Lick a soulslike: The Surge demo is now out
It's not great but worth a peek?
A demo is now out for The Surge [official site], the new Dark Souls-inspired sci-fi action-RPG from the studio behind Lords of the Fallen. Our boy Brendan declared it a "serviceable" action game, one he had fun with for a bit but ultimately didn't feel compelled to finish. Which sounds like a game that might be a lark to poke in a demo.
You can grab The Surge's demo on Steam (look for the 'Download Demo' button buried in that page).
The official word is that the demo contains "hours of unlocked content", which I'd guess is a figure calculated with a number of deaths in mind. Progress from the demo will carry over into the full game, for those who take a shine to it.
Here's a chunk of Wot Brendan Thought, about the Soulsy bits he did and didn't like.
"Still, I have to praise it for getting that one element – the shortcuts – absolutely note perfect, because finding the next way back home is still enough of a hook to keep me exploring (it's also got a very strong opening two minutes, for reasons you'd probably need to go in as blind as I did to appreciate). All the other things it borrows – the combat, the difficulty, etc – still feel 'off' to me as a Lordran loyalist, however. Even newer concepts, such as the time limit to collect your lost scrapsouls, or the scrapsouls multiplier you receive if you don't check into an Operations room for a while, only feel like minor tweaks, like tasting a vaguely interesting new flavour of Coca-Cola. It's not worse this way, but it's not better either. It's just different."
Developers Deck 13 have kept patching the game since launch, mind. The latest launched yesterday, bringing tweaks to dodging, support for Nvidia's fancy Ansel screenshot tools, and fixes aplenty. Check out the patch notes for more on all that.