The Ascent Review

the ascent is the most fun game i've played this year i hope you enjoyed the video if you did give it a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down maybe check out patreon and make sure to subscribe seriously though i can sit here i can try to surprise you with some kind of shock ending but there isn't going to be one when you look at twin stick shooters i'd say geometry wars was a breathtaking twin stick shooter so was livelock for the most part neon chrome smash tv back in the day well most of you guys weren't even a dirty thought in some kind of parent's mind what makes the ascent an ambitious twin stick shooter what allows it to create a successful amalgamation of twin stick and role playing in its own right well we're going to cover that i figured hell you know what they do enough different stuff in this game might as well do the reviews different the ascent though it isn't just about action in fact it's got a very high rpg element to it with side quests and main quests as well as rewarding exploration in its locations is a title that's thrown through twin stick shooter it's just turned on its side a bit and so i decided to do the review the same way as you guys know if a dev gives me a code which these fine gents did i always buy a copy and give it away to anybody who comments in the youtube reviews and this time i'll be given four away let's do this it's stunning one second letting you stand out on the precipice of this overlook as the world mills around you the next taking you down multi-enemy boss battle alleys as destructive terrain explodes around you turning that wall into a what's happening as you leap away at times the level design is an enigma like someone breaking down 19 lego sets only to make their own but they leapt into the middle set first sort of like a nine-year-old would tell a story the city is a mess of lived-in bits where finding yourself on the first level but wanting to be on the second level can indeed happen so you run and find yourself somehow on the third level stylistically it nails cyberpunk the ascent has done something else that's unique in the twin stick shooter world they let the moments of respite of quiet in the city extend into these odd sojourns that let you sink in and explore the world far more than a lot of other titles do i'm not saying there isn't a ton of action here it's just the game isn't as dogmatically attached to delivering it every second so soaking up the cybernetic interior of some dive bar with holographic dancers attached to tables and soft fluttering yellow lights billowing from neon side lamps can actually be seen and remembered as an experience and location even more so matters to the gamer playing it and so when the action finally does hit it feels even more epic people scramble around they fall when gunshots go off screaming in terror they freak out when their friends near them are gunned down as they sprint away from fights taking out civilians is sadly incredibly easy and almost troubling as you see a panic strangely limbed alien lumber and horror away from nine geeked out cyborgs engaging in a high-stakes high-caliber whack-a-mole and then accidentally you shoot them watching them trip and fall into the battlefield the various gun types are all represented well enough though due to the genre you aren't up close and personal with a lot of them you just see their effects that being said the effects are awesome you can see your little dude leaping head first with reckless abandon behind a bit of cover or frantically reload a shotgun in the middle of an insane battle and those are all easily noticeable and backed up by really good animations enemies also run the gamut from scavengers to huge slathered aliens that you can't quite identify the game went for an almost play-doh look to the texturing in a way i would say is a little doll like you will notice this in the cut scenes and in the codex when checking out various characters and gangs by the way one of the best codex i've ever seen i loved it but i can see a lot of people looking at it and thinking hey this isn't as hyper realistic as i had wanted lighting shading texture and detail work are all excellent for a game of this type as well are explosions and the various different ways in which you deliver out damage in your different guns performance dx11 it's fine and on the xbox it's actually very good as well on dx12 not so much dx11 you can usually get well over 60fps with dlss on quality or balance with a 2080 ti even in huge battles when they rear their head and maybe you'll get a drop here and there there's ton of effects going off and in the later game huge enemies as well as even more bionic effects you'll see a couple drops here and there but it's pretty rare what is sadly not so rare is the stunning amount of problems with the dx12 implementation the devs most likely will get a day one patch for right now though it's just dx11 which sucks because ray tracing is indeed attached to that however i can say that while ray tracing does offer some excellent additional bit to the visuals and a little bit of punch i found myself ignoring that in a very small amount of time one aspect of development that's easy to forget is that devs have been working with outrage racing for the majority of games history for any game we have incredible looking games up till this point and we will after this point a game isn't always about particularly high resolution pixel perfect renditions and the ascent shows that the atmosphere is a hell of a thing especially combined with awesome visuals disintegrating i currently have zero access to the security systems so i don't have a [ __ ] clue where our hours are who took them or why when we need a company rally or inspirational calf mugs to hand out i'll let you know okay why the hostility poon all i'm saying is that we should stick together in a time of crisis you got what it takes it can even upgrade your existing systems try and tune them in different ways i'll make a point of seeing them regularly it doesn't do to have outdated orbs when you rely on them to work visuals are one thing but audio does wrap the package up and being a dev can't be easy these days you can do your own voiceovers native language voiceovers and just say screw it and have a bunch of old man sounds like the dragon ball games do after the first word is pronounced and the rest is just silent text hell even alien languages can be screwed up if time isn't taken to offer at the very least some kind of textual stretching and unstretching of the tones to elicit a bit of reaction and to stop the gamer from being numb as they listen to it the ascent does this incredibly well gruff alien bounty hunters frustrated natural alien gym owners unhappy at their customers refusal to put the work in so he looks to placate them with the power that's inside alien roids or taking the lead from this hilarious hateful hungry for power semi-humanoid they're all presented excellently you have the star wars like clicks and turtles aliens asking you to find the giant creature testicle that they need to a man reflecting a gamer's want for virtual reality existence is by actually feeling that his life in this amazing place is something he doesn't want and virtually wants you to help him live a real one which is as odd as that actually sounds just like that the music is also incredibly well done [Music] far more like a theatrical release than expected it exudes a deep traditional connection to expected cyberpunk norms very heavy on climatized synth setback and layering over that construction of the visuals they impart this feeling of almost a serene loneliness but as you dive deeper and as you play longer the soundtrack momentarily injects action pieces that up that tempo set the mood to a more elevated rush of beats and driving themes somehow despite going more up tempo the game still never uncoils from the sadness it works so well to wrap everything up in an environment for example you'll be standing on this massive cityscape on a gantry way looking out reminding you that instead of the expected cranes and lights and equipment that a gantry normally supports it's you the indents the workers that are the machine and that low synth plane in the background that is the coil hum of its inner workings brilliant also something that's brilliant is the sound long tail echoes of gunshots the crackle of someone lit on fire by your hand canyons which i admit seems a little bit like adding ninja stars to an rpg and then randomly the heavy thud of your best friend rolling up behind him from a crouch behind a planter and taking him out now some technical issues did occur here the game has a couple settings and i found that one or two of them didn't play nice at all with my sound card removing the character's voices in the game's main cutscenes it took some time to find out if windows in a game setting just weren't working together the first time you let loose with your gun and you hear that long trail of the sample roll out across that open ground it is stunning the way it crunches up and electrifies even normal explosions gives the game a sound and tonal feel and atmosphere all its own [Music] in the ascent you're an indent working for the massive corporations that cover the world win for reasons unknown that corporation fails crumbling mysteriously leaving you something pretty goddamned unique it's a twin stick shooter sure but it's got rpg elements a ton of action mixed in and a surprising amount of narrative for a game like this now while not everyone is going to love the story to the ascent i do have to point out a couple things here especially if you're a cyberpunk fan you know how so many fictions present themselves after the best of times like showing up at the party after everyone cool is left even gandalf spent half of the lord of the rings movies making everyone feel bad for how shitty everything was right then cyberpunk games have always lived in that exact time frame that space where already everything is terrible the ascent does something different or at least it tries to not just as cyberpunk in the future but also a mirror of cyberpunk in the future's future not only have the industries taken over but here we are past that watching them fall into chaos and out of that blanket of security that they promised and the hope that they sold the people suffer the second tragedy of failure and fall and you could give up i mean you could also amputate your hand when you get a [ __ ] hangnail but not these characters working for a local gang lord who wants to combine the gangs into well one huge giant gang you decide to head out right at the starting the first thing you're going to notice with the ascent is the city itself the inflexible puzzle-like locations mixed with the flexible way in which life itself has shoved itself into the crannies you never expected the city is huge far larger than most would ever expect and feels much closer to the locations in perhaps shadowrun's rpg titles all in one versus the block of shops we see in a lot of games that try to mix rpg into a new game genre you know what i mean that johnny appleseed syndrome of nine shops per side i'll sell them the things that you need in this game it's easily one of the most fantastic locations i've had the pleasure to experience in a game and what's great is they actually smash a couple tropes of cyberpunk right away which hilariously see go horribly wrong when it comes to flying cars within the first hour or so almost every single npc in the game world talks to another in groups or while moving around many times changing as you go further in the game which surprisingly enough doesn't actually happen in full-fledged rpgs and you see a mix of unique character designs that make everything feel fresh regardless i'm sure someone said that a good world isn't cool unless you can blow it up and that's when we talk about battle especially at first glance it's easy to think of the ascent as simply an isometric co-op shooter but then you see the rpg elements as you level up you buy augmentations you take down various missions throughout game world to make a place for yourself in this world that's somehow monolithic but altogether too cramped at the same time another trope of cyberpunk too much life and that's cool because apparently you take it personally and you try to make a dent in the population you start out in the sewers learning the ropes of combat ropes which can hang yourself if you don't get them pretty damned quick it's not just a twin stick shooter but it has a cover system letting you leap behind items in the game world but it also has high and low attack so you can shoot over cover or your enemies heads as you will do countless times when enemies are coming upstairs and your shots shoot over their heads like failed falling stars and you stand there dunce like as they flank you your health and energy are also tracked as well as the use of your special tertiary weapon which is usually a grenade of some type while healing isn't done standing still you do find slot machines in the game world you put a little money in boom it pops out some health as do enemies when you pinata them with energy you power the biotics that you have these can be upgraded and bought from vendors they allow for effects like a robot loot sucking roomba that'll go out and help you by scoping the nearby battlescape and sucking up items that are dropped by enemies this is a huge help when you're prancing around with an empty shotgun and now you're at two percent health and you notice that the last dude you added two new holes to just dropped some health but he's on the other side of the battlefield you can also get other ones later on that are even better none are exactly break the bank when it comes to their special effects just solid skills that help you get the kills which is gonna help because since enemies are [ __ ] ruthless they aren't exactly smart they aren't so badass they play chess with just pawns and somehow still get checkmates but what they lack for in brains they make up for in killing motivation if you think circle strafing is always gonna work the first couple battles will lull you into a false sense of what it's like to stay alive as you notice enemies start to encircle you more and more and around you and flush you out behind cover hide themselves it's awesome it keeps the battlefield alive you can stand your ground some especially with particular skills and abilities but no matter how much health you have but your stuff by squeezing yourself into svelt double x bulletproof jacket and downing a bunch of upgrades to your health a couple shots or a single explosive canister going off will leave you dragging along the ground hoping your teammate can resuscitate you before the timer goes out or if you're alone well just dying alone i can't easily count the times i steadfastly thought i've stolen the upper hand sprinting after enemies like chewie and han only to have a gaggle of gang members shocked the [ __ ] out of me by waiting there in some corner and straight up sending me packing all the way back consistently shooting and then i was focused on retreat and i ran right into another group