The Ascent's city is catnip for digital flâneurs. It's easy to get lost, even when following the breadcrumb trail laid out by the HUD, and I don't mind one bit. The arcology's hub districts are a battle royale of adboards and Hangul script, a chaos of screens and reflections filtered through smog, the interweaving paths of delivery drones and the shuffling bodies of hundreds of weary NPCs. And how about that lighting? Polluted, gauzy, shifting, overwhelming. Each store is a delicate little treasure box, the lid peeling away when you step inside - neatly patterned with wares, like chips filling a circuit board. Open air markets of steam, textile and clanking metal. Fortified holes-in-the-wall staffed by philosophical robots. Soylent-green pharmacies and 24 hour kiosks with the fading aura of an impending hangover. Seriously, you never saw such shops! Armouries fringed by spinning, wireframe weapons. It's probably the lockdown talking, but I want to live in them. Availability: Out now on PC and Xbox One/Series S/X on Game Pass.But what The Ascent's world lacks in imagination and bite it almost makes up for in scale and an exhaustive, toymaker's commitment to the fine details. This is not one of your transgressive, norm-busting punk fictions - even Ruiner, its closest cousin, is a bolt from the blue by comparison. Admittedly, it also teems with cliches and callouts to the usual canonical works: William Gibson's phrase "high tech, low life", which flickers on displays throughout like a sorcerer's incantation Blade Runner's flourescent umbrella handles and melancholy synth score pirouetting holostrippers from any number of seedy sci-fi saloons an Oriental faction who worship honour and wield katanas. Its tiered alien megacity is one of the liveliest cyberpunk settings I've explored, always crawling with people and machines, whether you're massacring mutants in the sewers or gazing out from a boardroom window. A narrative-led adventure playable in single and up to four-player co-op modes.The Ascent's arcology setting is splendid, if heavily derivative - shame that all you can do here is gun and grind.Double-aim mechanic enables players to utilize the full screen and choose between multiple targets anywhere in the environment.An unprecedented sense of verticality within its world, with different levels and platforms discernible within play.Classic RPG mechanics to enable players to build up their character including cyberwear, augmentations, and looting.A free-roam play style in a cyberpunk inspired dystopian world.The Ascent will offer players the chance to step into an action-orientated science-fiction RPG powered by Unreal Engine that takes the genre to new levels, available to play in both single-player and up to four-player co-op. Players will have to take up arms and hold them off. Life becomes a case of survival, with rival corporations and crime syndicates looking to fill the empty space. Taking on the role of an indentured worker, the world starts to go haywire when The Ascent Group shuts down for unknown reasons. The Ascent will see players dive into “The Ascent Group” arcology, a self-contained corporate-run metropolis, stretching high into the sky and filled with creatures from all over the galaxy.
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