The Ascent

Such a let down. Haven't been so quickly sucked into buying a game in ages only to get incessant frame rate drops for the hour I played at 4K
Refunded it, but now I hear that the RTX wasn't working and DLSS which was meant to be implemented wasn't even there I'm gonna keep an eye on reviews to see if things pick up

I really want to like this one
 
This game started as a 8 out of 10 for me, but over the days it just kept dropping until it is maybe at best a 6 out of 10.
  • The pacing is all off, sometimes walking ~10 minutes before finding action again, or finally advancing the plot.
  • Skills are a bit of a mishmash
  • Map system is a mess
  • The fast travel system is a pain. Why can we fast travel only on the current city level and not between levels.
  • Switching augments drains all augment power, hardly a good thing in a firefight.
  • Switching tactical weapons forces the tactical power to drain and you can only refill it by killing hordes of enemies or finding a vending machine
  • Dying drains all your tactical weapon energy and you can only refill it by killing hordes of enemies or finding a vending machine.
  • The Respawn points seem random and nonsensical. I repeatedly respawned at a point that was the wrong side of an overpowerd horde I had to spend ages trying to fight past but died multiple times. Fast travel was not available so I had no option but to keep trying.
  • Taking a side mission and walking for ages to get to the location. Only to find it was locked and had to be opened via the main quest. Don't make missions available if it cannot be completed.
  • Why does killing innocents not have more negative impact other than your boss telling you "stop killing innocents" over and over. A karma system would be a good gameplay element. Maybe police show up, or vendors in the area stop selling to you etc.

I finally lost interest when the Recompile Mission just kept putting me a long lift ride and a long walk to reach the terminal to do a 5 second reboot before the action started and I got horde killed over and over. I timed the lift ride and walk to the terminal as 50 seconds along empy corridors and rooms. This is not good level design folks.

Action is good, graphics are good and they just need to fix a lot of the poor gameplay choices.
 
Last edited:
Game was great. Not without issues but a total blast from start to finish. 18hrs played for all main and side quests.

As an added bonus I am now also a twin stick pro. Wobbled on the first AGI/SI reboot sequence and went m+kb as it was tough. Everything else was gamepad.
 
I finished all I can including some rare achievements. A bug stopped me finishing/picking up the last side quest annoyingly. May hop back in if a patch fixes it. Really fun and impressive for such a small team.
 
I'm lvl 14 now, imo the missions seem to be the biggest issue. There are several missions where the "lvl" for the mission bears no resemblance to the mobs you will need to fight, there are some other missions which you pick up and are in an area that you havent yet unlocked but theres no mention of that and there are certain other missions which you simply shouldnt even be able to pick up yet but can - for example , Lost and Found , which I picked up at lvl 11 (says its a lvl 13 quest) , however turns out that the mobs I need to fight to get to the mission destination are lvl 18s, which promptly slaughtered me. Anyway, I respawned many times and kept battling through and eventually after an hour of repeated tries I managed to kill all the lvl 18s and get to the mission destination only to find that the NPC wasnt there. I figured the quest was glitched but nope, googling it revealed that you cant do that mission until you have done its pre-requisite mission "Foreign Code" , which I didnt even have , so clearly the game really shouldnt have let me pick up the 2nd mission in the mission chain if I hadnt yet done its prerequisite mission.

Luckily these issues are not major ones to fix I wouldnt think and at the end of the day I'm still having fun and for a debut title it has already got better graphics and aesthetics than many much more experienced studios can manage with their titles. I hope the title continues to be a success because I really think that with a success under their belt and increased budget for their next title this is a studio who could put out some very good titles.
 
Tombstone said:
To be fair, I wouldnt necessarily blame Gamepass in this instance, they can only put up the build they've been supplied with. Its not like they have an older build and a newer build and have simply decided to put up just the older build. The blame here may well lie at the feet of the Ascent devs rather than Gamepass if they've only supplied an older build to Gamepass.
Click to expand...
This absolutely is also fault of MS because they insist on packaging their games differently, using their terrible windows store infrastructure, integrate their achievements and all that...Devs cannot just take steam build and use it on Gamepass, sadly.
 
Paul_cz said:
This absolutely is also fault of MS because they insist on packaging their games differently, using their terrible windows store infrastructure, integrate their achievements and all that...Devs cannot just take steam build and use it on Gamepass, sadly.
Click to expand...

You could switch that around and say that Steam insists on using its own infrastructure, achievements etc. Not sure why that’s the fault of gamepass. Steam is a platform in its own right, it isn’t and shouldn’t be the expected game delivery platform on PC.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
You could switch that around and say that Steam insists on using its own infrastructure, achievements etc. Not sure why that’s the fault of gamepass. Steam is a platform in its own right, it isn’t and shouldn’t be the expected game delivery platform on PC.
Click to expand...
Unlike MS, Valve actually does not insist on anything. Developers can release games on Steam without any achievements or features, without DRM, without any encryption.
Whereas on Gamepass you MUST encrypt your game files and do all that other crap, in effect forcing developers to do two separate builds. And then it is no surprise that the gamepass build is inferior because it takes more time from developers.
 