who somehow successfully merged satellite targeting to their [ __ ] grenade arms somehow just like in real life slaughter enemies you magically learn new things as you level up you get points to use in skills affecting max health weapon accuracy and more i will admit the game doesn't do the best job reminding you of things so if you forgot and you're in the middle of battle you won't get any icons at all in the menus to indicate you have skill points waiting to be spent so check it occasionally it's a bit like the gears currency that you get in the game which allows for you to upgrade different weapons it can be a bit confusing at first to figure out how you even got them when you have them or even you know what to do with them the game does give you a little loot readout on the lower left which luckily is shared with anyone playing as well but it's still not nearly easy enough to notice when you're running around or running away for your life especially when you add in the skills the bionics the weapons their skins upgrades and new versions of each having their own damage type like ballistic energy and fire i'm not gonna lie man i think the ui is just messy the game has a tendency to throw a number of stats at you and keywords that makes you understand that they should make sense and they should be something important but sometimes finding exactly what these keywords mean is really hard many aren't even in the codex itself also the game lets you compare weapons which is fine when buying or upgrading but it doesn't let you see the type of damage and the numbers at the same time it's either or so as you get better at things you'll remember those damage types of course or what a clip icon means in a particular way versus some other icon but strangely enough that also means at first you won't know those things and can be a little bit messy to try to compare things the game does reward exploration though both in and out of combat as you get weapons and armor makers that are all over the world as well as stores and small quests that can be found in various locations which also may have a skin that you haven't seen or later on a weapon type you haven't seen it's just like i said comparing some of those things when you do get them can be a little bit shady at first luckily you can always grab some pals because there is co-op this is online with up to four or two player local as well each person can instantly jump into another person's game even without having done the tutorial and while windows 10 and xbox have cross play the steam version doesn't joining took just a minute or so and they were instantly in there each person was able to go to whatever store they wanted in the city that get the quests reward the quests and talk to different people if the game has one caveat if you can call it that is that the first hour is actually a bit slow with less shooting than you may originally expect this is also combined with the tons of random locations small catwalks cavorting cyborgs and back alley cutthroats that the game has where each mission says go left and you think to yourself yeah but what if i want to go right that will add even more time to this no joke the city is [ __ ] huge various levels switchbacks shortcuts it's not hard to find yourself thinking man i really want to shoot somebody with this new gun as you're running to a new location later in the game fast travel does open up but that does of course remove the exploration element it's going to be up to you to decide what you do the ascent is a linear shooter yes quests are there as well and side quests that can take you from the various characters in the game world back into dangerous places and then back again it's not balder's gate or something some of the quests will reward you with items others money and others both as well as experiences but it's the mixture of combat and writing i found the writing at least for some of the quests really good and the overall quest was fine but i liked it mostly just because it did try to do a little bit something different with that slant on its story while the devs say 15 hours i can say that some are probably going to be doing a little less if they skip the side quests but i think a lot of people could go even longer there are a couple nut smashing battles in here i myself played near to the end and then jumped in the xbox version and they weren't cross play and of course had to get that startup and restart it even with aim assist applied on the gamepad normally i would be fine with this but the fidelity of the mouse and keyboard was just way beyond the gamepad there's a mixture of the way the game plays and how it goes at distance enemies do see you at the edges of the screen just like you can but also because there's just a ton of [ __ ] going on sometimes that ability to flick and click with a mouse is just well better as for bugs have the audio issues and of course direct x that the devs say will be fixed i did have one mission refused to start but it was a side mission and then started about an hour later it wasn't a progress stopper but it was frustrating to never really figure out what was going on there fun in a way this is somehow more cyberpunk than cyberpunk could have been and before people who live in black and white worlds go to their blue lord and save your twitter and start complaining about this comparison i get that they aren't directly comparable in viewpoint but in theme resilience atone and the desire to explore and see and just be there they can be and while there were a couple issues with this game that doesn't ruin everything if it did you'd be getting your [ __ ] shocks replaced every time you hit a pothole enthusiastically this is absolutely enjoyable even when there were issues enemies ducking while you're diving then kneeling while you're shooting over their heads yelling at them just [ __ ] stand still for a second and then somehow beating them with that single shot from almost across the map and feeling like yeah i just did that it's a roller coaster made of guns combat is enjoyable atmosphere is enjoyable sitting back and looking out over the world and just listening to the music or running some rampaging writing out man thing and ending his life with a well-placed augmented falcon punch feels so good it's not that i enjoyed the story and the quests both of which i did it's that the ascent tries mightily to merge these two genres and does so without hugely impacting either one and then actually improves on some things and lastly the idea that while i was playing it i realized suddenly oh crap this isn't procedural which means it's gonna end everything the experience the atmosphere the gun fighting it just works there were issues here and it will not be lost on me that some of those issues will impact people but my god this is a blast so as you guys know i rate games on a buy weight versus yes buy we don't even need to get there it is a buy it's it is incredibly fun to me it was one of the most enjoyable experiences i've had this year i had some issues with it didn't matter jumped in with some other people to play this game really enjoyed the combat even though i would say the gamepad a little less so than the mouse and keyboard this is a title where i enjoyed what they were trying to do with the story i enjoyed their little digs at cyberpunk tropes and mythos it's so great to be surprised it is so rare as well so anyway that's it for me i hope you guys liked the video check out the patron thumbs up if you did thumbs down if you didn't like it make sure to comment if you want a chance to win a game peace out

