The Ascent is a game that just kind of seemed to come out of nowhere. I had no knowledge of it prior to its release. The day I bought it was the day I heard about it from a friend as a cyberpunk-type game that had that real colorful but gritty look of the genre. While certainly not the typical gameplay style that appeals to me as a twin-stick shooter, The Ascent has proven to be a game in which I’ve spent a lot of time wandering the damp neon streets of a city that fell straight out of Blade Runner. The experience hasn’t been perfect, however.

The Short of It

What I’ve Played

20+ hours total
3-4 hours single-player

Pros

Represents cyberpunk in a better way than most other movies and games
Music is terrific
Detail and atmosphere are fantastic, even for a twin-stick shooter
Effects are great
A fair amount of understanding of the type of guns, armor, skills, and traits is required to do well; more complex than you expect

Cons

Buggy mess
Story and side-quests are not all that interesting
Lots of backtracking
Exploration is not always encouraged with how quickly you can die to higher-level enemies

The Rest of It

Story

In the distant future on a planet other than Earth, you arrive as an indentured servant (IS) in a city with skyscrapers and districts that stretch up to the heavens. Like other immigrants who arrive as an IS, you are expected to work for your freedom and you have to do the work of the highest bidder until you are free. Obviously, freedom comes at a high price that you’ll likely never pay, but what matters is that you’re working for mob bosses and syndicates to do some heavy lifting and heavy shooting in the world. As you complete missions, wipe out gangs in a district or two and cause mass destruction, you’ll catch the attention of other potential ‘owners’ of your contract and have to do more missions in the hopes of obtaining your freedom.

As you might expect, the missions start out simple like exterminating cyber pests and gangs in areas that are causing trouble. It quickly escalates to kidnapping and espionage as the story progresses and you move to new districts within the massive cyberpunk city. While I still haven’t seen a real through-line to the story of The Ascent after 20 hours, the missions that have been completed so far have mostly been for the purpose of universe-building and lore explanations.

A lot of terms are thrown at you immediately in this game. It’s clear that the intent is to build out a deep world with lots of culture and backstory. In this regard, The Ascent thrives. In regards to motivating you to continue with the main missions, however, it doesn’t exactly create an enthralling, lengthy story that can get you invested. The primary reward for completing the main story missions is just to open up more of the environment and weapons. When it comes to the overarching plot of The Ascent, I haven’t found it or felt the need to look for it.

Gameplay

The Ascent is a twin-stick shooter, which is a game genre I don’t typically play. The camera stays well away from the characters in a somewhat isometric view as they run through the environment. One stick on a controller moves your character, while the other spins and points your character in the direction you want to shoot. Most other twin-stick shooter games that I have played were more of a short arcade experience in which you try to make your way through hordes of enemies in a level. The developers of The Ascent decided to take this genre and use it to have players do exactly this, but also navigate a dense cyberpunk world they created.

While I probably would have preferred a different gameplay type than this for a world as colorful and beautiful as The Ascent, it still gets the job done of being relatively fun, so long as I have another person to join me in co-op. I’ve spent solo time in The Ascent and it’s not nearly as fun or engaging just running around and shooting things or investigating quest lines. The added strategy of taking out hordes of enemies with a friend is almost a requirement with this type of game and it’s no different here.

What sets The Ascent apart from other twin-stick shooters I’ve played is the amount of customization and combat options. Each player can equip two special abilities, two firearms, and one tactical skill, in addition to their passive abilities and character statistics that increase as you level up. Since I’m still relatively early in the game, it seems like there are a ton of skills and abilities to unlock, considering how many I already have. Both your skills and abilities operate on cooldowns, but they are easily the most powerful weapons in your arsenal. You can throw grenades, shoot laser beams, do a falcon-rocket-punch that rips enemies to shreds, throw down a healing sphere to heal the party mid-combat, and many other actions. There’s a lot of variety here and it allows you to play to a particular style of character, ie tank, medic, etc.

