We’ve all become accustomed to the big boom of Cyberpunk-themed games over the last few years. While a specific one at the tail-end of 2020 may have left a sour taste in some of our mouths about the aesthetic and themes that fit this genre, it seems Neon Giant was able to give me that love I once had for it once again. The Ascent does everything right by the genre, and while it may not be a perfect game, it definitely is a fun one.

Story

The game’s story is set in the Cyberpunk city, The Arcology which is run by The Ascent Group. It’s a corporate-run metropolis where everyone and everything is owned by the group. But one day The Ascent Group abruptly closes and you find yourself in the middle of catastrophic events. Now it’s up to you to fight for your district in order to keep things running smoothly.

I found the story to be serviceable overall. It’s pretty clear that the dev’s main focus was on creating fun gameplay and a unique world for said gameplay to take part in. Because of this, the story felt like it took a backseat in comparison.

Gameplay

Going into this title, I wasn’t sure what to expect in every facet of gameplay. I knew there’d be some shooting but I wasn’t so sure about how its other mechanics would be implemented. Because it’s both parts shooting and RPG, this is a pretty fine balance between the two that keeps the gameplay interesting.

Shooting is extremely fun because of its twin-stick type of style and there are a ton of guns to get used to. It also helps that traversal within the game is also very smooth and your character doesn’t seem to move too slow either. It had been a while since I’ve played a game even remotely close to this so I was pleasantly surprised at just how much of a good time I was having with it.

The game tosses many different enemies at you from various factions as well. Each one even has its own unique enemy types that were a curveball to be sure in some instances. The bosses too are fun to fight and they also came across just challenging enough to kill me a time or two before I knew how to get things done. I hate it when boss fights seem unfair. These were enough to grind my gears but kept it realistic.

Next comes the RPG portion of the gameplay. It’s just as you would think; you have different skills and attributes that you can upgrade in order to be more efficient as well as the ability to add cybernetic modifications to yourself as well through augmentations. These too will give you improvements and even special abilities in battle. They’re cool to play around with and I’m glad that they were there because what would an RPG be without them?

When you aren’t cutting down baddies or upgrading your character, you’ll also be scouring The Arcology for all kinds of collectibles to make your character their battle-ready-best. You can find new weapons, skins, armor, and augmentations just to name a few. It makes it important to always check out what your enemies drop and if you missed any crates along your route.

The Arcology is by far one of the coolest game locations to date for me. It has a life of its own and its inhabitants are quite unique. There are a plethora of side-quests to pick up around the streets and vendors to do business with. They’ll help you upgrade guns and sell you some sweet new armor too. You could easily get lost in this world and I was happy to from time to time.

Another thing that surprised me was just how many locations you can wander into from off the streets. These locations normally have chests or locked doors to get through and there’s always this air of mystery to what the city has to tell. Luckily, even with its massive size, The Arcology never feels too big as there are subways and taxis that you can hitch a ride in, in order fast-travel to where you gotta go.

Visuals and Audio

The Ascent boasts some absolutely beautiful locations in its city, The Arcology. I’d go as far as to say that the visuals alone are my favorite piece of what the game has to offer. The atmosphere and lighting are just glorious, even on a Series S. Audio as well is very great, especially as most characters are voiced. The soundtrack is definitely on point for producing a Cyberpunk vibe as you blast your way through the grimey streets of Arcology.

Replayability

Aside from playing the game solo, you can actually play with up to four players. This allows for you to mix it up and jump into someone else’s game or to invite people to your own. You can do open games or invite-only ones for friends. It’s cool to have these options and it adds a chance to play it more than once. You also have a lot of different save slots that the game grants at your disposal.

What It Could Have Done Better

While I enjoyed my time with The Ascent overall, I did have some issues with it. Some even brought back bad memories of that time in December of 2020.

My first area of gripes is about the game’s characters. More specifically, the playable humans. These characters are ugly. They have this samey feel to them and they look wet as if they stepped out of Doom 3. It just feels out of place alongside the cool alien creatures or the environmental visuals and it left me feeling underwhelmed overall.

It doesn’t end there though. As I and others online have noticed, the character customization is very lackluster and even a bit biased in what options are available for characters. If you’re someone who’s creating a character that’s a person of color, you’re going to have a hard time. It may be for lack of diversity on the dev team, but it doesn’t really look like there was enough effort or care put into making characters look true to real-life representation.

Another spot where the game could’ve been more impressive is in its story. It really never felt like it had one going. To add insult to injury, your character is the only person who doesn’t have a voice. It really pulled me out of the immersion and I never felt too strongly about what was even going on. It was a missed opportunity

Now that I’ve gotten the artistic issues out of the way, let’s get into how the game actually plays. I’ve had multiple visual glitches between cutscenes and death scenes, I’ve also seen T-posing as well in some cinematic clips, most notably the very first scene of the intro. Things like this shouldn’t be happening at launch. I get that they can be patched but for me, they’re a sloppy mistake to let by when your game launches.

There also seems to be some issues with stuttering when in elevators or lifts, as well as some glitchiness and even loss of frames when just running around. These aren’t the worst types of bugs in the world but they do remind me of another Cyberpunk game that had very similar issues. I hate seeing games go down that same path.

Verdict

The Ascent does its gameplay and setting justice as being a truly fun game to take part in. But even with the fun I had, there are some issues with this title that truly let me down. It is definitely worth your time as far as gameplay goes but I wouldn’t go in with too many expectations otherwise. If you have Game Pass you’re set, if not then I’d say it’s still worth your time if those issues I’ve mentioned don’t bother you.