I just love to see the character development:
Tag: Ascent
Completed Ascent.
I must give this game some credit. At first I thought the arsenal to be boring: regular pistol, EMP pistol, regular assault rifle, EMP assault rifle, regular shotgun, EMP shotgun. But there are some more interesting pieces later on. Flamethrower is a lifesaver. But then there’s also a LMG with explosive bullets, ricocheting SMG and a combination of a shotgun and a minigun.
Also, one of the skills I liked the most lets you summon an exosuit, that you can fight in. Can’t go wrong with an exosuit.
The final rush through Silo 86 requires some endurance. Too many mutans, not enough opportunities to heal. The carnage is satisfying, though, I must admit.
But the final boss, or rather just four waves of enemies separated by some button presses, is rather fair.
Turrets in this game are annoying. They shouldn’t have anywhere as much HP as they have. Super tanky. And on top of that, the tendency of the enemies to spawn behind you, in an area you already cleared, is annoying as well.
This stops mattering us much once you buy and upgrade the minigun, though. It, and the spiderbots that you get from the mid-game boss. Spiderbots are amazing, because they deal all types of damage at the same time. So no matter who you face, they will always deal maximum damage.
All I can say about the game story: it exists. You serve a mob boss, and as the Ascent supercorp that controls everything goes bankrupt, you try to reroute some energy from one of its reactors. You’re then hired by another corp, to steal the logs of Ascent. Turns out it went bankrupt because it was putting all of its money into a Secret Project.
New areas of the city open as the story progresses. But sometimes you’re given a sidequest in an area that hasn’t been opened yet. And there’s nothing telling you that you just wasted your time getting to a blocked path.
The game reminded me of Ruiner. Same cyberpunk settings and warm palette. Fixed isometric camera angle. The controls are twin stick. But unlike Ruiner or Clid the Snail, there’s proper inventory and equipment system. And one thing I never saw in twin stick shooters is that you need to take enemy height into an account. Shorter enemies can only be hit by hipfire of while crouching, from what I can tell.
Leveling up gives you attribute points which you can distribute, but no abilities. Abilities are picked up as gadgets.
Loot is Mass Effect like, not Borderlands or Diablo like. There’s just one kind of assault rifle. But those have levels, which basically just boost its attributes, but doesn’t change the characteristics whatsoever.
What annoys me is that there’s no way to sort items in your inventory. Would be useful if I could sort items by their value. But nope.
After years of Souls-like punishment, the game is surprisingly forgiving. If you die, you don’t need to recover your loot or credits, you don’t loose XP, nothing. There is no punishment for dying.
I started the game with gamepad, but quickly switched back to keyboard and mouse. In most of the encounters, enemies pop behind you, in a “climbing over the rails” animation. Being able to just point at them helps a lot.