It’s like how chocolate cake is a delicious treat, but there’s still only so much of it that you can eat over and over for an extended period until you vomit. What hurts is that there’s a good fifteen or so hours of it. And one nice touch is the ability to aim upwards, which adds a bit of strategy when taking cover or firing up stairs (though it makes the lack of an ability for you and your enemies to fire downwards seem kind of awkward). The various weapons that you can equip on the fly all have a good kick to them, provide respectable weight and are fun to toy with, especially when it comes to automatic rocket launchers or sniper rifles with energy bolts. Nothing that unique, but it gets the job done, and trying to keep a good balance going provides a nice challenge. Of course, to increase energy levels, you can either equip specific great that provides boosts to it or invest skill points, which goes for health, damage resistance and more. They get creative at times, allowing you to equip enhancements that can tag enemies to inflate and explode upon death, save your current health level and restore it after a brief period of time, or even allow you to summon explosive spiderbots or an entire mech using regenerating energy, with the cost varying by augmentation. After all, it’s hard to mess up arcade-style gameplay this simple, but there are still a few twists to it that elevate things, like the various augmentations that you can collect. The Ascent’s core gameplay is that of a top-down twin-stick shooter, and when it comes to the basics, they’re executed perfectly. And so you set out to help solve all of the various dilemmas resulting from this, and by “solve” I mean “repeatedly shoot at.” But one day, the Ascent Group seemingly goes belly-up for seemingly no reason, leaving you and your boss to try and figure out what the hell just happened and what to do next before someone even worse comes in to scoop everyone up. Set on that Planet Veles, The Ascent sees you playing as a disposable worker that belongs to the Ascent Group, a massive corporation that owns the entire metropolis which you reside in, a tower-like arcology where the the most successful can afford to live at the higher levels. Yes, The Ascent did indeed end up become a true showcase for the graphical power of the Series X, one that could arguably called masterpiece in that department. And all of this is backed up by Pawel Blaszczak’s stunning electronic soundtrack, one that sets the mood perfectly. Even the various alien races you encounter in huge crowds as you casually walk the streets have unique and well-crafted designs, and the artistry put into crafting a creative cyberpunk universe, even with all the expected tropes in play, is something to be commended. From the impressive lighting to the hard work put into every unique structure to every speck of dirt, all of the visuals and effects and a sight to behold. From the filthy lower levels of the deepStink to the pristine levels of the Pinnacle, every location here is a visual stunner. It was exactly the type of game that I felt would give the Series X a good test when it came to the graphics department. Developers Neon Giant clearly aimed at delivering the most dazzling cyberpunk game that they could, with loads of detail and characters around every corner, and one that wanted to deliver a unique alien world as well. A game that not only flexed its graphical muscles for the next-gen hardware, but one that also provided a new IP on its side (even if it did get a PC release as well). When The Ascent was revealed as an initial launch game for the Xbox Series X (prior to its delay), I thought that it was exactly what the platform needed.
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