The Ascent Xbox review: Cybernetic murder machine
Source: Windows Central | Neon Giant
When I previewed The Ascent a little while ago, I found myself incredibly excited. Could this exist the cyberpunk-styled Diablo I've long-yearned for? Like Icarus, The Ascent soars to greatness early but doesn't quite stick the landing.
Equally I write this I've just fully completed The Ascent, including the campaign and all the side quests. It offers some really great value at $30, complete with Xbox Game Laissez passer support, but I tin can't help but feel like true greatness only slipped out of reach. The jaw-droppingly gorgeous world, fist-poundingly violent gainsay, and the intrigue-laden story don't do plenty to smooth over its half-baked RPG systems, odd structure, and collection of glitches, which hold back the overall experience.
Despite everything, though, I had a blast with The Rising, and promise to see it get a scrap more love in the coming months to aid it realize its true potential.
The Ascent
Bottom line: The Ascension is a solid evolution of the twin-stick formula, offering some of the most detailed and impressive visuals the gen has to offer and so far. Nevertheless, The Rise needs a couple of polish passes equally of writing, due to bugs and other glitches. Additionally, the game suffers from a lack of testing, with balance issues and structural issues that weaken the latter half of the game.
The Good
- Incredible visuals in a truly jaw-dropping world
- Infectious gainsay with a decent variety
- Compact campaign with groovy characters and lore
The Bad
- Glitches and bugs detract from the feel
- The UI is generally atrocious
- Co-op implementation is clunky
- Game structure needs a lot of work
Visuals, Gainsay, and World
The Ascent: The expert stuff
Source: Windows Central | Neon Giant
| Category | The Ascent |
|---|---|
| Title | The Ascension |
| Programmer | Neon Giant |
| Publisher | Curve Digital |
| Genre | Activeness RPG |
| Play time | ~twenty hours |
| Players | 1 to 4 (online and local) |
| Launch engagement | July 29, 2022 |
| Xbox Game Pass | Yes |
| Launch price | $30 |
Let's go to the point, from the moment y'all lay eyes on The Ascension, y'all'll know there's something truly special here. Quite honestly, Neon Behemothic has produced one of the best-looking games of the generation thus far, with a truly painstaking approach to its environments and world-edifice.
Prepare on the cyberpunk multi-species planet colony of Veles, The Ascent defies the developer's svelte employee count and delivers something with visuals y'all'd sooner expect of a AAA studio. Truly meticulous detail meets admittedly stunning lighting and shadows. Dozens upon dozens of NPCs going about their daily business, with drones floating overhead, flanked past massive hologrammatic billboards and towering habitats washed in layers of interstellar grime and nuclear pollution. Indeed, the arcology feels like a society on the brink of collapse. Factories and facilities suspension down and explode in front of your very eyes, while crime scenes play out in the background. Mountains of bodies lay discarded and ignored in the streets, while NPCs cry, "It'due south happening again!" every fourth dimension you lot kickstart the side by side round of violence. Life on Veles seems miserable, but hey, at to the lowest degree it looks beautiful from the safety of my QLED TV.
Every corner of this mechanized earth will be quenched in blood past the time you finish the game.
Every corner of The Ascent feels paw-crafted, with minimal re-create and paste. Every seedy bar, strobe-blasted nightclub, cybernetic-selling storefront feels handcrafted, with jaw-dropping 3D vistas. Despite the fixed camera angle, which tin oftentimes feel a bit claustrophobic, The Rise's unique vertical earth blueprint gives you a persistent view of the wider world, creating a scenic sense of scale.
Veles is a towering arcology construction, comprised almost entirely of steel and concrete. Arcologies are theoretical structures that serve as a type of artificial ecosystem, potentially built on planets that lack natural habitats. The arcologies are incredibly well realized, with mountains of lore that explain how the earth works. Huge tokamak fusion reactors power the world, while besides recycling the waste from the millions of Velesian citizens. I use the term citizens quite loosely.
Source: Windows Cardinal | Neon Behemothic
Veles is essentially a piece of work colony, where predatory corporations exploit the desperate with promises of a new life in the stars, except they pay back their travel and accommodation fees by becoming indentured servants, or "indents." Many of them won't ever know true freedom, as the unregulated corporations deploy layers of bureaucracy and debt to keep indents in perpetual servitude. Y'all're one of these indents.
