Swedish independent studio Neon Giant stands behind today’s consideration The Ascent. This is a cyberpunk role-playing game with an isometric view. Your character develops during the game and you learn new abilities and develop new weapons as you go.
The story is that of the mega-company The Ascent Group has run out of time and the world is facing a collapse of gigantic proportions. How can you do without them?
Your avatar starts at the absolute bottom of the career ladder and during the course of the game you can rise in the ranks. For everything is not quite as it seems and it is important to keep the tongue right in the mouth so as not to step on the piano completely.The Ascent takes place as I said from an isometric view and thus somewhat reminiscent of Diablo III in look and feel, but then in a completely different environment.
The graphics are among the nicest I have seen in a game. Everything is incredibly detailed, even in sections you more or less just run past, you can look at hundreds of, fine, meticulously rendered surfaces. The story is engaging, interesting and it’s exciting to see in which direction it all boils down.
The problem with The Ascent is that it sometimes gets so insanely difficult. Especially before you get good weapons and skills in order, it feels very unforgivable. Plus when you die you have to replay long sections and run the same way, over and over again. This caused me personally to lose interest too quickly. Even though the game itself is really nice and rich in content, it ended up being very annoying to be killed all the time. Then it does not help that the controls are not as tight as I would have liked and thus do not always make it easy to aim.
In summary, that is The Ascent a really nice, interesting and cool game, but due to the level of difficulty, the long distances between the checkpoints and the fact that it is difficult to aim, the grade is “only” approved with praise – which is a shame, as it could have been much higher.
