The Ascent, announced as part of the presentation Microsoft on the E3 2023, immediately attracted the attention of all lovers of works made in the setting of cyberpunk. After a failed launch Cyberpunk 2077 many have seen a novelty from Neon giant a kind of bug fix by the gaming industry CD Projekt RED… “These 12 guys are now going to show everyone how to make cyberpunk,” the game fans said in absentia. Finally, The Ascent is out, and we is in a hurry to share our opinion on what the young studio did and what didn’t.
The history of the game takes us to the planet Velez – a futuristic dystopia controlled by the mega-corporation The Ascent Group. A short text exposition at the beginning of the game informs us that in the courtyard of cyberpunk in all fields, tenacious fingers of corporate tycoons converged on the neck of every inhabitant of the planet, and the only chance to continue its unenviable existence is almost slavery for the good of the company. Having assumed the role of one of such hired “slaves”, we learn that suddenly The Ascent Group bursts like a soap bubble, and on Veles various groups begin their struggle for power. The further story about the plot does not make much sense, and not because of spoilers, but because of the unbearable boredom it causes. The local scenario is more of an attempt to give a plot context to the gameplay.
On the other hand, here we have a twinstick shooter – a genre, frankly speaking, which does not impose serious requirements on the storytelling. You will spend most of the game in skirmishes, which Neon Giant did much better. The fact is that The Ascent is the debut game of a studio founded by natives of AAA teams, behind which there are many shooters known to everyone – Doom, Bulletstorm, Far cry 3, Wolfenstein and Gears of war… Such a track record makes it clear that the guys know their stuff, and indeed, the basis of the gameplay, namely the shootings, is one of the best moments of The Ascent. You have at your disposal, though not a huge, but rather diverse arsenal of weapons, each unit of which is unique. In the game, in addition to the division into types of weapons (pistols, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, etc.), the type of damage inflicted also differs, which is important in collisions with enemies, among which there may be people who are vulnerable to kinetic damage and fire, as well as robots less susceptible to conventional ammunition. Needless to say, often the composition of the attackers will force you to change weapons on the go in order to survive?
It’s also worth mentioning that the shooting feels great. And this is the merit of both the game sound, which fills the gameplay with very juicy automatic bursts and powerful explosions, and the visual component, thanks to which each shootout is kilograms of fragments flying off shelters and walls, clouds of smoke, fire and alpha particles after the explosion of another grenade. and the ragdoll carcasses of enemies scattering both whole and in parts.
Unfortunately, when it came time to add a few details to the basic gameplay, the developers made a number of mistakes. Let’s start with the fact that in addition to the shooter part, the game also has a character leveling system. Skills can be improved that are enhanced at your choice with each new level of the hero, weapons, for which you need special consumables to upgrade, as well as augmentations, divided into modules that unlock both active and passive abilities. So, unfortunately, only the last ones significantly affect the gameplay, allowing you to collect from your hero, paired with one or another type of weapon, any builds that are differently useful in certain situations. The pumping of characteristics, on the other hand, feels like an unnecessary makeweight, designed to stretch the gameplay.
Another problem with the game is the structure of the world. The Ascent offers players a semi-open world divided into several large locations. The trouble is that such a decision must be supported by adequate filling of side activities in order not to let the players get bored. Here, everything that awaits us outside the main plot is dull side effects, reduced to the banal kill-bring. Let me remind you that this is not the most interesting storyline. As a result, you will spend a lot of time winding back and forth across huge locations between quests, which will give you only one emotion – boredom. Moreover, the game loves to put a stick in the wheel with its strange balance of difficulty – a fifth level quest can easily lead to a location where enemies of the eighth or ninth level will meet you with open arms. The result will be a quick death and return to the checkpoint.
