Welcome to our review of The Ascent, the game proving that the twin stick shooting genre can produce amazing games.
The Ascent is a solo and co-op Action-shooter RPG set in a cyberpunk world. The mega corporation that owns you and everyone, The Ascent Group, has just collapsed. Can you survive without it? The Ascent is a solo and co-op Action-shooter RPG, set on Veles, a packed cyberpunk world.
Welcome to The Ascent Group arcology, a corporate-run metropolis stretching high into the sky and filled with creatures from all over the galaxy. You play as a worker, enslaved by the company that owns you and everyone else in your district. One day, you are suddenly caught in a vortex of catastrophic events: The Ascent Group shuts down for unknown reasons and the survival of your district is threatened. You must take up arms and embark on a new mission to find out what started it all. You belong to the corporation. Can you survive without it?
I adore this game, despite its apparent lack of a quick travel function or some sort of return home option (after 5 hours into the game). The Ascent is just that type of game where the RPG elements take you all over the place, but in between the seemingly endless runs, there is a lot of fighting. You have no idea how well balanced this game is until after you’d played and let me convince you to buy this game or go for it on Game Pass!
From arranging your weapons, getting your special powers set up to all the way skill point spending. There is just so much to do in this gorgeous cyberpunk style world and that is on top of all the fighting that is to be done. While there are no real difficulty settings and the game is not the easiest to play, you can play around a little with the aim assist to at least make it easier to survive. This is especially needed for some of the boss battles if you are not the most seasoned of twin-stick shooting son of a gun.
I loved the way this game just made you get back into the action every single time. The first time I encountered a “mini-boss”, I got slaughtered big time. Not wanting to give up, I went straight back in. Not even 5 attempts later, I went in, did a perfect sweep without any damage at all, got a big ass smile on my face, and totally kept playing and enjoying the game.
The second mini-boss, a pair of big hogs, they were something else. It took around 10 times to get through them, mostly because there was half an army at their disposal. And even though the grunts in this game are quite easy, they become a menace when they appear in bulk and even topping a mere 10 at once… Hard as F yet so rewarding when you finally get through them.
On the bad side, it does feel boring when you run through hallways for ten minutes, fight the boss, finish him off, and then having to take that same 10-minute trip through the same hallway. Sure, it all adds to the experience and longevity of the gameplay, but does it really contribute? I felt this part was often unneeded and kind of boring. After beating a mini-boss, I don’t want to be doing menial labor like that… I want my rewards and whatnot. Not having to run back because your idiot boss wants you to.
In conclusion, The Ascent is a fabulous game in a genre that is often destroyed by lack of variation outside of the shooting part. The Ascent gets it all right except one small bit and is my personal recommendation for this month on Xbox!
9.5/10
Tested on Xbox Series X
And then I got to the final boss or like I want to call it, the shit show that ruined this game and brought its personal rating back to a mere 6. Clearly bugged as there were non stop enemies each spawning right on top of me or in my backside, I was unable to clear the final boss.
What makes this even worse, is that the game resets itself after every attempt to right back at the beginning of this chapter, which I saw to be NOT the case for some random streamer on twitch (sorry, no credits because you constantly said the N word on your stream and yes, I did report you over this, those words no longer belong in our world and just for that N word, you should lose your affiliate status)
So I was thrown back to the start of the level every damn time and when I finally made it through to the end boss, spoiler alert, this has to do about disabling 4 computers, the game effing crashed on me. Setting me back even to an earlier save point in the game. I was about to throw my controller on the ground at that point when I took to social media. I am still waiting for a reply, no confirmation this is supposed to be happening or not. I am waiting for an update because this is just impossible behaviour of any game meant to entertain.
I am just left in the dark with tons of frustrations and a near broken controller that barely survived, unlike me, because I keep getting enemy spammed from freaking everywhere, even in places where I see streamers not even encountering one single enemy. I am starting to hate this game.
As it stands, I want to bring down the score to a mere 6/10 out of pure despise of how the game is acting up on me. And yes, even in Easy, this bullshit keeps happening to me…