Completed it and yeah, my opinion from the start has not changed. This is a 7 out of 10 game. Not sure what ACG is on about to be honest. Worth a play, but would have been annoyed had I paid more than £16 for my Steam key from cdkeys.

That said there is a lot of good stuff here and if they get a bigger team and improve the story and rpg system further they could have a much better game for a sequel.
 
TNA said:
Completed it and yeah, my opinion from the start has not changed. This is a 7 out of 10 game. Not sure what ACG is on about to be honest. Worth a play, but would have been annoyed had I paid more than £16 for my Steam key from cdkeys.

That said there is a lot of good stuff here and if they get a bigger team and improve the story and rpg system further they could have a much better game for a sequel.
Click to expand...
What ACG is on about is what you didn't mention needed improving - the gameplay. It's a blast and just very enjoyable. The story and rpg elements were extras and not wholly needed, but helped with the atmosphere.
 
6/10

I may play it again once the buggy mission are fixed otherwise the frustrations are starting to outway the fun gun play. Reminds me of Far Cry 2 where you have keep traversing the same areas with the same enemy spawns. Even the basic loot crates are always in the same place so you start to ignore them.

Actual setting and graphics is very good (though can be choppy) but spoilt nby bad level design and repetition.
 
D3K said:
What ACG is on about is what you didn't mention needed improving - the gameplay. It's a blast and just very enjoyable. The story and rpg elements were extras and not wholly needed, but helped with the atmosphere.
Click to expand...
Well I obviously disagree. Without those elements I would not have bothered at all.
 
Thing is I suppose, ACG said it was the most fun he had played this year. Which is obviously a subjective declaration which cannot be denied as it may well be the most fun of any game he has played this year.
 
Reading what people have to say, I don't feel so bad about having not been able to play as it seems issues go beyond merely the technical
 
Frubeling said:
Reading what people have to say, I don't feel so bad about having not been able to play as it seems issues go beyond merely the technical
Click to expand...

Its still a good game even with the issues that some have with it, I mean even TNA gives it a 7/10, which in my book is a pretty decent score (possibly because I dont count anything ever as 10/10 as that would be perfection..so in my scale theres only 7, 8 and 9 at the top end realistically), consider it this way, 7/10 is still in the top third percentile meaning that even with the issues it has its still a top third title :D
 
Still finding it very good. Not experienced any major bugs or performance issues. Just get the odd frustration with enemy difficulty scaling, map not being very good and the camera angles that can be unhelpful sometimes. But aside from that the graphics are lovely, gameplay is snappy and fun, nice soundtrack and great fun in multiplayer. Definitely the most fun new game I've played in some time.
 
Tombstone said:
Its still a good game even with the issues that some have with it, I mean even TNA gives it a 7/10, which in my book is a pretty decent score (possibly because I dont count anything ever as 10/10 as that would be perfection..so in my scale theres only 7, 8 and 9 at the top end realistically), consider it this way, 7/10 is still in the top third percentile meaning that even with the issues it has its still a top third title :D
Click to expand...
Exactly. I give it an 8 and heap praise on it for what it is. He gives it a 7 and doesn't understand what the fuss is about, not wanting to have spent more than £16 on it. You would think we were at opposite ends of the spectrum.

I don't actually watch ACG, but I do pay attention to Skillup. I had kept my eye on this for a while yet had suspicion about the lack of reviews in advance. Skillup's review dropped and i skipped to the closing of it and he said everything I needed to know - there are issues but it's a hell of a lot of fun. I then bought it off cdkeys for £16 and thought it was money well spent.

What most interests me is what they do next. I'm sure they will drop a QOL patch at some point (maybe some dx12 love too), but I would be most keen to see them make this into a looter with an endgame loop.
 
D3K said:
Exactly. I give it an 8 and heap praise on it for what it is. He gives it a 7 and doesn't understand what the fuss is about, not wanting to have spent more than £16 on it. You would think we were at opposite ends of the spectrum.

I don't actually watch ACG, but I do pay attention to Skillup. I had kept my eye on this for a while yet had suspicion about the lack of reviews in advance. Skillup's review dropped and i skipped to the closing of it and he said everything I needed to know - there are issues but it's a hell of a lot of fun. I then bought it off cdkeys for £16 and thought it was money well spent.

What most interests me is what they do next. I'm sure they will drop a QOL patch at some point (maybe some dx12 love too), but I would be most keen to see them make this into a looter with an endgame loop.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I did that with both skillup and acg :)

For me based on “the fuss” I expected a better game, at least something I would give an 8 for example ;)

Not like I ever said it was a bad game or anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom