15 Awesome Video Games From 2017 You Probably Missed

12. The Surge

Back to the Souls formula, and Lords of the Fallen developer Deck13 decided to upend expectations for a followup, instead taking the genre to the farthest reaches of space.

Even from the outset you've got far more driven character motivations behind exploration and equipping your character with the best gear imaginable. See, character Warren arrives in a wheelchair, seeking a radical cure - only to be thrust and literally stitched into a makeshift mech suit where everything in the surrounding area wants to kill him.

Gameplay-wise you've got a neat targeting system that means whatever area of a foe you perform a finisher on will remove that limb or body part, giving different components and allowing you to spec in different directions. The macabre and sterile surrounding world combines with these brutal fatalities to give The Surge a really cerebral edge, grounding its combat and making you want to see it through to the end.

Deck13 still need to refine the weight and speed of attacks in some spots, but The Surge is a brilliant shake-up of the Souls aesthetic and general tone, showing what the genre can feel like when injected with a more propulsive, survivalist story.