The Ascent

The Ascent is an action RPG set in a cyberpunk dystopian future where corporations are in full control, and you are their slave. The storyline is nothing novel, nor is the gameplay, however it is absolutely fun to create absolute carnage in this game. Whether you use guns or later on katanas to kill your enemies, it will be fast, fierce, and gory. The only time that I didn't enjoy the game was when I was trying to get my last achievement by grinding to get to Level 35 as I finished the full game at level 33. The graphics are amazing. The level of detail, the amount of unique scenery within the small town areas and beyond is wild. For such a small team of devs, they packed hours of detailed work into this game, and the game is not small by any means. The details in the shops, in the sewers, no matter where you are, you will be delighted with not just highly detailed graphics, but amazing lighting to boot. The use of ray tracing in this game is also some of the best uses that I've seen, and the game still ran smoothly. While the game did run smoothly for me, I did hit a couple crashes throughout my play through, it wasn't just once either. Maybe I crashed 10 times total where I had to shut down the game and start over, the game just froze on me. While that is a definite party foul on the part of the game, shutting it down and opening it up back up doesn't take more than a minute to get back into the action and the save game feature is not that bad so as to set you back all that much time. I haven't had this much fun in an RPG in a long time, most of them are way too long, and have many slow section to it, Ascent never pulls off the gas, it is full steam ahead. The game has a variety of weapons which you can upgrade, even if you sell your weapons, the upgrades persist with that gun if you find it again later on. Upgrades to weapons are found throughout the game in special treasures that you can find. You also find augmentations that can give you extra perks such as spider bots that attack your enemies for you or life stealing assists so as you kill your enemies they give you health. The game is not too difficult, though I definitely died more than 100 times, since I got that achievement without trying, the beginning is a bit more tough than the end. At the beginning, I needed to use cover to not get hit by bullets, but by the end I was only using a katana for face to face kills because I was well equipped to survive those interactions. I held on to this game in my backlog for far too long, do yourself a favor and give it a shot, I was able to 100% the game in less than 40 hours and there is definitely more than 30 hours worth of fun between the game and its DLC. Do yourself a favor and take this one for a spin, you won't regret it.