![]() You'll need to think cleverly about opportunities like this, particularly as you approach boss rooms. If you duck behind some waist-high object you can squeeze the left trigger to tease your weapon up over it, staggering encroaching enemies and gathering yourself before the next wave is activated off-screen. There's real joy to be had in pushing into groups of enemies and kiting them around the isometric 3D spaces, quickly switching between your two primary weapons to deal out maximum damage and ducking behind cover when you need to figure out which of your cooldowns are ready to be unleashed – stasis grenades that hold enemies in place, an exoskeleton mech suit that can be summoned to give you some additional firepower, a barrage of micro-missiles that can be unleashed from your shoulder blades, or devastating melee attacks that rupture the ground around you.Ĭover provides added depth to combat too, as the left trigger can be used to introduce elevation to your shooting patterns. It's a competent action-RPG, with tight twin-stick shooting and intuitive controls. How easily you're able to disassociate yourself from the driving forces of the narrative will likely define how well you get on with The Ascent. It doesn't help that the characters are all grossly unlikeable at best, and weirdly juvenile at worst – an early quest called 'Balls Deep' sets the tone for the type of storytelling that only a teenager could truly appreciate. As you set off between areas of the world at the command of caustic mob bosses and agency heads to put bullet holes in bodies, you'll be doing so for reasons that rarely make sense. Put a gun to my head, I wouldn't be able to recall a single plot point, character name, or acronym. While the game may look like something that emerged from the mind of Ridley Scott, The Ascent is more Bright than Blade Runner. The characters entrusted to drive the main story forward – rare voices in a wall of disorienting sound – are little more than ciphers designed to deliver incomprehensible genre talk. Bounties can be handed in to shopkeepers, but they offer no further detailing to the type of villains running amok through the colony. A handful of NPCs will offer side-quests, but these routinely end without any real resolution. The animated bodies that occupy the streets and hubs of commerce pop in and out of existence and barely react to your presence, as if they are background actors paid only to compose themselves quickly should you shoulder-barge them and flee at the first sound of gunfire. The areas you navigate are densely populated but ultimately lifeless. The problem The Ascent faces is that your only point of interaction with the world around you is with whatever gun is held in hand.
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