The ascent review embargo Pc#

You can be walking through a fairly ordinary city street and you’ll be instantly faced with an ambush. The lawlessness of The Ascent means most people want to shoot you.

Your stackboss - a mob boss crossed with a council manager - sends you out to quickly get the necessary supplies and firepower needed for the lower level city to survive, and thus your journey in The Ascentbegins. And in the Veles’ largely lawless world, especially amongst the poorer classes, that creates a massive economic and power void. Having fulfilled one of these shit-eating contracts - quite literally in the sewage system - you emerge to the lower levels only to discover that the biggest corporation of all has completely collapsed. These contracts typically last for life, since most people are so deeply in debt - and in need of the various augmentations and access corporations provide. The citizens of Veles are all basically slaves, having travelled to the planet by taking out contracts with various corporations. You’re an indent - short for indentured labourer - who acts as a low-end gun for hire. There’s no shortage of incredible views, and it’s largely thanks to the excellent lighting and sheer density of NPCs, objects and buildings. So now that I’ve got all of that out of the way, let me tell you why The Ascent is hands down one of the best things I’ve played in years.

The ascent review embargo Pc#

And most concerning of all: we have no idea how the game runs on any Xbox console, as only PC codes were provided by the game’s publisher prior to release (and Microsoft, despite the exclusivity, didn’t offer any codes of their own). Plus, this is a twin-stick shooter with a lot of cinematic views - so naturally, you’re going to run into moments of frustration with the camera. Neon Giant doesn’t lean into ’80s cyberpunk, the way CD Projekt Red did, but the setting never really ventures beyond the corporatocracy aesthetic. Those looking for something new in the cyberpunk genre might be disappointed, too. And while The Ascent is a honest-to-God cyberpunk game, and players will inevitably draw some comparisons with Cyberpunk 2077, I’m not sure Neon Giant needed to borrow some of Cyberpunk 2077‘s fonts. Perhaps the most egregious flaw lies in The Ascent‘s inventory menus, which obfuscates useful information so frequently that it almost feels deliberate.

The game’s variety of loot is nothing spectacular, and you’ll frequently find yourself reselling duplicate bits of armour, weapons and augments - but the excess credits generated can’t really be put towards anything meaningful because of how The Ascent‘s items work. I ran into a surprising amount of quest-breaking bugs, ranging from major bosses refusing to spawn, doors not opening or not being hackable despite quest markers demanding I run through them, and AI enemies freezing in place after a cutscene. The build I played on PC suffered a ton of micro-stuttering, particularly when bodies or barrels would explode. That’s what it’s been like playing The Ascent, the debut title from the 12-person studio Neon Giant. BTW - prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.Įvery now and again, a game comes along that simply blows you away. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.

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