Developed by Deck 13

Published by Focus Home Interactie

Available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One

Rated M for Mature

As much as I typically hate the DLC seasons for multiplayer shooters, MMOs, RPGs, and other time/money sinks, there’s a big exception for my favorite genre of games, Dark Souls. As I stated in my previous The Surge review, Dark Souls should well be considered its own genre. ARPG just doesn’t cut it, and anyone trying to say that games like The Surge or Salt and Sanctuary aren’t just, “Dark Souls plus something,” are lying. Which I will once again reiterate is totally fine, because Dark Souls games are great.

Maybe I’m just biased, but I feel like DLC works best for Dark Souls games. It gives you a chance to explore something new outside the beaten path, a quirky diversion full of new enemies and bosses to expand the overall experience rather than just lengthen the runtime. Souls games are all about the diversity of set pieces, and exploring a new unique location opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

For The Surge, that means fighting robots with doughnuts for heads. Hallelujah, I can now fight a deranged nuclear cat robot while dressed up like a can of soda. Just like I’ve always wanted.

Cheekily titled A Walk in the Park, the DLC takes place in the dilapidated CREO World amusement park. Now overrun with the deranged robots endemic to The Surge, the collection of junk food mascots, psychotic maintenance workers, and murderous labor droids will make sure that your time there is anything but relaxing. Meaning that this walk in the park is… (sigh) no walk in the park. There, I said it.

It’s always a challenge to place Dark Souls DLC. As these games have always been about creating a massive, completely interconnected world. Figuring out where/when to fit in a new chunk of content is part of the experience. You don’t want to put new endgame content right after the first boss. At the same time, you don’t want to make players trudge through 80% of the game just to get to their new DLC. A Walk in the Park gets around this by splitting the DLC into two chunks, one which is available soon after the first boss and the other at the 70% completion mark. For NG+ players like myself, both are available right off the bat, so kudos for that Deck 13.

Now I must say it was pretty great to walk into the DLC and my first enemy be a anthropomorphic cartoon doughnut complete with Mickey Mouse hands and googly eyes. It was a degree of levity not previously seen in the techno-horror show of The Surge. There’s still a fair amount of dismembered bodies littered about the park, but you also get a firework spewing giant candy cane as a new weapon. It’s just lovely. The first half of the DLC has a fair amount of this fun stuff, and it really helps give A Walk in the Park its own feel.

The second half has some goof to it, but is markedly more dark and serious than the first half. This is where new players will first encounter the nanomachines, and the techno-monster horrors they create. I know that the robo-doughnut isn’t a person, but when its head splits open and a giant arm launches out I can’t help but feel a little bad for it. Best beat it to death and put it out of its misery.

The overall design of A Walk in the Park is tight, if not a bit short. It feels like all of the best parts of The Surge condensed into 4-6 hours. The levels themselves are small, but loop around with enough unlockable connecting paths to give a lot of mileage to every inch. Fighting through to find these new hidden paths and secrets is what these games are all about, and A Walk in the Park has that in spades. By the time all is unlocked, it shouldn’t take you more than a minute to get from anywhere in the park to anywhere else. I’m seriously impressed at how many different staircases, lifts, hidden doors, and unseen pathways they managed to fit into the map.

The actual runtime of A Walk in the Park doesn’t favorably stack up to the base game. The amount of stuff you’re getting certainly does. CREO World is home to 2 new bosses, 16 new weapons, and a number of new implants and gear sets. Previously, The Surge only had 5 bosses and 32 weapons (10 more with the Fire and Ice DLC, and technically 5 more with the special boss drops). For the sheer variety in new stuff to play with, it’s well worth the $15.

The only downside is that I didn’t really find it to be hard. Full disclosure, I played it on NG+ with my level 100 character, so maybe that had something to do with it. I beat the first boss on my first try, and the second boss on my fourth. For a game that I previously described as possibly the hardest of its kind, I was disappointed. Maybe it’s way harder on the first runthrough.

If you liked The Surge, you’d have to be pretty crazy to not give this park a stroll. It doesn’t really do anything for new players, but it doesn’t have to. This is an experience tailored for veterans, fans that want a little more bang for their buck and new toys to play with. It doesn’t really change the game meaningfully, so it’s not a must have like Bloodborne: The Old Hunters. It’s a solid addition for a solid game, and worthy of the same score.