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LTTP The Ascent - do we even need AAA games anymore?

martino

Member
AAA selling for the best of them less than half of people playing games (and this game being multiple time others ones) tell you all you need to know
The majority doesn't.
And people pushing for AAA (and exclusives) have the worst motivations and agendas.
 
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It's literally 100x better than Cyberpunk. It's a 3D Akira. Has tons of lore, and world building on par with anything Mass Effect did, but more interesting. I will never in a million years understand some of the opinions people have on this masterpiece.

The UI is literally completely fine. People just want every single control scheme for UIs to be exactly the same and can't train themselves to just use a different button. Everything about it works 100% fine. It's easy to track power-ups, quests on the map, use the in-game prompt to guide you to markers, etc. You don't have to constantly juggle duplicates of guns, and just hit 1 button to sell all duplicates. Upgrading is easy. Leveling up is easy. Can respec, can equip dozens of different power-ups.
 
This game is not really... That good.
  • Combat: Among the best isometric combat games. Tons of weapons. Tons of abilities. Can spec your character for multiple builds. Cover system is a nice addition not seen often in this genre.
  • Quests: Good mix of a few filler quests and quests with an interesting story about Cyberpunk / Corporate stuff.
  • Graphics: Literally among the best looking games ever. Looks like what 7 year olds imagined FFVII pre-rendered backgrounds looked like, but 20x better and all modeled for real in 3D.
  • Sound: The guns and sound effects are top notch. The music is decent.
  • Story: Pretty unique concept. Not mind blowing story, but pretty good. The focus is tons of lore building on every aspect of the entire world. Game ends with unique story revelations and a cliff hanger setting up a sequel.
Literally can't even think of anything in it that's bad except maybe the co-op and a few minor glitches?
 
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It's literally 100x better than Cyberpunk. It's a 3D Akira. Has tons of lore, and world building on par with anything Mass Effect did, but more interesting. I will never in a million years understand some of the opinions people have on this masterpiece.

The UI is literally completely fine. People just want every single control scheme for UIs to be exactly the same and can't train themselves to just use a different button. Everything about it works 100% fine. It's easy to track power-ups, quests on the map, use the in-game prompt to guide you to markers, etc. You don't have to constantly juggle duplicates of guns, and just hit 1 button to sell all duplicates. Upgrading is easy. Leveling up is easy. Can respec, can equip dozens of different power-ups.

I agree about the worldbuilding. I think because the sci-fi is so unapologetically hard, that it's probably alienating for some people who aren't as familiar with the genre. But I love that about it.

And yeah, I don't have any major problems with the UI. The only real complaint I have is that the map could be a bit better, and it would be nice to be able to set markers. But not a dealbreaker.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Literally can't even think of anything in it that's bad except maybe the co-op and a few minor glitches?


It's easily the map. Once you spend tens of hours roaming around the world you can easily tell what's what on that 3D hologram, you have everything memorized, but for the first walkthrough or two it's basically useless, it brings more confusion that help really.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
I'd love to play it but its still a technical mess on Steam from what I can see, I just checked right there and people with an i9 and a 3080 TI are they still get frametime spikes and general stutters. Some guy saying he's not getting 60fps at 1080p + Ultra + RTX on a 2070 which I thought was kinda fair enough until I read he has DLSS Quality on.

I think I'll just wait for a discounted PS5 version at this point since I already bought it on steam but cant refund because I spent over an hour trying to fix it after playing for an hour with bad performance, bugs and crashing. Seems fine on console but I've no xbox unfort.
 

Fredrik

Member
It's literally 100x better than Cyberpunk. It's a 3D Akira. Has tons of lore, and world building on par with anything Mass Effect did, but more interesting.
Lol I love the game but I can’t agree on all that 😅

The Ascent was a beautiful summer fling, took me 37 hours to see all there was to see and do all side missions, I went away satisfied but ready to move on.

But for what’s essentially a twinstick shooter The Ascent is world class.

And I hope other devs understand that this zoomed out perspective and control method has it’s clear benefit for action gameplay just as with Metroid Dread which also dare to go outside the norm on how modern games are designed.

For that aspect alone I hope either Metroid Dread or The Ascent get some action reward at the TGA.

It’s time to drop the behind the character camera for shooting games, it was never great and never will be, you never ever have total control of what’s happening around you. Top down or side-view will always make the action better. Devs knew this in the 80s but sadly got lost, I don’t know when the switch to third person behind the character happened but for decades the AAA shooting action has been lacking as far as I’m concerned.
 
Lol I love the game but I can’t agree on all that 😅

The Ascent was a beautiful summer fling, took me 37 hours to see all there was to see and do all side missions, I went away satisfied but ready to move on.

But for what’s essentially a twinstick shooter The Ascent is world class.

And I hope other devs understand that this zoomed out perspective and control method has it’s clear benefit for action gameplay just as with Metroid Dread which also dare to go outside the norm on how modern games are designed.

For that aspect alone I hope either Metroid Dread or The Ascent get some action reward at the TGA.

