unremarkable recreations of sci-fi factories or science labs but the Walk in the Park expansion is brightening things up with a colourful area full of rollercoasters and crazed robot mascots. It came out yesterday and you can see some of the baddies and bosses below. (more…)

Sci-fi robojaunt The Surge was a bit of a shonky soulslike but it got a couple of things perfect: a liberal sprinkling of clever shortcuts and a dogged refusal to add fast travel. Less impressive were the environments themselves. Factories and junkyards and labs that felt too plain for the daft zombie mechsuit world they were housed within. Well, it’s getting a much more colourful new area in some upcoming DLC a creepy theme park filled with enraged robotic mascots and, I m guessing, some disgruntled rollercoasters. (more…)

Oh, I see. Just as I ve written an article complaining that no game has learned from Dark Souls level design, The Surge [official site] comes out, a Soulsy sci-fi action game which is, on the face of it, about a cataclysmic accident in a robot factory, but which is actually about opening that door over there and finding out you re back in your favourite corridor. It s from the same developers as Lords of the Fallen but while Rich found that earlier foray into the land of Dark Clones to be uninspired and shonky, The Surge turns out to be a decent homage to its predecessor, even if it is lacking in several vital areas. Some of that shonkiness, for example, is still hanging in there. … [visit site to read more]

The Mac Dad will make you jump jump, for, as always, these are the ten games with the most accumulated sales on Steam over the past week. It’s an odd old chart this week: the mainstays continue to stay, but random discounts remix things quite a bit. … [visit site to read more]

“The Surge has hacked off a couple of limbs from Dark Souls, but it’s using them to build something a little different rather than leaning its entire weight on them,” Adam said when he played a preview version earlier this year. If that piqued your interest, hey: The Surge [official site] is out today. Our boy Brendan is beating robots to death to build weapons to beat up other robots so he can tell us Wot He Thinks at some point but for now, consider this a reminder of its release. … [visit site to read more]

Shamelessly Souls-y action-RPG The Surge [official site] will launch on May 16th, publishers Focus Home Interactive announced today. Our Adam recently played a preview chunk and quite enjoyed it, happily lopping limbs off robots to craft bigger limbswords. Sadly, while it does let you lop off a bot’s chainsaw arm to craft your own chainarm, I don’t believe it reaches ridiculous levels of e.g. ripping off and swinging a 30-metre diggerarm like in NieR: Automata. Ooh, aren’t we serious! Still, The Surge does look like it could be fun. … [visit site to read more]