At the start of The Ascent, you make a character with a limited only passable customization system, and eventually evolve into a cybernetic murder machine with extreme prejudice. At that place are piles of weapons and abilities to choose from, enhanced by specific stat choices you make throughout the game. Spawn waves of robots that explode on death, producing torrents of charred viscera. Incinerate enemies with flamethrowers, laser rifles, and microwave emitters. Produce a gigantic proton beam and vaporize scores of gangbangers in a flash. Grenades. Mech suits. Missiles. Cybernetic enhancements. At that place's a truly dizzying amount of combat choices you can become your teeth into while crafting a build, or meeting specific challenges. Robots take more damage from energy weapons, while organic unarmored enemies are susceptible to ballistic weapons and burn. Information technology'south a bit tricky to become to grips with at first, just with some practice, you'll go a cybernetically enhanced walking tank, trigger-happy through hordes of enemies with reckless abandon. Indeed, a lot of people want to kill you in this game.
The game'due south title describes pretty much how the game plays. You lot start out in the irradiated underbelly of Veles, literally in the sewage works. The game charters your ascent to the pinnacle of the arcology, clawing your mode up the ranks of different criminal offence lords, hackers, and somewhen corporate interests, growing in power and abundance as y'all become. The arcology is separated into several floors that stand for the poorest indents at the bottom, with the rich corporate suits at the top, in a most-literal ivory tower.
Source: Windows Central | Neon Behemothic
Source: Windows Central | Neon Giant
The Ascent also refers to the game's Rise Group, which had full control over the arcology until their business concern mysteriously complanate. Competing corporations swooped in like vultures, appropriating the different facilities and services with their individual armies, with desperate indents like yourself defenseless in the crossfire.
The Ascent features some potent characters with unique designs. Various alien races make upwardly the indent population, including "sapiens," (you), also as simple AI robots and computers. Your personal AI revels in violence against organics, and unaffectionately refers to you every bit "Flesh" throughout the game, which is hilarious and slightly unnerving. Indeed, everything in The Ascent is a tad unnerving, with layers of dystopia injected into every plot point and ambient story crush. NPCs hash out life in the arcology, and datapads and side quests add diversity and flavour to the rich Veles sail. The large story missions are where The Ascent shines the most, with some truly wild biomechanical characters, with great writing and solid character acting. Many of these fights ofttimes culminate in a boss event too, testing the depths of your skills and the thoughtfulness of your itemization.
The world-building reminded me of the Godspeed You! Blackness Emperor lyric, "We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death." Every corner of this mechanized world volition be quenched in blood past the time you terminate the game, and the rising to the top was as satisfying as it was visually stimulating, for the most part.
Bugs, poor UI, and half-baked systems
The Ascent: The bad stuff
Source: Windows Primal | Neon Behemothic
The Ascent starts off incredibly stiff, and as I said in an before preview, The Ascension felt like it could be the stuff dreams are made of. Withal, the execution falls short in various ways.
The showtime and well-nigh annoying problem in The Ascent is the UI. The map tools are mostly awful, giving you quest markers that atomic number 82 to nowhere, without indicating elevation. The text on the UI is absolutely tiny, and requires a magnifying glass to read — information technology's especially strange since The Ascent does take accessibility options that permit you increase the font size of subtitles. I appreciate minimalism, only The Ascent goes a bit far with it.
There'due south a parade of minor bugs and glitches that frustrate the experience.
There's a parade of small-scale bugs and glitches that frustrate the experience. Tutorials popping up multiple times. Quest markers and progression misfiring. UI lockup bugs that prevent motion. The shop UI doesn't work properly, showing inventory that isn't at that place. The hide helm toggle doesn't work consistently. I could keep. Thankfully, there's cipher in there that'southward inherently game-breaking though. Although, some quests fire the next progression step only when you enter a specific expanse. If yous die or turn off your console, and come back to the game, there's a fair adventure you'll be checkpointed somewhere far away from where you need to be to trigger the next quest marking. I had a couple of issues where quests just didn't burn down the adjacent step correctly due to this. I made sure that I only logged out of the game if I had a quest marking currently on screen every bit a result.
Despite the issues, I was able to get through the game and complete it, in what was fun and action-packed 15 or so hours. Towards the center and end of the game, I couldn't help merely wonder how much better it could've been structurally.
The RPG layer of The Rise flies in the face of the game's story construction to some degree. At the showtime of the game where y'all demand currency the nigh, you don't get enough. Towards the end of the game when yous're pond in uCreds, there's naught to buy. The items you need to upgrade your weapons are deficient, and there's no way to purchase them. As such, I concluded up not using any of the wild weapons I found in the late game, because I'd spent all my components upgrading the weapons I got in the early game. I institute a shot-Gatling gun. I constitute a buzzsaw thrower. I institute a huge laser arc cannon and a flame launcher. Alas, I didn't take any components to upgrade them to my current graphic symbol level, and so they all striking similar a wet noodle. I could've grinded random mobs to get the components I needed, just I feel like that would've taken hours. I didn't have a problem finishing the game with the basic starter weapons I upgraded, it'southward simply a shame that they hid so many of their absurd weapon designs behind this restrictive upgrade system.
