The Ascent Review

"Ascending"

Campaign

August 13, 2021 at 10:07pm
By Jason Stettner

Cyberpunk and twin stick shooters are two of my favorite things, but sadly in this case they don’t add towards a perfect experience. A bit of a letdown perhaps, as the first couple hours of this game are quite stellar. It’s just the broken coop, balancing issues and other problems that drag down what could have been one of the early stand out games of the generation.

Whatever the case, if the visuals are what we should expect this generation of gaming when it comes to indies then we are in for a grand time. It’s a bit hard to talk about the story of this one, as you basically just get thrown along the chain of working for whoever and you kill stuff along the way.

There’s this one owner that treats you poorly for being a sapien, and basically slowly walks into a scene to spout exposition. The narrative certainly could have used more of a punch to it, at the same time I do question if it was needed. With the thought process that it was needed, this really could have been elevated quite a bit.

Outside of the story are some side missions you can take part in. This gives you something extra to do and overall I think there’s a good amount of content in this. I liked how it was finite, and never ending as most RPGs feel they need to be these days. It felt right content wise, and I’d like to see some DLC or future expansions upon this concept as the base of this is actually quite good.

Gameplay

This is one of the most technically impressive games I’ve ever played. Each scene is drenched in neon and the beautiful misery of a cyberpunk society. The social hubs are filled to the brim with NPCs vibing around whether you’re on the streets roaming or headed into the bars to chat with the locals. It’s really amazing, and hard to describe if you’re not visually seeing it. It looks really cool, and it’s just grand to take in. It really is quite amazing, and feels next gen. I do wish this had HDR support on the Xbox Series X, that being said it is visually very impressive.

The isometric style works perfectly here and they’ve mastered the angle to make a rather stunning environment for you to venture through no matter where you visit. I know I’ve talked about the casual areas a lot, but these also mix into combative spaces as well. The environments are very receptive to the battles going on as the areas get damaged and you often see civilians getting trapped in the crossfire. It’s fascinating, as so few games do that. The twin stick combat is great and there are a ton of weapons to use.

You also get to face off against a vast selection of enemies, with random boss bounty encounters popping up too which were cool. There were also some bigger boss battles that happen which brings me to difficulty. This game has some serious issues with the way it scales. Some moments are super easy, whereas others are insanely difficult. I’m fairly seasoned and it becomes just too much at points, to then be very easy in the next part. It’s really frustrating and detracts from the experience. Even when you adjust difficulties it seems to take awhile to fully change, or doesn’t seem to change at all.

I really want to note that I made it through on normal all the way through until the ending when enemies were suddenly jumping hugely in number right at that final segment. It was kind of a huge annoyance at times. On top of that, this game has early 2000’s checkpoints that were bizarre to the max. I couldn’t wrap my head around some of the spots I’d end up when I died. This just added to the overall list of problems I had that really lowered what was initially a grand time. I should mention some of the other RPG mechanics as well.

There are skills that you get as you level, armor to equip which can look awesome and minimal customization. I really wish the customization was more in-depth, at the same time I suppose the armor did cover it up after awhile. It just seemed tame for base customization considering this is a cyberpunk world.

The map in this is also very well done and detailed. Navigation at times is a bit awkward. When it does work well, you can use the taxi or metro to get around fast. Other times you have to do a lot of walking to figure out where you’re going, even with the Fable trail guiding you. In general, like mentioned I enjoyed the selection of weapons. You can upgrade those weapons too with parts that you find.

There is also a coop component to this. That might actually make it sound small, as it seemed like this was wholly designed to be based around playing cooperative with others. You can have four players locally or online which can be fun, if it works. I could never get online coop working as there were constant issues whether that was having players join or keep them in the game.

This was a critical issue, at least to me since you could tell this was specifically designed for coop. The lack of matchmaking was also disappointing alongside no coop difficulty scaling. A final note is that this console version does not have ray tracing if you’re looking at the Xbox Store, that’s for the PC version since this is a Xbox Play Anywhere game.

The Conclusion

The Ascent is a technically impressive and rather gorgeous cyberpunk twin stick shooter held back by a number of issues. This includes the basically broken coop, the mind boggling checkpoints and the insane difficulty spikes.

It’s actually disappointing in that regard, as with more polish or adjustments this might have been a generation defining title early on. I do want more from this universe. If they were to get more funding or could expand a sequel out further there’s some serious potential with this being a franchise.

They do need to focus on the story more, the lore was cool but I felt like I was just being rushed across with an exposition person piling on details occasionally. This game is seriously gorgeous, just want to mention that again. It really does look beautiful, those neon soaked cities remain in my mind and I hope they stick around awhile as they were so cool.

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The Ascent Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Renaissance PR

Rating Overall: 6.5