The Ascent Review

Introduction

The Ascent is a solo and co-op action RPG that’s set in a cyberpunk style world. The mighty corporation that owns everything, The Ascent Group has collapsed, which leads to disarray, confusion and chaos as the streets become unlawful and littered with thugs and thieves. It’s your job to protect the streets and uncover what really happened.

Review

I do love a good cyberpunk style game-world, and this game certainly delivers. I’m not entirely sure why I enjoy a dystopian futuristic setting with dismal outlook and expensive high-tech, but I do. There are a few different playable options; single, online and co-op, so there’s no doubt an option for all.

The main objective in the game’s story is to traverse the map to uncover what really happened to The Ascent Group, while protecting the streets and killing any enemies that get in your way to the truth. There are also side missions which reward you with components and money – and you’ll get a trophy if you complete all 28 side missions.

We have character creation! as with any game that has character creation, I was in this section for at least 30 minutes. I mean, if the character is going to be in third-person view, you want them to look awesome, right? There’s also male and female character options, which I appreciated.

This has got to be the only game I haven’t finished playing before writing the review, as it got so frustrating for me, that I just had to stop. I may go back to it at some stage, but for now it will remain incomplete.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, because I did; when I wasn’t constantly dying over and over that is. Turns out I have a short fuse when it comes to constant deaths, and this game lit that fuse to the end of its wick. I really did enjoy the several hours I played though. The combat, characters, set designs – I was loving it all. Until one boss that I just couldn’t get past.

A lot of the loading times were long, which seemed weird as I was playing the PS5 version of the game. The sound effects and dualsense controller made up for the loading times though, it was almost like I had surround-sound!

Graphics were really good and very detailed; lots of layering and textures, and of course the outfits and armour really fit the cyberpunk style so well – along with the colouration of the objects and surroundings.

Very smooth movements and controls, with only one crash after 5 hours of playing, and a glitch where a boss didn’t appear after I skipped dialogue. Overall, not too bad.

The handling of weapons and general controls were fine once I had gotten used to them, I found the aiming difficult at times as there’s no auto-lock onto a target, that I could find anyway. I just shot in the direction of the enemy which worked.

I really enjoyed the techno/electronic music which is always so perfect for this style of game – I even found it helped me in a fight at times. Other times however it just irritated me, if I wasn’t doing that well. But that’s how it goes.

There is fast travel, which is done by a taxi service that you can call upon at any point, as long as you’re not in combat. This service does cost quite a sum of money however, and is introduced part of the way through the game. As long as you have plenty of funds, you’ll be able traverse the map and cleanup trophies or missions in no time – as you’re able to go back into the game after completing the campaign. So there’ll be no issue with any cleanup if you’re working towards that 100% completion.

Rating

Pros:

Fairly short game
Interesting cyberpunk world
Fun gameplay

Cons:

Difficult boss fights
Enemies can re-spawn

Summary

Enjoyable story in a cyberpunk world with plenty of enemies to face and truths to uncover. Fun characters to interact with and challenging boss fights.

Overall, I do recommend this game, as it’s somewhat based on the players skill and strategic abilities, so even though I struggled to win a super difficult boss fight, someone else might find it easier. So play, explore, and please let me know what actually happened to The Ascent Group.

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Game & Developer Information

Developer Website: Neon Giant
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: Curve Games
Publisher Socials: Twitter
PSN Store Links: £24.99/€29.99 Europe / $29.99 North America
Trophy Information: 47. 1 / 3 / 4 / 39