It’s time to drop the behind the character camera for shooting games, it was never great and never will be, you never ever have total control of what’s happening around you. Top down or side-view will always make the action better. Devs knew this in the 80s but sadly got lost, I don’t know when the switch to third person behind the character happened but for decades the AAA shooting action has been lacking as far as I’m concerned.
Well that's fine if people disagree, but I genuinely don't understand most of it lol. Not that I need to understand it, but I like talking about the game.

I thought Cyberpunk sucked horribly. I think Ascent looks like a 3D Akira comic (basically the fulfillment of a childhood dream in game form). I think the lore is extremely interesting, even down to all the new alien races and corporate history - the stuff they tease at the end as well. The game isn't a crazy deep RPG, and is primarily an action game first with RPG elements. But I'm totally cool with that.

Maybe I'm exaggerating on the Cyberpunk thing. If they ever fix it, I'm sure it has better written quests and stuff, but I wasn't impressed with the game they shipped at all. And you're totally right about the zoomed out, gameplay first perspective being under used.
 

hlm666

Member
Freaking love the output of smaller teams these days. Riftbreaker / alien maurader / valheim / ascent / grounded. All so good.
so ive played everything there except alien maurader and hit up steam, says it's early access but no buy option. Was this a crowd funded game or something and the early access is restricted at the moment or something?
 

Bartski

Gold Member
Best co-op game since RE5
Oddly enough co-op is where the real issues with the game begin despite being the recommended way to play and clearly this is how most reviewers played it. I played the whole thing solo on release and have seen only a few bugs all the way, nothing major. Still waiting to see it fully patched, multiplayer here is great but I'm not risking losing my save 'till that happens.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Oddly enough co-op is where the real issues with the game begin despite being the recommended way to play and clearly this is how most reviewers played it. I played the whole thing solo on release and have seen only a few bugs all the way, nothing major. Still waiting to see it fully patched, multiplayer here is great but I'm not risking losing my save 'till that happens.
Well there was some crashes to main menu, connection issues, but other than that nothing major.
 

Fredrik

Member
Well that's fine if people disagree, but I genuinely don't understand most of it lol. Not that I need to understand it, but I like talking about the game.

I thought Cyberpunk sucked horribly. I think Ascent looks like a 3D Akira comic (basically the fulfillment of a childhood dream in game form). I think the lore is extremely interesting, even down to all the new alien races and corporate history - the stuff they tease at the end as well. The game isn't a crazy deep RPG, and is primarily an action game first with RPG elements. But I'm totally cool with that.

Maybe I'm exaggerating on the Cyberpunk thing. If they ever fix it, I'm sure it has better written quests and stuff, but I wasn't impressed with the game they shipped at all. And you're totally right about the zoomed out, gameplay first perspective being under used.
I’ve clocked in over 250 hours on Cyberpunk 🤐 This is on PC where there has been less bugs, cool mods and just an allround better experience than on console where it seems to be mostly hated, maybe rightfully so. Won’t bore you and start listing what they did right and wrong in this thread though, I really just like core RPGs and are more or less immune to RPG action jank at this point, and for a RPG Cyberpunk has possibly the best action ever, it actually feels like proper first person shooter action.

You’re right about The Ascent, the complaints mostly feels unwaranted, they managed to marry twin-stick shooting with light RPG elements in an absolutely phenomenal way.

Personally I think platform warring stirred up some shit too, it always does, some minor problem gets highlighted as a major game breaking flaw or whatever. Goes for all platforms and any type of exclusivity. It’s likely why some have strange complaints on Metroid Dread right now. It is what it is. Hopefully the devs see through that and hear us fans as well so we get more games of this type.
 
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Nico_D

Member
Started this last night and besides it being gorgeous, so many details and beautiful environments, I'm also having a damn good time.
 

bender

What time is it?
While it is beautiful, I didn't care for the game much. How layered the first hub area just doesn't work well with an isometric game.
 

Urban

Member
Im playing it with a friend and that game is so good !

BUT

holy Shit is the map poorly made! If they only did some QoL work than this would be a Goty contender
We startet with normal difficulty but we are thinking about going with hard
 

manfestival

Member
I will also hop on the band wagon. Only reason I have not finished this game is because I have been playing with friends and we have to assemble just to have our playthrough of the campaign. Otherwise, it is a ton of fun. Probably one of the biggest surprises of the year.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
  • Combat: Among the best isometric combat games. Tons of weapons. Tons of abilities. Can spec your character for multiple builds. Cover system is a nice addition not seen often in this genre.
  • Quests: Good mix of a few filler quests and quests with an interesting story about Cyberpunk / Corporate stuff.
  • Graphics: Literally among the best looking games ever. Looks like what 7 year olds imagined FFVII pre-rendered backgrounds looked like, but 20x better and all modeled for real in 3D.
  • Sound: The guns and sound effects are top notch. The music is decent.
  • Story: Pretty unique concept. Not mind blowing story, but pretty good. The focus is tons of lore building on every aspect of the entire world. Game ends with unique story revelations and a cliff hanger setting up a sequel.
Literally can't even think of anything in it that's bad except maybe the co-op and a few minor glitches?
You do you.
 
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