The game’s other great strength lies within its presentation. These encounters aren’t impossible, but you’ll have to play smarter and plan your augmentations instead of the normal running and gunning. Picking up health is easier alone, but I grew frustrated in many encounters as I was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies – it seems that the game was balanced with co-op in mind. Half of my time was spent on my own, and I still enjoyed the experience with some caveats. I jumped into a coworker’s game for a few hours, only to find my progress was utterly gone because I wasn’t hosting the match.Ĭo-op is the main draw, but solo players shouldn’t despair. My other complaint is how progress is handled. That problem is exacerbated thanks to a surprisingly large play space. It is also hard to find your partners in the world as player indicators blend in with the rest of the map. A limited pool of health drops aided in my team’s demise, as the number of HP pickups doesn’t seem to scale to the greater player count. While co-op is the highlight, co-op play still has a plethora of annoyances. The bombastic fights are more manageable with a team alongside you, and the combat starts to sing when you’re synched with explosive weaponry and chaotic augmentations. Up to four players can enjoyably play the majority of The Ascent’s 15-20 hour story. That was especially true when playing with others when the onscreen tumult becomes extremely difficult to track. I seldom paid attention to attributes such as fire protection because I could usually blaze through enemies with the right tactics and augmentations. It’s hard to know what specific attacks you’re even trying to protect against. I was always thankful to have points to boost my health and energy levels, but I found some of the other categories and even the armor inconsequential outside of the generic protection buffs. The Ascent is a shallow RPG experience, with stats that don’t always feel purposeful. That lack of variation also extends to your armor as well. Through an upgrade vendor, I started to find my favorite weapons and boost them, which outpowered most loot drops, making them largely irrelevant. While most of the fights left me satisfied (if not overwhelmed, but more on that later), the combat grows slightly monotonous as the game goes on. Some of my favorite moments included blowing away corporate goons with a rocket-spitting Gatling gun then finishing them off with a devastating energy punch. Developer Neon Giant also ups the fun with a diverse inventory of weapons and some truly fantastic augmentations and tactical weapons that can send enemies flying. The moment-to-moment gunplay is exhilarating, with waves of varied baddies headed your way at virtually every moment. Combine that with a lot of confusing jargon and lore, and I found myself wanting to skip through dialogue to get back to what the game does best: turning you into a cybernetic warrior.Ĭombat is The Ascent’s main strength. Those tropes aren’t inherently bad when handled with nuance, but the main story never dives into anything of substance, making those dark themes more set dressing than meaningful commentary. While I enjoy the cyberpunk genre, The Ascent’s grating narrative contains all my least favorite tropes: incessant expletives, human rights abominations, and a profoundly bleak world. The Ascent takes place in the tech-obsessed world of Veles, controlled by maniacal corporations, and players control an indentured laborer who becomes wrapped up in a mystery as they battle for their freedom. This mindlessly fun co-op experience features bombastic gunplay, engaging cybernetic abilities, and a visually impressive world to wreak havoc in. The Ascent suffers from a similar identity crisis in its attempts to pull from dungeon-crawling RPGs and twin-stick shooters, but it never ascends to the heights of either genre. Dick to the seminal table-top RPG by Mike Pondsmith, fans of the cyberpunk genre are familiar with the theme of characters in search of an identity and purpose.
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