The Ascent looked good, but it ended up being a very pleasant surprise: one of those indies that deserves more attention than they seem to garner. We analyze this cyberpunk adventure that has convinced us, made us fall in love and that can be used with other larger productions without problem.

To say that I liked The Ascent is an understatement. I mean, I had already seen it in a trailer for a fair, and I thought “wow, how cool, I’m sure I’ll try it when I can.” But now that I have been playing for a few hours, I think that impression does not do it justice at all because I already like many other games that have not made me feel the same. This, rather, has been one of appreciation ; of stopping to see things — physical, interactions, preconfigured events, you know — that usually don’t tell me much, just because here in particular they are implemented in a super satisfactory way.

It may sound silly, but I assure you it is not mucus. It is a game of those in which it is worth stopping a little (or many) to appreciate how well done everything around you is. So much so, that after playing for an hour I stopped to find out who was behind the project. I save you that effort: it’s a Swedish team called Neon Giant , and this is the first title they’ve signed together. The studio is apparently so named because they want to make “top-notch action games, standing proudly alongside the giants.” And I think The Ascent does achieve that creative vision. I commented to colleague Álvaro Castellano, after just a few hours of play, that this does not seem at all inferior to Cyberpunk 2077 .

That one is more ambitious, yes. It gives you more hours, the world is bigger, there are more missions, it goes without saying that there is more budget there. But when it comes to sensations, The Ascent gives me more or less the same as CD Projekt. It is simply all more condensed . I already stop with the comparisons, because we have not come here to mount any war, but I wanted to make it very clear that this game aims high and I think you should take it into account if you were letting it go until now. By the time you read these lines, the game will also be available on Xbox Game Pass , so you basically have no excuse. Anyway, if you want to learn a little more, read on.

A cyberpunk world to remember

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The makers of The Ascent describe their game as a cooperative action RPG title , and other than that, I think it would also be nice to describe it as a twin stick shooter . And even as an open world, which is not exactly the same as sandbox. But the reality is that none of those labels do justice to what I think really makes this game shine, which is its immersion factor – there probably isn’t even an appropriate label for it – and the ability it has to convey the fantasy, the personality, the charm of its setting. It is a cyberpunk game that may not convince you much because of the story, but it will because of what it represents to walk through its city.

Thus, the adventure begins in a metropolis on the planet Veles where numerous species coexist, or survive, subjected by the invisible hands of large corporations that basically possess immigrants (or ” contracting parties “, they say) in body and soul. It goes without saying that your character is one of the latter, willing to team up with whoever it takes to achieve the freedom and rights that any living being deserves. All of that sounds good on paper and frankly I think that the rabble you come across throughout history, including suburban chieftains, anti-establishment hackers and even corporate representatives, have their one. But no, it cannot be said that the plot hooks much.

I think it is because many of these characters respond to archetypes that do not offer anything really fresh, or do not present it well because each dialogue is an endless string of very technical terms that are neither understood nor wanted to be understood. Now, what it’s like to send yourself out on missions feels like a fable. Think that this kind of games only understands one dynamic: go from point A to point B, and when you arrive, talk to such a character or kill such an enemy. Simple. But The Ascent goes to many, many, many hassles to make sure that ride is an absolute delight. He succeeds, he is grateful, and the 15 hours that the campaign lasts fly by.

The secret is in the city , as I was saying above. Neon Giant is not interested in square kilometers or offers you absurd ambitions, what he wants is for a junkyard to be dark and oppressive like in the Alien film saga and for there to be swarms of small monsters living among the junk in the same way that a airport will be full of citizens sitting on benches. Each location you can visit is carefully pampered from a visual point of view accompanied by a very intelligent design. The camerait moves dynamically in very specific points to serve different fantasies, like a corridor where you advance without cover, opening fire on everything that moves (a bit “no Russian” style) or letting you see the enormous verticality that exists in the open spots, more than you can cover on foot.

The Ascent is a game of sensations that has an unparalleled mastery of getting you to those places, and it hits the exact keys it needs to win your love. We players like details a lot, so in the first few minutes you walk through terribly narrow and claustrophobic corridors where the only allies are androids. As you pass by, you bump your shoulder into them, and they react naturally by flipping forward or backward depending on the direction you are going. Similarly, garbage on the ground is thrown when you walk towards it. Then when you say “wow, it is true that it is a very interactive game“The atmosphere changes radically: they let you go in the middle of the city asking you to go to a remote point, and you are forced to pass in front of all these strange creatures. You really feel like one more.

Personally, what I appreciate most about the whole game is that it puts you there in the crowd and in case you weren’t convinced, it rubs you back on how alive the world is: something interesting always happens around you. Citizen AI reacts to the weather, it does the things one is supposed to do in every place. You see drones or repair robots constantly in urban areas, police vehicles flying close to patrol cars around them, and all sorts of things like that. Neon Giant knows perfectly – I can’t stress this enough – how to combine procedural elementswith pre-designed events to play with the sensations of the player, to surprise with things that one does not see coming regardless of how long it takes to control. Some details are small, like being able to control the character during the elevators or seeing you while they take you in a taxi, and others are as important as the combat system.

