The Ascent

Raes said:

Like, you can't drop off the chics bag to her in Dream World until after the main quests takes you there, and you can't enter Stimtown til it does either.

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Got stuck on both of these for this reason.

Worse than just not telling you they're locked is both bugged waypoints for other quests when I tried to switch. So I then ran to waypoints for the side quests I couldn't do, then ran to main quests waypoints that were wrong and only recalculated after I reached the bugged waypoints.

I love open worlds to mess around in and explore at my own peril, but treating this game as an open world is a frustrating mistake.

You have to use the Deck skill as an AE pulse before you open the chest.

I was testing out the Xbox Cloud Beta through the browser and decided to re-check out Ascent on there to see if it had the same performance issues as when I played on my i9-9900k 3090 PC. Nope. Game played smooth. Even tried it on my iPhone 11 and it ran really well.

Still don't like that game but it is nice to see how smooth streaming the game was.

Having finished I would give the game a 6/10. The world was fantastic but you aren't really rewarded for exploring and it felt empty with the sheer amount of detail put into things. Gameplay/content overall felt as if incomplete and the twin stick combat seemed like overkill with how little it mattered. Could have easily been a turn based tactical rpg ala Wasteland or something instead and I think I would have enjoyed it much more.

Approach a chest. Hit x to open; doesn't. Hit x to open again; doesn't. Must be a hold x chest. Hold x to open...processing please wait; locked. Hold y to hack; success. Hold x to open -- too soon for the chest to register as hacked so you reload you weapon instead. Hold x again.... processing; opens. Can't upgrade cyberdeck further. Now that chest will remain an icon on the map forever.

Araysar said:

Seriously, how does it play with a twin stick controller?

Still sucks or good?

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Clunky, but gets fun after you start getting other abilities and the weapons with homing bullets that remove most of the aiming quirks.

Lots of small facepalm/wtf stuff but game is still fun and worth trying out.

This is a fantastic game for the amount of resources and number of people it had devoted to it.

To those of you who don't seem to understand why there's so much seemingly dead-end content -- it has a purpose. Those 'dead-ends' are little tech demos and love letters to fans/potential investors/larger studios that say "With more time, money, and men we can put out something truly amazing."

I'm genuinely impressed by many of the games coming out of the indie space recently. Solasta is awesome and I hope someone gives that team 10 million to make a sequel (but they need to hire a much better writer).

The game is fantastic consider the lack of funding and small team? That's a dismissive and condescending opinion. The game can be judged on it's merits like every other. It's fun and overall above average, 6.7/10 imo. That's okay and doesn't have to dressed up with excuses.

I'm comfortable giving the respect to the developers and judging it on its merits, not some warped scale like she's hot for a diabetic mom of three with lopsided tits, because that's also just called not hot.

Tech demo? Hopefully their future investors don't play co-op!

People are weird.

Yeah, on the technical side, there are some glaring issues. As far as I can tell, they could be fixed with more dev time. But, the art, the world, the music, the characters like Poone and Noghead? A+. Kira was a bit flat. And I wish she would shut the fuck up about the collateral damage. Bitch, you wanted the best, and you got it, now fuck off and let me work.


Edit: Almost forgot about your bloodthirsty Imp. A++

I think this is a good Game Pass game. Meaning, it provides good value and fun for the price of "free". But, if I paid $30 for it, I'd feel pretty underwhelmed.

Graphics, sound, music, atmosphere, and world building all work. They nailed this part. The gameplay is fun when you are rolling through blowing enemies to bits. There is a lot that needs more work though. It feels like a base Blizzard game, before its first expansion. It just needs more content and features to be fully fleshed out and really good.

Here is what I struggled with:

• The controls are really frustrating, but it get better with time.
• Why is the only multiplayer option local/friends? My Xbox friends only play Call of Duty. So, why can't I play with other random's?
• Gear comparison is a nightmare. Most of the time, it is nearly impossible to tell if one is even better than the other. You are comparing apples and oranges.
• This kind of gets back to the control issues, but most of guns go unused because they can't hit shit. So you settle into a mainstay weapon and a situational energy weapon for certain bosses. I don't think a Primary/Secondary system was necessary and it stifles your desire to ever try new stuff out.
• Bugs all over the place. Quest markers that lead to nowhere. Enemy's just stop spawning. Weird sound issues. etc.
• The world is huge, but cookie cutter and empty at the same time. It might as well have been procedurally generated.
• The story/exp progression feels way off. It allows you to progress way ahead of your level/abilities, causing you to get stuck slamming your dick in a door for death after death on boss fights.
• So much travel, back tracking, here to there to circle back there again. The subway system and cab systems help, but they feel redundant and overly punitive early on when credits are a limited commodity.

Overall I'd give it a 6/10 in it's current state. I think there is a lot of upside if they continue to work on it and develop and expansion.

Did they fix it finally?

Yeah, game was good, but some fatal flaws. Aiming had laggy dead spots at the poles. Co-op would bug and wipe characters. Some game breaking mission bugs. Was hoping they fixed those so I could co-op with my girlfriend, but then just sorta forgot the game existed. Shame really because so much was done well.

Gravel said:

Did they fix it finally?

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Quick check of reddit makes me think no.

For instance, despite characters being overwritten and lost since launch, there is a new post from a dev asking for info so they can start investigating the issue. Little late.

It's on gamepass pc, don't even need to wait for sale.

Picking this up again since I quit due to bugs on release. Looks and plays great. Some caveats:

- had to start over because original character had game breaking bug (cyberdeck bugged, no way to fix it)
- manually back up your save files!!! (since Elden Ring I do this religiously now)
- they "supported ultrawide" in the worst possible way, by clipping the screen, so you actually see less of the world in UW
- to change FOV (and fix UW issues) need to install Universal Unreal Unlocker (UUU) to get a console

How can you ship a game in 2022 and not have an FOV slider? Ridiculous ...

UUU link:
Not tried, but from what I'm reading multiplayer still not working well. Sad because this could have been an excellent coop game.