Surge Deluxe (PS Vita) Review by Jason Bonnar

Game Review: Surge Deluxe (PS Vita)

Surge Deluxe is an arcade puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. Surge Deluxe has been developed by FuturLab, whose name will certainly be familiar as they have developed the classic indie game Velocity. Surge Deluxe is actually a remake of FuturLab’s Surge, which was one of the best games from the PlayStation Mobile range released in 2012 and now includes various improvements over the original.

The arcade mode sees you having to prevent the pressure building at either side of the screen by clearing the blocks out of the way and venting the pressure by clearing blocks on any given row to at least temporarily reduce the pressure until all of the blocks are cleared by matching blocks together that have the same colour or symbol. The puzzle mode sees you having to achieve a particular score to successfully clear the puzzle with the ability to revisit the puzzle to attempt to beat your best time as you pursue an improved position on the online leaderboards.

Points can be scored naturally by matching blocks together and clearance bonuses for clearing the entire screen of blocks, although there are various ways of earning a significant higher amount of points including: starred blocks are worth double points in comparison to normal blocks with huge points bonuses on offer for chaining together multiple starred blocks; X2 and X3 blocks doubles and trebles your points respectively for the current chain of blocks that are connected with the X2 block or X3 block; the Dual Vent Multiplier is activated when you open paired vents that are matched to the same colour of blocks that provides an X5 multiplier; switcher blocks change colour and must be connected

to at precisely the right moment with the possibility of between two to four different colours for each of the switcher blocks; bombs detonate all of the blocks of the colour you connect the bomb to; combiner blocks will multiply points in a chain by double, while adding more combiner blocks or multiplier blocks into the chain will exponentially increase the value of the multiplier; connecting combiner blocks and multiplier together without any of the other types of blocks in the chain will result in a multiplier block for strategic use at a later time; connecting a chain of blocks to a chain linker block and connecting the chain linker to any other coloured block of your choosing will create a bridge between the two colours that will create a huge chain of blocks cleared simultaneously; and connecting a coloured block to a frenzy block will change absolutely every block to the same colour, which lasts only for a limited period of a few seconds before all of the blocks revert back to their original colour, therefore the frenzy block provides a brief window of opportunity to clear the entire level as quickly as possible with the biggest possible multiplier chain available.

The controls are well mapped to the Vita, especially considering that the control scheme is entirely centred upon the touch screen. You can connect blocks together by dragging your finger over blocks that possess a matching colour, while tapping a vent on either side of the touch screen will open it and tapping the corresponding vent on the opposite side of the touch screen will open it and release the pressure from the vents, alongside tapping the pause icon to the top centre of the touch screen or pressing start displays the pause menu.

The graphics are rather simple yet effective with blocks containing particular patterns and bright colours that allow you to play a game in a way that is just effective regardless of whether you are colour blind or not, alongside brighter flashes of electricity that connect each of your selected blocks together and when you have released the pressure on both sides of the level.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great purely touch screen based user interface across

various menus such as the main menu, play menu, puzzle mode menu, online leaderboards, instructions menu, options menu and various gameplay menus, although that means there is no support for

navigation via the left analogue stick, right analogue stick, directional pad, face buttons and rear touch pad, which is a bit surprising considering they are mostly the usual methods of navigating a game and were included throughout the presentation of FuturLab’s Coconut Dodge: Revitalised. All of the menus produce a procedurally generated streak of colour in the form of electricity wherever you drag your finger over the touch screen, which is a really great addition to the presentation of the game.

The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects including an explosion after each block has been removed and an alarm that only sounds towards the end of each level when the pressure is about to overload, while the music has a fusion of a dance techno soundtrack.

The trophy list includes twelve trophies with seven bronze trophies, four silver trophies and one gold trophy. There are a couple of trophies that you will earn naturally as you progress through the game, such as the Clean Slate bronze trophy for clearing all of the blocks in a single level; the Grinder Man bronze trophy for exploding 100,000 blocks and the Under Pressure bronze trophy for opening 1,000 vents. The majority of the trophies stack in relation to one another or are loosely based upon the same principles, such as the Masterful bronze trophy for creating a chain of fifteen blocks and the Tammett Called silver trophy for creating a chain of twenty blocks, alongside the Score silver trophy for scoring 5,000,000 points and the FuturLab Certified gold trophy for scoring 12,000,000 points. I would estimate depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between five to eight hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels, although the difficulty naturally increases as you progress throughout each level as the time until the pressure hits a critical point will gradually reduce per level, resulting in you having less time to complete each level, unless you are really good at venting pressures to buy yourself some more time as you clear a row of blocks to provide more time to complete the level.

There is no online multiplayer component, although there could have been an online co-operative multiplayer in which two players would attempt to get their highest score collectively between the two players, while the competitive multiplayer could have saw two players attempting to beat the other players’ score or at the very least a local hotseat multiplayer comprising of co-operative and competitive multiplayer with a set number of levels to make it as short or as long as the players wanted it to be, but unfortunately there are no multiplayer components, although it does not detract from the game, while there are online leaderboards.

The online leaderboards focuses on global scores, near scores and your friends’ scores across high score, best clearance and puzzle categories with each leaderboard containing your score at the bottom

of that particular leaderboard; each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and each player’s best score with the positioning of each player based upon how high their score is. There are also notifications of when a player from your friends list has beaten your score, which is another nice touch, although I thought there would have been an inclusion of the amount of blocks each player has successfully combined and an option to sort the positioning of each of the online leaderboards by the amount of blocks each player has successfully combined.

The replayability of Surge Deluxe stems from the many ways you can improve your score with multipliers, which provide you with a reason to keep on returning to the game to attempt to perfect your craft at creating huge multipliers in order to gain huge scores, which propel you to a much higher position in the rather competitive online leaderboards, which is rather clever as it means that one element of gameplay drives the entire amount of replay value from the game and it will certainly have you coming back for quite some time.

Overall, Surge Deluxe is a fun arcade take on the puzzle genre that has plenty of content and the quality to match; providing an excellent experience as you reach as high and as far as you can in your attempt to dominate the online leaderboards, which absolutely places Surge Deluxe in the must purchase category, especially when you consider everything that is available with such a high level of replay value for just £3.99.

Jason Bonnar

10 out of 10

Analysis