But others feel a little like busywork, with a lot of walking long distances between districts to perform fairly mundane tasks. Some, like the one involving a soft drinks company conducting sinister experiments on citizens addicted to their product, keep you hooked with a good story. I wouldn't mind this if the sidequests were consistently good, but I found them pretty hit and miss. I also had issues with sudden, sharp difficulty spikes, some of which forced me to break off from the story and grind sidequests to level up. But these safe zone visits, as evocative as they are, are ultimately just a brief pit stop before the action ramps up again. A setting this rich would be a perfect fit for a game in the style of classic Fallout, with deep quests and dialogue. The combat is great, but exploring these areas, I wish The Ascent was more of an RPG. In crowded social hubs you can shop, talk to NPCs, and pick up sidequests without fear of being attacked. This is fundamentally a game about shooting lots of people dead, including gangsters, corporate soldiers, augmented aliens, and hulking mechs. The story takes you from the stinking depths of the Arcology to increasingly higher, more opulent levels, all of which have a very different aesthetic and vibe. But as you make a name for yourself, working as a mercenary for an influential crime boss, you find yourself rising to the top-quite literally. This grim industrial abyss is dark, claustrophobic, and crawling with bitey creatures called Ferals. When you begin the game, your lowly indent-who you create yourself from a fairly limited selection of faces, haircuts, and tattoos-is working a job in the Deepstink, the lowest part of the city.
Later, a class of enemy shows up who can drop offensive gadgets including mortar launchers, complicating things further. I spent the majority of the game running backwards, kiting enemies. They push forward aggressively, never giving you a chance to get settled or get too comfortable behind cover, which can be exhausting sometimes. Gun-toting enemies are accompanied by large groups of melee grunts wielding katanas, pipes, knives, and other painful-looking weapons. Enemies come thick and fast, and thinking about where you're moving in these dense, messy environments is as important as having a good aim.ĭon't be fooled by the existence of a cover system: the relentless rhythm of The Ascent's combat forces you to be in near-constant motion. All these elements combine to create a really great-feeling shooter that involves more than just pointing and shooting. If you double tap the spacebar (or A button) you can evade enemies with a fast roll, which works on a cooldown timer. Crouch behind something and you can raise your gun with the left trigger or the right mouse button, shooting over the top of whichever chunk of ultra-detailed debris you happen to be squatting near.
0 kommentar(er)