Similar restrictions hinder the game'southward augments and abilities. Swapping abilities in the field strips you of all your energy for a expert few minutes. This discourages you from trying new abilities out equally the state of affairs calls for it. What'due south worse, the augments and enhancements are utterly imbalanced, despite having really spectacular effects. Different stats requite you boosts to specific augments, but even trying out different builds, I found that a few really stood out as being far more than powerful than others. I ended upward only using a handful of abilities to get through the game in the end, since using other augments fabricated gainsay needlessly more difficult.
A side quest gave me admission to an incredible and hilarious "Tentakill" ability, which turned me into Dr. Octopus, and murders enemies with cyborg tentacles in a radius around your character. The problem is, this ability animation locks your character, information technology uses a mountain of energy, and has a pretty hefty cooldown. The spiderbots conversely non just practise more harm, but they too draw agro on enemies, bargain area impairment, and don't animation lock your character. In that location wasn't a scenario in the unabridged game where using Tentakill was viable over using the spiderbots.
Perhaps the more situational abilities would've been more useful, if in that location were more situations in the game. The Ascent tells you to use specific armor resistances for certain challenges for example, but I only really constitute it necessary at one point in the entire game to equip some burn resistance gear, for a specific dominate. It feels a bit like the vision for The Ascent as an "RPG" didn't really friction match up with the size of the overall game.
The structure honestly is just a flake strange throughout. By the time you get your cyberdeck hacking tools maxed out, you no longer need half of the abilities it grants to you. There are a couple of instances in the game where you lot accept to practise mountains of walking too, owing to the game's clunky fast travel system. You can only use taxis in certain areas, meaning that inside enclosed places you're tasked to walk on foot to your next destination.
Information technology feels a chip similar the vision for the game as an "RPG" didn't really match upward with the size of the world.
There are a couple of times in the game you're required to ascend up and downwardly the arcology, and since you tin can't fast travel between floors, you lot take to manually walk to the lifts which is incredibly laborious. A character even remarks about how "sapiens demand cardiovascular exercise to stay healthy," after directing me back all the mode down from the summit to the lesser of the arcology. It was funny, just as well not.
Finally, the way co-op is implemented is also a flake disappointing. There'south no post-game content, relieve for the ability to get and mop up any leftover side quests. If you bring your leveled graphic symbol into a friend'south game, information technology resets your story progress to their salvage file. You can brand new character profiles to play with friends instead, but this isn't the drop-in co-op that most of usa will have grown accustomed to in 2022. Also, in a lot of ways, it's merely not a great co-op game. Your co-op buddy is left out of cutscenes and conversations, so you're essentially just bringing them in every bit hired help. Experiencing the game for the first fourth dimension as a co-op player will be a far inferior experience than existence the player host, or playing it solo. Due to the residuum issues, and the lack of variety in feasible gameplay builds, I'd argue that there's not a great deal of replay value on offer here either.
The Ascent feels like it was originally designed equally a twin-stick shooter, just somewhere later in development, information technology was decided it needed to be an RPG. And every bit a result, those RPG systems experience half-baked.
The Ascent: Should you play it?
Source: Windows Central | Neon Giant
The Ascent is a tantalizing vision of a much superior game, that desperately needed a fleck more forethought and testing. The UI needs a ton of piece of work, and the map tools and quest markers need several polish passes.
Neon Giant has an incredible world to build from here.
I'd also argue that Neon Giant should have a deeper look at how some of their RPG progression systems piece of work, given that the game isn't long enough to actually feel one-half of the weapons they implemented into the game.
Despite the bug, though, I had a neat fourth dimension with The Ascent. The world alone makes The Rise worth playing through at to the lowest degree once, with its nightmarish rendering of a chrome-plated dystopia, baked with deep and meaningful lore and great characters. When the combat is firing on all cylinders it's a spectacular theme park of '80s-mode ultra-violence that at to the lowest degree I for one cannot become plenty of.
The Ascent's saving grace may be Xbox Game Laissez passer, and its generous $30 price tag. Neon Giant has an incredible world to build from here, with a story that delivers intrigue and spectacle in abundance. I hope with my whole heart that The Ascent gets a chip more love and care to help it realize its full potential, considering it's very obviously there, below the grime and glitches. Regardless, even despite the bug, The Rising slaked my virtual bloodlust and left me eager to visit Veles once again in the time to come. And I sorely, sorely hope Neon Giant gives usa the opportunity to do so.
The Ascent
Lesser line: While The Rising has some very clear problems, it remains a satisfying 15-20-hour cyber political party of violence and mayhem, enjoyable for upward to four friends in online and local co-op. The Rising could utilize a bit of postal service-launch love and care to help it realize its true potential, but the world design, general combat, and story make information technology well worth the journey.
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