The Ascent [video game, review]
Jan. 1st, 2022 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWell, I finished The Ascent. It’s set in an SFNal universe but the speed of light is still the greatest barrier; everyone crosses space on slowships, and wherever they end up, their lives are at the mercy of corporate powers. There is no democracy at all; at one point a character says, “I hear on planet Amion that they tried to give everyone the vote, not just shareholders. Can you imagine what a nightmare that must have been?” It’s the grittiest, worst life you can imagine for everyone not at the corporate top of the ladder and you, young sprout, are at the very bottom.
You work in the DeepStink, the very bowels of the arcology known as The Ascent Group… and then something goes horribly, horribly wrong, and you get hired to be the one to fix things. At first, small things, but eventually, naturally, you end up in The Board Room.
The plot is straight out of Grand Theft Auto; it’s a big open world and as you explore parts of it open up. You get to see more of it, more and weirder and nastier parts of it. From the summit you can see the sun and the clouds; down at the bottom you see the scrap yards where robots end their days.
In between, there are a dozen different species with their own characteristics, and multiple corporations and gangs out to make your life hell. The comparison to Grand Theft Auto isn’t at all out of place; you get bigger and heftier weapons as time goes on, you visit ritzier and more deadly places, and you generally run errands for everyone. The only thing missing is Taxi Missions to grind out cash (and in this game, experience points).
The Ascent sometimes takes itself a bit seriously. There are very few easter eggs or sight gags that break the fourth wall, and every joke makes sense in the conext of their universe, not ours.
The game is pseudo-2.5D; I say “pseudo” because it’s clear the engine is capable of full 3D, and it could go the full Grand Theft Auto that way, but you’d miss out on so much art if it did. And that’s the most remarkable thing about The Ascent: The art. There is so much texture to this game that you almost never see the same texture twice, you never meet the same characters. Even some of the aliens, which could be ciphered into just one or two, have dozens of variants each to make sure you don’t start to see patterns. The cut scenes are rendered with the same Unreal 4 engine as the rest of the game, and they’re just as pretty and well-rendered as anything Pixar was doing five years ago.
It’s not the most stable of games. I had it crash a few times. One cut scene didn’t render, and one time I walked into a boss battle only for there to be… nothing. No boss. I wandered around the arena wondering “Where is everyone?” until I finally decided to reload, and there was the boss and all her minions. More than once I got stuck in a texture I couldn’t get out of, which is very annoying when you’re being shot.
It’s a very adult game. Aside from the violence there’s lots of profanity. In both the Dream World and Stimtown environments full of holographically rendered nudes, and the woman who did the mo-cap for them gets her own credit: Agnes Cort, Exotic Dancer. If that’s your things… The Ascent won’t pander to you, but the content is there.
Overall, a pretty good game. I was a completionist, doing every side mission and even exploring very odd corners of the city to find more stuff, and overall it took me about three weeks of play, mostly on weekends, to get through it; Steam says I was there for about 40 hours.
You work in the DeepStink, the very bowels of the arcology known as The Ascent Group… and then something goes horribly, horribly wrong, and you get hired to be the one to fix things. At first, small things, but eventually, naturally, you end up in The Board Room.
The plot is straight out of Grand Theft Auto; it’s a big open world and as you explore parts of it open up. You get to see more of it, more and weirder and nastier parts of it. From the summit you can see the sun and the clouds; down at the bottom you see the scrap yards where robots end their days.
In between, there are a dozen different species with their own characteristics, and multiple corporations and gangs out to make your life hell. The comparison to Grand Theft Auto isn’t at all out of place; you get bigger and heftier weapons as time goes on, you visit ritzier and more deadly places, and you generally run errands for everyone. The only thing missing is Taxi Missions to grind out cash (and in this game, experience points).
The Ascent sometimes takes itself a bit seriously. There are very few easter eggs or sight gags that break the fourth wall, and every joke makes sense in the conext of their universe, not ours.
The game is pseudo-2.5D; I say “pseudo” because it’s clear the engine is capable of full 3D, and it could go the full Grand Theft Auto that way, but you’d miss out on so much art if it did. And that’s the most remarkable thing about The Ascent: The art. There is so much texture to this game that you almost never see the same texture twice, you never meet the same characters. Even some of the aliens, which could be ciphered into just one or two, have dozens of variants each to make sure you don’t start to see patterns. The cut scenes are rendered with the same Unreal 4 engine as the rest of the game, and they’re just as pretty and well-rendered as anything Pixar was doing five years ago.
It’s not the most stable of games. I had it crash a few times. One cut scene didn’t render, and one time I walked into a boss battle only for there to be… nothing. No boss. I wandered around the arena wondering “Where is everyone?” until I finally decided to reload, and there was the boss and all her minions. More than once I got stuck in a texture I couldn’t get out of, which is very annoying when you’re being shot.
It’s a very adult game. Aside from the violence there’s lots of profanity. In both the Dream World and Stimtown environments full of holographically rendered nudes, and the woman who did the mo-cap for them gets her own credit: Agnes Cort, Exotic Dancer. If that’s your things… The Ascent won’t pander to you, but the content is there.
Overall, a pretty good game. I was a completionist, doing every side mission and even exploring very odd corners of the city to find more stuff, and overall it took me about three weeks of play, mostly on weekends, to get through it; Steam says I was there for about 40 hours.