An intelligent and agile combat system

Make no mistake, The Ascent isn’t as intense as, say, Enter the Gungeon ; but he knows very well how to alleviate his deficiencies. For example, saving the encounters predetermined by the story, the game manages each encounter procedurally. Nothing can happen to you on the main streets, but if you go to the outskirts you will still find “neutral” armed groups.that warn you before opening fire and it is in your hands to continue or find another way. And if you go to the dead neighborhoods, you will find that there are hardly any pedestrians and that you are attacked by thugs around every corner. According to those responsible, the AI ​​appears in a reasonable way to adapt to the number of players present in the session, and with such frequency that you never get bored or tired. On the other hand, the nature of an overhead shooter implies looking for certain ways to deal with repetition.

In this specific case, we have a more than respectable variety of weapons, armor, powers and enemies; all of them with their moments of prominence. Álvaro and I agree that the sensation of shooting is very good, because doing so makes the camera shake and you can almost feel the weight of the weapon. The character also reacts naturally, holding heavy and light weapons in different ways. the coverage, for their part, are very important. There is no such thing as a button to stick to a secure wall, you just have a button to duck, and you’ll see how you use it. The enemy AI is designed in such a way that you cannot stay in the same place for long, so you are always thinking about how to cover the weak points, fill the energy meters or hit a shot at this or that opponent.

It is true that there are some incomprehensible errors that I cannot ignore, such as that sometimes you can see enemies “stuck” without the possibility of reacting and even a huge jump in the difficulty curve from a very specific point that does not have much sense at the narrative or design level. Personally, I appreciate that there are difficult parts – they are the ones that I have enjoyed the most, actually – but I think for many players it will be quite rough. Nor would I say that the fact that the experience points you gain during an encounter stay there even after dying is entirely well thought out, because that encourages anyone to kill all but one enemy, allow themselves to be killed by that last one, and repeat the process until it reaches the maximum level . It’s weird, right?

As an action RPG it does a very interesting thing which is not relying on damage statsIn relation to that, I think it’s worth noting that as an action RPG it does a very interesting thing which is not to rely on damage stats . You can assign points to an attribute that manages the chances of landing critical hits, and the end of the theme. The rest of the damage is dictated by your weapons and their respective degrees of enhancement, ensuring that you are never over or under the capabilities of your friends. Simply, the player who has been playing the longest can hold out longer or can control shots better with scatter reductions or increases in reload speed. Points can also be spent on skill cooldownsactive, they feel just as brutal as guns. Many of them, like the missile salvo or the hydraulic fist, are fresh and exciting. Others simply summon creatures from enemy ranks to fight for you, and they lose some of their interest.

Be that as it may, I think what I want to convey with this is that The Ascent’s match is on the right track overall and has a lot of good ideas. Receiving loot is exciting because each piece has unique behaviors and aspects, there is no RNG factor that tells you if your weapons are worth it or not, the handling of the weapons is satisfactory and as you progress you see more and more varied enemy archetypes. It is clear that those in charge understand that they should not abuse the subject, so each encounter is interesting regardless of whether you play alone or cooperatively. I would just expect a bit better technical polish and a balance check that checks the effectiveness of certain hand cannons, the damage and health of some bosses, that sort of thing.

The big downside, the technical section

The Ascent is gorgeous, it’s immersive, and it’s fun. One cannot help but be amazed at the level of detail in the city, or the attention the characters receive during cutscenes. There are also ideas that may seem silly at first but are very much appreciated, such as that in cooperative games all the characters of the squad appear in the video sequences or that all individuals can read the dialogues and options that choose teammates; But if there is a weak point in the program, that is the technical section , because there are a few polishing questions that do not fit at all, neither for me, nor for the rest of the people who have played with whom I have been able to speak, and frankly I would say that you wouldn’t accept them either.

For example, we have the issue of bugs . We are used to new games having some minor launch problems: enemies or loot that go out of the visitable stage, graphical errors and other minor issues that are present do not tell us much at this point; but others are quite serious because they can compromise some save points, block essential sequences to continue playing and even annoy all the progress of the campaign missions.

Others are simply ugly, scratchy, like dirtying a product that generally looks brutal. For example, it is somewhat unpleasant to play in Spanish and verify that we can only speak to aliens in English even though they answer us in our language. Neon Giant claims to have this matter under control and they plan to fix it in mid-August, but until then, it is a small point against. Similarly, the theme of optimization is to take it with a grain of salt. The version that I have used to write the analysis is the PC version, although in 3DJuegos we have also been able to test it on Xbox Series X.

The fact is that to access the always welcome combo of ray tracing + DLSS from Nvidia you have to bet, of course, on DirectX 12. It is an API that we would still consider experimental and it does not work equally well on all computers, but the experience in ours it has been directly painful, with a completely inconsistent fluidity that suffered regularly when changing zones or loading a predesigned event. Since the game is developed on the Unreal Engine 4It is also common to experience crashes when starting the pairing, and even if the game is successful, it can be greatly improved because there are no options to mute our partner’s microphone, and if it is already difficult to orient oneself with the map and the radar of the interface, adding the icons of the friends becomes a challenge.