The Ascent (2021)

Dipping my toes into this game, not because I think I will be able to play this to the end, but because of the setting and the atmosphere. I just can't do twinstick-shooters. Having to let the camera do what it wants drives me crazy (I constantly want to turn it), but I made it through the tutorial missions on easy and did not die to the boss at the end once, so I will go on in short bursts and see when the game decides to kick my *ss too much. It plays surprisingly well with keyboard & mouse too.

The place itself reminds me a lot of a mixture between Cyberpunk 2077, Blade Runner, Alien and a bit of Warhammer when it comes to some of the bigger machinery that looks more like heresy than tech or looks like whatever drive the Event Horizon had.

The sound in this game and the visuals just blew me away. If I can't play it far enough I might watch someone play it, to see all of the maps.

I know most reviews say that the story doesn't hold up too well, but in the tutorial I made up my own one in my head already, because it dragged me into this dark and dirty mess of a place. Also that humanoid alien lifeform you meet in the tutorial looked interesting too, I hope there will be more of that.

It finally happened. The game crashed so many times that the save file got corrupted and we cannot continue our playthrough.

We (my wife and I) are gonna start the game again because we were really enjoying the co-op action, cyberpunk setting and electronic music, but only when this is finally patched (we're playing the PS4 version). In 10 hours we got at least a dozen of crashes.

The problem is: how the frack do I review this now? I got the code for review purposes and I'm not exactly sure what to do now.

Until this game is updated, it is simple a fun game that has major issues. There is quite a lot of small things that add up to lessening the overall experience. One of the large issue that bothers me a lot is lack of matchmaking. This game would be incredible with some type of matchmaking and ways to meet people/make friends in game. Not adding anything like that at all is just plain bad. I know it is a small team but that doesn't change anything.

Also, releasing a product on multiple store fronts, and having different feature sets in them is also just plain bad. This should never be done. The game is not ready to release if you are holding back features on any store front. Significant updates could raise this game up to a really fun co-op romp. Until then, it's okay, but frustrating to play. For this, I have to change my original rating from 4 stars to 3 stars.

The levels are gorgeous and the cyberpunk theme is neat but this game is just dull.

I normally love twin-stick shooters but after an hour of play I only gained one weapon and one power. The basic shooting is uninteresting, the enemies are almost all melee creatures that just rush you and you have to kite them away. I have played lots of zombie shooters (Dead Nation is a twin stick one I loved) but The Ascent just doesn't have anything interesting going for it besides the setting.