Channel: ACG

Views: 483,501

Keywords: #gameplay, #gamereview, #reviews, ACG, acg reviews, acg the ascent, acgreview, angry review, angrycentaurgaming, ascent, ascent review, game, gamepass, gameplay, gaming, gaming news, ms, official ascent, preview, ps4, review, reviews, the ascent before you buy, the ascent gameplay, the ascent impressions, the ascent pc review, the ascent review, the ascent xbox review, trending, video games, xbox, xbox series s, xbox series x, the ascent playstation review, the ascent ps4, the ascent ps5

Id: 8uOH7g40H6w

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ACG-Gaming]

Game is so god damned fun and enjoyable and THICK with atmosphere.

[u/flappers87]

Just a PSA...

Gamepass version is a little broken. It forces DX12, even with DX11 set in the settings (Verified with rivatuner). But DLSS and RT is disabled. Devs are currently working with MS and Nvidia to bring it to gamepass, but no idea how long that will take.

You'll end up getting massive stutters and lag when things happen in the game (explosions and the likes) because of DX12 usage.

Trying to mess with the files to figure out how to force DX11, but even when having ownership of the files, you still can't modify the game files.

Steam version is working.

[u/exray0]

When games are good, everyone wins. Gamepass coming through again.

[u/StickAFork]

DLSS is currently supported in the Steam version of the game only. We are working with our partners at NVIDIA and XBOX to implement it in other versions of the game

I guess I will wait a bit to try it out on Game Pass PC.

[u/UTChem]

Can Xbox PC users play with console users?

[u/Exhaledoom]

Do I buy on steam or?

[u/-sYmbiont-]

It's a good day when a game you've been waiting for actually turns out to be good. Thanks for the review! Looking forward to getting through the work slog to play it tonight.

Edit: downvotes for being positive. Keep being you /r/pcgaming

[u/1F1S]

It looks like this could be a great game to play with the steam deck bc of the touchpads

[u/Ipickthingup]

Ultra wide support?