The Ascent, In-depth Review
12I played 15 hours of “The Ascent” Game. Here is my review after beating it and completing all side missions.
Game Description: THE ASCENT IS A SOLO AND CO-OP ACTION-SHOOTER RPG, SET ON VELES, A PACKED CYBERPUNK WORLD.
WELCOME TO THE ASCENT GROUP ARCOLOGY, A CORPORATE-RUN METROPOLIS STRETCHING HIGH INTO THE SKY AND FILLED WITH CREATURES FROM ALL OVER THE GALAXY. YOU PLAY AS A WORKER, ENSLAVED BY THE COMPANY THAT OWNS YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE IN YOUR DISTRICT. ONE DAY, YOU ARE SUDDENLY CAUGHT IN A VORTEX OF CATASTROPHIC EVENTS: THE ASCENT GROUP SHUTS DOWN FOR UNKNOWN REASONS AND THE SURVIVAL OF YOUR DISTRICT IS THREATENED. YOU MUST TAKE UP ARMS AND EMBARK ON A NEW MISSION TO FIND OUT WHAT STARTED IT ALL.
YOU BELONG TO THE CORPORATION. CAN YOU SURVIVE WITHOUT IT?
Here is my personal take and review on this new Cyberpunk action-shooter RPG which is exclusive to Xbox and Windows/PC.
Overall Rating for the Solo/Couch Co-op or bug-free experience: 9/10
Rating for the Online Co-op mode which has a decent amount of bugs (at least in pre-release): 8/10
Here is the list of bugs in the online co-op mode and what I was able to do to prevent or get around them:
1. Players couldn’t connect to online sessions in progress, host would have to end the session and start a new lobby to invite players to before beginning the session. To fix any issues, have all players dashboard and quit the game before opening and starting a new online session.
2. Having the tutorials options turned on under Gameplay in the settings (it is ON by default) and having a teammate perform an action that caused a tutorial pop up while you were in a menu would cause it to bug out and trap you in that menu screen. The way to avoid this is easy, have all players turn off the tutorials in the settings under gameplay and instead use the codex in your journal for all tutorial needs.
3. Speaking to a vendor or entering a dialogue with a character at or around the same time as one of your teammates, which would cause you to be trapped in the dialogue scene or viewpoint with no choices or options showing up. To work around this, designate the host of the online session as the spokesperson to interact with NPCs for missions, and avoid speaking to a specific vendor at the same time. If someone does get trapped in the menus, the host must restart the online session to fix it.
4. Quickly interacting with, backing out of, and re-interacting with the vendors would cause a similar issue where you are trapped in the menu with the vendor. Similarly, opening and quickly scrolling through the journal/character interface could bug up and trap you in the menus. To avoid this, pace yourself when going through menus and pause briefly before speaking to NPCs.
5. Rarely, one of us experienced a bug where we could not fire our weapons anymore until quitting and rejoining/restarting the online session. We are not sure what causes this, but it happened very infrequently. Restarting the online session is the only way to fix it.
6. A minor visual bug for non-host players where the energy meter for augments/abilities doesn’t show any recharge and the bar appears half empty even though energy has recharged. This bug is basically always there but it doesn’t dramatically impact gameplay.
7. Another minor bug where holding down the shoot button/trigger while reloading prevents reload from registering. To avoid this just let go of the trigger and manually reload by pressing the X button.
8. Not sure if it was a bug, but the only player that could see all map markers on the map was the host. The host was also the only player that could see and choose which mission to track out of all that were available in the map/mission log. Because of this, the host should be someone who is on top of it, can navigate open worlds well, and is good at communicating.
9. Audio bug where a gun can be heard firing in full auto with no apparent source, usually resolves on its own in a couple minutes.
10. UI elements randomly disappear in-between combat and non-combat areas. Restart online session to fix. Does not affect host.
11. Armor and augments/other items can randomly disappear. Most can be repurchased from appropriate vendor, but if you lose a unique item (some of the augments are unique like Volatile) you are out basically out of luck. This issue does not seem to affect the Host of the game.
Have a great day, and as always, thanks for watching!
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