The Ascent

As the actual last game to finish off my game pass summer, I chose to play The Ascent, the freshly released (at the time) debut game of Neon Giant. It is a cyberpunk twin-stick shooter whose strong suit is its presentation although I found its other aspects adequate as well.

Authentic cyberpunk twin-stick shooter

At times, I felt The Ascent even relies a bit too much on its visuals and music. Especially after the prologue, the journey to the game's hub was unexpectedly extensive. One might think a twin-shooter would not have such lengthy moments of lull. The game is definitely trying hard to get you immersed in the atmosphere. There's also quite a lot of backtracking -- often through respawned enemies -- even if you use the fast travel taxi system (which you probably should start doing the moment it becomes available to not waste your time on traveling on foot).

Neon Giant's efforts in creating The Ascent's atmosphere were not wasted though. The game gives off a very strong impression of a cyberpunk setting. The original soundtrack was composed by Paweł Błaszczak (The Witcher, Dying Light) and is reminiscent of other cyberpunk works, such as Ghost in the Shell and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The frequently red-lit visuals also reminded me of Ruiner, another very similar game I had forgotten about. I should check it out at some point: It has been one of Epic's giveaways.

The Ascent's title refers to the in-game Ascent Group for whom your character works but also describes your journey from the bottom to the top: from a slave-worker to a sought-after high-class mercenary. The story is hardly anything novel and I think voice-acting and dialogue are the weakest parts of the game. It didn't matter to me though as I played The Ascent like an action RPG, focusing on the combat and mechanics.

Character builds and upgrade systems are pretty straightforward stuff. I took a liking to fast-firing weapons like SMGs but did try other guns as well: Some guns are better against certain types of enemies. For the longest time I wished for a good way to heal, to essentially reset a fight for you. The Rejuv Field tactical heals enemies as well -- an idea I didn't like -- and the Biometric Timestamp augmentation was awkward to use, its healing being either too early or too ineffective. Eventually I found the Life Transfer augmentation which gave me what I wanted.

Generally the game wasn't too difficult, certainly a challenge at times but boss fights at least were always well designed. Maybe the final boss arena was a bit too cramped. Enemies spawning everywhere and your dodge rolls often stopped by some obstacle. It's too dimly lit as well.

Difficulty spikes up if you're, for whatever reason, fighting enemies of higher level than you. Side quest flow seemed to be poorly implemented as, for instance, I at some point had like a level 3 quest but to get to the quest area I would've needed to fight through level 20 enemies. I think that was fixed in an update. Neon Giant apparently has added a transmog system into the game later on as well which would have been nice to have on my playthrough. I took liking to how some armor pieces looked like and was sad having to abandon them for better stats -- a punishment for playing a game at release, I suppose.

The Ascent has now climbed up to Mostly Positive overall user review score on Steam but it was Mixed for quite a while. I feel the Mixed score was not deserved as I didn't find anything hugely wrong with the game and it was definitely fun to play. I did hear its co-op had problems though. I reckon those have been fixed by now.