It’s no secret that the term cyberpunk has been ever so slightly tarnished in the aftermath of the Cyberpunk 2077 launch. Luckily, it hasn’t deterred Neon Giant from finishing their first project together as a new studio, consisting of just 11 people! ‘The Ascent’ is a cyberpunk-inspired; action role-play game that looks to reinvent the twin-stick shooter genre. Furthermore, this is a direct to Xbox Game Pass as a Microsoft exclusive across PC and Xbox with local co-op to boot. While single-player games have been killing it of late, it felt good to jump into a four-player blood bath to blow off some steam.

The game kicks things off in the grimy, rundown underbelly of the Arcology sewer systems aptly named the Deepstink. A cramped and clustered mess of a location with pipes bursting with raw sewage and steam. Rubbish and scrap littering the catwalks, it’s a perfect place to set your expectations, that you’ll be in the thick of it for most of your campaign.

Your boss is dribbling verbal obscenities through the radio while you are mowing down hordes of Ferals that have infested the area. It’s a brutal introduction to the world of Veles and its superstructure, the Arcology, with superb environmental storytelling that only goes up from here. Literally.

After clearing the tutorial portion of the game, you get to ascend to “The Warrens” level which boasts arguably, one of the most fleshed-out cyberpunk environments to date. The fixed camera angle suddenly pans out to reveal the giant megastructure’s internal layout with immense and highly detailed backdrops. You suddenly feel incredibly insignificant in scale and the hovering cars zooming across the expanse in front of you left me speechless.

Then immediately after you enter cluster 13, the place is jammed packed full of aliens and punked out humans as varied as snowflakes. Neon signs and holograms brilliantly light up the dark environments with rain-soaked metal floors glistening as if to flex the developers’ sheer coding powers. The claustrophobic nature of the hub with makeshift shops full of spare parts and rubbish made the place feel alive with a sense of desperation that also washed over me as I realised that I would have to just made do with what they could find.

The characters you come across help drive the story forward and their rugged dialogue and quips helped to sell the feel of a cyberpunk aesthetic. I never felt over-invested in the story by just following the missions, it served its purpose though to get me to go kill more things, but it was not necessarily a terrible thing either. Being a twin-stick shooter, you move with the left stick and aim with the right stick and generally just spray an absurd amount of bullets in all directions with unlimited ammo.

Be warned though, just because you have unlimited reloads does not mean it will be a walk in the park. You will need to be smart about moving around your environments to kite the hordes of enemies to effectively mow them down. Use cover when you can and hold the left trigger to shoot over cover and master augments and abilities to stun, explode or bludgeon your way to victory.

It is a simple system with a plethora of options for different builds, with energy weapons for higher damage to mechs to just straight-up heavy machine guns to chunk away at the larger fleshier Larkians. Leveling up seemed daunting at first but after sticking a couple of stat points on health and crit damage, and upgrading my guns with basic components, you quickly realise it’s pretty intuitive and accessible compared to most RPG games.

I enjoyed spelunking through the Arcology on my own but after playing co-op it feels almost wrong to play it any other way. Having multiple people running different abilities and weapon builds made the visual splat fest all the more sweeter. The Ascent is a violent and visceral experience that continually ramps it up as you ascend higher and higher. It’s not just a visual journey but an audible delight, the stomach-churning splat of entrails hitting the floor and the ominous Blade Runner-esque soundtrack kicking it up a notch during combat and sinking back into a soft background vibe that relaxes you after a gunfight.

As I mentioned earlier the environmental storytelling hammers home the higher you climb. The more apparent the separation between the rich and the poor, with the higher levels in pristine condition with access to actual sunlight stirs a feeling of resentment that fuels you to strive on. I only wish the radar was replaced with a more detailed minimap as the actual map was less than helpful at the best of times.

While all the environments were varied and beautiful, I did not enjoy having to backtrack or stop so often to figure out where I was going. You do get a handy little ping system that points you in the right direction but more than once it sent me into a corner that I couldn’t get past and struggled to get back on track.

The main campaign was done in about 15 or so hours with a ton of side quests left to do after the credits had rolled. It can be a notoriously difficult experience, especially with certain areas filled with enemies way above your level you can just stumble upon. However, I didn’t always feel this was a deterrent, in fact, it made me go and grind out some more levels so I could come back and tear them a new one. If you are looking for a gory co-op adventure, with jaw-dropping environments and a kick-ass soundtrack, then the team at Neon Giant have you covered, strap in, and gun your way to the top!

Written by: Shane Fletcher