The Ascent Review
When I was in high school, I had already been playing Dungeons and Dragons for several years and knew I enjoyed tabletop role-playing games. Then I made a new friend who knew, and still knows, many more new and interesting TTRPGs. This friend introduced me and others in the group to Cyberpunk 2020, a game set in a nightmare world of advanced technology, extreme poverty, and unending violence. It was my first foray into new TTRPGs and also one of my first “wow cool robot” moments. A few years later, that same friend introduced me to Alien Swarm, a hard as nails isometric co-op shooter game that took more than a little inspiration from the Alien movie franchise. Through either chance or a massive conspiracy, those two games were blended together and released last week as The Ascent, a cyberpunk isometric shooter RPG.
The planet Veles is the crown jewel of the galaxy. People of all races flock to it for a taste of the comfort, luxuries, and technology promised by the greatest of planets. But only those who have made the journey understand the real cost. Demand for passage to Veles has caused prices to skyrocket, forcing immigrants to enter into crushing debt to one of Veles’ many megacorporations. Made into indentured servants, or “indents,” by their corporate contracts, newcomers are forced into backbreaking and dangerous labor, often dying before their contracts are paid off. In The Ascent, players take on the role of one of these indents, a pitiable sewer technician thrust into a world of violence and espionage by chance.
If there’s one thing that The Ascent absolutely nails, it’s the feel of the game. Players will spend most of their time in gunfights with various enemies and I found this combat to be really enjoyable. I’ve seen over a dozen different weapons, with at least another 10 available to unlock, and each one fills a more or less unique role and feel fun to use. There are also an array of augments that can give players a variety of powers that reinforce Clarke’s third law, such as launching a salvo of missiles from the player’s back, firing a massive laser from the player’s hands, and conjuring robots to fight alongside the player. It all serves to give players a great experience of high-octane and delightful action. But The Ascent doesn’t just nail the feeling of being an amoral mercenary cutting a bloody swath through futuristic slums and offices, it also brilliantly evokes the cyberpunk aesthetic as a whole. Set in a cramped mechanical world, The Ascent is drowned in neon and grime, with buildings stacked on buildings and gutters packed with people. Outside of special corporate-owned zones bristling with automated defenses and professional mercenaries, everywhere is a war zone as the disenfranchised lash out at each other. Nowhere is safe, but at least in the suffocating corp-zone grind people have enough time to decorate their minuscule stack house and visit a few stimulation bars before they die.
The mission of the player ties into this feeling as well. Initially working for their “stackboss,” essentially a super-landlord, to clear up a plumbing problem, the player soon shifts to a new responsibility when the megacorporation that owns and protects the stack goes into bankruptcy. As ownership or lack thereof shifts, so too does the morality of the player’s missions and how they are treated by others. At first, players are talked down to and bossed around to by most, occasionally sought out by the truly desperate or depraved for help. But once the player begins fighting for the freedom of their fellows, they’re treated with more respect, given more resources, and insulted slightly less often. But the game’s writing, and a select few characters, never forget the player is in this for themselves, so most of the work the player does is far from good, and even then it’s usually corrupted. A perfect example of this is one of the game’s earliest missions. At the request of a neighbor, the player goes looking for the corpse of the neighbor’s late sister. This involves breaking into several different facilities and quite a bit of shooting as a corporate conspiracy unfolds, but eventually the corpse is found and justice can be rendered. But by the time the player returns to the neighbor, they are flanked by new powerful corporate “friends” and the neighbor insists the player drop the investigation. The Ascent captures a sense of powerlessness and despair I believe is vital to a good cyberpunk story.
For as much as I like The Ascent, and I do, I have to admit some flaws. The first of these flaws is the slow escalation of player capability. I found myself getting frustrated at how long it took to unlock new weapons and augments to use. For the first five to six hours, players will be limited to uninteresting handguns and submachine guns and a super-powered punch augmentation. Worse, any advancement is dependent on the whims of the random loot table as new guns and augments will mostly be dropped by enemies upon death. While this makes sense in the world, swiping guns off enemies to use against their compatriots, not every enemy drops one and it would have felt better if I were able to visit one of the stack’s many gun stores to pick up something new to prepare for the next mission. Equally inconsistent are the game’s side quests. Every quest has a recommended player level, but that seems entirely separated from which parts of Veles the player has access to. The second side quest the player gets is to pick up steroids from a dealer, but the player can’t access the neighborhood the drug dealer is in until they complete three more main story quests. I would have appreciated a notice on these sorts of side quests informing me I wasn’t far along enough in the main quest to complete them.
Lastly, The Ascent has some rare but nasty bugs. At one point, I had to fight a boss enemy that was a giant mechanical spider with lots of guns. However, the first time I attempted the fight, a glitch caused the game to spawn eight copies of the boss. Needless to say, I didn’t win that one. I didn’t have the glitch on my second attempt and, because I won, never had another chance to see if it would happen again. The game’s navigation system suffers similar problems: at any time the player can hit a button to create a Dead Space style line that points towards their next objective. Unfortunately, this function failing isn’t uncommon. I had the guide line lead me into dead ends and wrong directions often enough that I started relying on the in-game taxi service, bypassing potential experience points and loot by skipping fights.
The Ascent is not a perfect game. Between bugs, weird design choices, and a morality and aesthetic that could put some people off, I can see why some might not be interested. But, if you’re in the mood for a stylish, bombastic action RPG, I recommend The Ascent. This goes double if you’ve got one to three like-minded friends, because you’ll be able to pick each other up after losing all your HP and keep fighting. Regardless if you have friends or not, this one is absolutely worth the $30.
Buy this game at full price
It’s worth every penny they’re asking
