The Ascent review: a cyberpunk shooter without enough confidence


There is no denying: The ascent it has style. It’s drenched in neon and vibrant with decay. What isn’t coated in chrome is swallowed up by rust, and while it draws on the usual cyberpunk influences (Neo-Tokyo, Midgar, Dystopian Los Angeles, to name a few), I can’t help but lose myself in its singular energy.

Of course, the style can only go so far. To quote William Gibson, “When you want to know how things really work, study them when they fall apart.” The ascent frequently falls apart. It’s a collision of genres that, even in the best of cases, you can’t decide what you want to be.

Developer Neon Giant’s double-lever shooter puts players in the shoes of a hired servant seeking freedom through a litany of slum owner jobs, hackers, and corporate lawsuits. As the title indicates, these quests will take you higher in the tiered city of Veles as you complete more important jobs. Collect new armor, weapons, and cyber-combat skills, which you then deploy in frenzied top-down battles. Between missions, he returns to various core worlds to upgrade his gear and accept new side missions.

That is all to say The ascent does not stick to one gender. It’s part two stick shooter, part RPG, and part vanilla loot party. It has dialogue options and enemies controlled by level. There is even a cover mechanic. The ascent it is, to put it lightly, all over the map.

A battle scene in The Ascent

Image: Neon Giant / Curve Digital via Polygon

This often works. During one particular mission at the end of the game, a variety of enemies invaded me. I took cover to fire blindly at human snipers, before dodging the melee attacks of the flanking robots. Meanwhile, I switched between an energy-based hand cannon and a fire-based machine gun – robots and humans fell for their respective weaknesses. At one point, when the synthwave soundtrack intensified, the staccato clack-clack-clack of my machine gun played to the beat of the percussion. When The ascent he’s confident, he’s fucked up rules.

But most of the time doesn’t seem to realize when has I. Every time I start loving its beat, it abruptly changes the song.

As a result, The ascent you never really find the center of your Venn diagram of gender. In fact, its design principles are actively vying for control. Just as I start to embrace his world construction and explore a new neighborhood teeming with citizens, he throws a horde of enemies at me. Just when their combat is lulling me into a state of flux, they call me back to town for a series of nondescript side missions from a variety of forgettable mission givers. Meanwhile, I engage with a team system that gradually becomes a glorified routine.

One particular mission ended up on a robot boss that was resistant to the types of weapons that I had spent all my upgrade materials on so far. okay, I told myself, that depends on me. I should have been prepared. So the problem became finding the necessary components to upgrade an energy weapon that he had neglected. To do so, I had to backtrack through previous environments and go on side quests that ran the gamut of quality – one sent me on a lengthy search for a suitcase, while another tasked me with collecting testicles from slain enemies. . An hour and countless frustrations later, he was ready to face that boss robot once more.

Add this tedium to the fact that The ascent often it doesn’t even work, and it all feels like it’s on the brink of the highest level of Veles. Throughout my game on Windows PC, objectives did not activate, mission-critical doors did not open, and in one case a boss refused to appear after a cutscene. I went back to the main menu to reload a dozen times during my 16 hours of play.

Even parts that work technically, like navigation, can be a bummer. In the first few hours, I did a lot of walking. The world is as vast as it is vertical, and despite the magnificent dioramas on display, long-distance walks quickly become cumbersome. Several side quests took me off the beaten track, only to discover a door or obstacle that wouldn’t unlock until a future main quest was finished.

The character's skill screen in The Ascent

Image: Neon Giant / Curve Digital via Polygon

There are train stations in most of the main Veles hubs that allow you to travel quickly once you’ve explored them, and with 1,000 credits to spare, you can call a cab from almost anywhere in the city. But taxis only drive to one destination at my current city level – if I need to quickly ascend or descend through Veles, I have to call a taxi back to the central elevator, take said elevator, and then call another taxi to my destination real. At best, this system feels outdated. At worst, it is exhausting.

So, I wonder, as things fall apart over and over again: is this how The ascent plays? Will the stretches of euphoria always end in hard downturns? There is an attractive game lurking somewhere in here, but it is getting weaker with so much extra weight.

Still, despite all her gender changes and doubts, I can’t help but admire The ascent. It’s hard not to be mesmerized by the lights, the rain, and the sprawling world that Neon Giant has built out of trash and steel. When I’m fighting gangsters and robots and giant military mechs, and the music beats alongside the chaos, The ascent borders on euphoria.

But as it is, The ascent it is less an intentional amalgamation of ideas and more a palimpsest of philosophies at war. Like the precarious dystopia in which it unfolds, The ascentThe blazing glitter often feels like sleight of hand, distracting my gaze from the flimsy pillars that support everything.

The ascent It was released on July 29 on Windows PC, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed on PC using an Xbox Game Pass subscription. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.


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