When it comes to gun variety, there are a lot of guns, but there aren’t many different types of guns. There are enough to differentiate them and make certain guns more useful for different situations, however. There are a lot of statistics to keep in mind regarding the types of enemies you’re facing and what their weaknesses are. For that reason, it’s good to keep guns that can fire different types of ammunition so you don’t get stuck in sticky situations. Some enemies are weak to energy, while others are more easily dispatched with old-fashioned bullets. As you progress through the game, it becomes more apparent which gun suits the situation, so long as you don’t go down the wrong alley.

One of my big gripes against this game is how progression is gated. There are many areas that are constantly populated and repopulated with enemies. Some of these are enemies that are far above your character’s skill level and can kill you in one or two shots. While I normally like this more than the obvious walled-off barriers or invisible walls, I found this to be somewhat counter-intuitive for The Ascent. In addition to the areas where high-level enemies hang out, there are also areas that are blocked off with obvious walls and gates you cannot pass through. So the fact that these gangs are here does little in terms of progression other than discourage exploration, which is something I want to be doing at all times in this game. The Ascent is so pretty and enticing, it’s annoying when I’m off on a path to find out more and I instantly get sniped for my curiosity. The punishment for dying is pretty minimal, thankfully. But I would have preferred they chose one method of controlling your progression versus another, or maybe just slowly increase the difficulty as you walk around, rather than overwhelming you with the extremely high-level enemies right away.

The other big problem (and I mean BIG problem) I have with The Ascent is how buggy it is. I’m not sure how much more time this game should have been in development and QA, but the amount of bugs I’ve encountered since playing this rivals an open-world game and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I typically don’t mind the occasional bug and some of the bugs here don’t bother me. However, the frequency in which I encounter and can replicate them is quite high for a game that is supposed to be out of alpha/beta. Some are simple visual glitches. Some are side quests that can’t continue because the NPC doesn’t appear. Some bugs have caused me to have to force the game to close in order to continue. It’s a full range of bugs that I’m sure they’re planning on addressing, but will probably need to keep working on over the course of the next year.

Presentation

If there is one aspect of The Ascent that gets an A-grade, it’s in presentation. There are obvious visual glitches I mentioned, as well as the frequent t-posing of characters and popping textures. However, once the level loads and everything is in its place, The Ascent is a beautiful and magnificent ode to cyberpunk.

The Ascent wears its influences on its sleeve in both its visual and audio aesthetics. There are obvious nods to classics like Blade Runner in the environment with the constant barrage of neon lights, the people walking around with lit-up umbrellas, and even the buildings that are replicas of the models in the film. Even the music by Pawel Blaszczak is very clearly inspired by the film and other cyberpunk films like The Matrix, Johnny Pnemonic, Akira, etc. The music does a great job of providing ambient background music in the exploration segments and real heart-pounding beats for the action with tracks that are similar to that of artists like Perterbator and Megadrive.

The Ascent oozes style and atmosphere in a way that few other games have managed to grab me. In all honesty, I think this game looks better and has a more interesting style to it than Cyberpunk 2077. If it weren’t for the fact that the gameplay is limited to what it is, I would just walk around and look at the environment for hours to soak it all in. If there is one reason to get The Ascent, it’s the presentation.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

The Ascent is, by far, one of the best-looking and sounding cyberpunk video games I’ve ever played. It’s certainly the best twin-stick shooter I’ve played, but I haven’t played many, so take that with a grain of salt. While the lack of an engaging storyline and the overwhelming number of bugs would normally turn me away, I have had a great time playing The Ascent in co-op. I can’t recommend this game to anyone who is planning to play it solo, because I think you’ll get bored or stuck pretty quickly. However, if you have a buddy lined up, if you have the patience to endure the bugs and glitches, and if you’re aching for a game to give you an amazing-looking and incredible-sounding experience in a cyberpunk world, The Ascent might be right for you.

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