Surge-on's knot

The Surge is a sci-fi souls-like from the German development studio Deck 13 that came out in 2017. I haven't played it (although I know someone who has and might consider writing a guest review ...), but the idea of violently depriving enemies of their limbs through the surgical use of hacking and sawing tools and equipping yourself with them actually sounded pretty cool.

The score

The soundtrack to the game was composed by Markus Schmidt, who has already made a name for himself with his work on games such as the latest offshoots of the Anno- and The Settlers-series, The Dark Eye: Drakensang and Legend: Hand of God . While I have fond memories of the first of these, the score for The Surge is somewhat disappointing - especially if you go in expecting a Souls-like representative.

That doesn't mean that we aren't offered anything noteworthy in the 25 tracks. The action tracks in particular, such as P.A.X BattleMarkus Schmidt4, L.U-74 Firebug BattleMarkus Schmidt4, Big S.I.S.T.E.R 1.3 BattleMarkus Schmidt4 and Quality Assurance LabMarkus Schmidt4 are quite impressive with their ominously gloomy bass sounds and are reminiscent of thematically similar games such as the Warhammer-series. Compared to Dark Souls , however, the orchestral opulence is missing, which is probably due to the sci-fi setting.

Unlike for example in Thymesia , for example, there is also some background music in the OST that takes the focus away from the brute, fucked-up future tenor to score points with creepy atmospheres instead. HorrorMarkus Schmidt2 or Abandoned ProductionMarkus Schmidt2 seem to be borrowed from F.E.A.R, but they're not particularly entertaining. The ambient tracks such as Central Production B, Part 1Markus Schmidt2, Resolve BiolabsMarkus Schmidt1 or Research and Development / C.R.E.O Security, Part 1Markus Schmidt1 also fall behind and rank more in the category of Limbo or Thief.

All in all, the music doesn't bang enough for me to at least acoustically ascend to the rank of Soulslikes. However, apart from the direct comparison, it's also a little too interchangeable to be really enjoyable. Perhaps I'm being a little too harsh with a game scoring around a 72 (Metacritic), but the quality of the game says nothing about the quality of the music. And we can see from his other compositions that Schmidt is capable of more than what is offered here.